if a tree falls

Playing and winning

On losing at Scrabble

Sometimes I remember my past in sounds and songs. Sometimes a smell will trigger a strong emotion completely out of context. Lately, I've recalled snippets of memory through Scrabble games.

I learned about Scrabulous about two weeks ago. It's a site where you can play Scrabble online with other people, with "Scrabble robots" or alone, though I've only played alone or with robots thus far. While playing, I've had flashbacks in tiles. Below, a personal history in Scrabble wins and (mostly) losses.

1990ish: My grandmother teaches me how to play. She is ruthless and routinely wipes the board with me. She thinks about each move for a very long time and then puts the tiles-- which usually total more than 20 points-- onto the board ever so delicately. I regularly have the opportunity to get a triple word score on SEX or ZIT but am too embarrassed to play. Gram beats me by 100 points anyway.

1992: I go to therapy when my parents get divorced. I'm in middle school. I start to cry when the therapist Bonnie wants to talk about the issue at hand, so we play Scrabble. This makes me think that she can read my mind through the words that I use. I play SEX and ZIT often, which is why I think she says I should keep coming back.

2002: I get an internship at a marketing magazine where everyone has their names spelled out in Scrabble tiles next to the doorways of their cubes. I realize that it's been ages since I've played.

2004: I am employed as a writer and furious that my pharmacist boyfriend regularly kicks my ass at Scrabble. This is because I try to make long words that open up the board for future words. He just tries to get a lot of points. Obviously, his strategy works better.

September 2007: ScrabbleRobot16 also beats me, teaches me valuable words like QI and FAQIR.

October 2007: I beat my husband by more than 40 points, aided by good letters. Joe allows me to use the questionable word QUADS and severely regrets it. We rematch the next weekend and play in a dead heat for more than an hour. I lose by three points and am delighted by my progress.

I'm coming for you next, ScrabbleRobot16.

Rainy Sunday

Despite the fact that the ongoing extreme weather has created a lot of chaos, my rainy Sunday was blissfully uneventful. It was like a snow day without all the cleanup. Joe and I watched a lot of TV, played a lot of video games and did a lot of couch-sitting. Top five moments are below.

5 - Nancy Giles' call for a more diverse broadcast news media, in light of Imusgate. [CBS Sunday morning]

4 - Joe's Tiger Woods golf game victory dances. He and his avatar did exactly the same thing on some holes.

3 - SNL's digital short. Shia LeBoeuf did a really good job on the episode in general, but the use of Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" (first heard on TV on The O.C. at Caleb's funeral) was fantastic. Honorable mentions go to the Dakota Fanning show and "An intimate moment with Jessica Simpson and John Mayer."

2 - Super Paper Mario's old school gaming/new school controls approach. I played for three hours and could have gone on much longer without feeling like I was suffering from brain rot or general Nintendo-induced crankiness.

1 - Sydney Pollack as Johnny Sack's medically-trained prison confidante on The Sopranos. In one episode, he created a fantastic character.