Back to reality.
I have become obsessed with playing Scrabble on my Gameboy. I play four or five games a day, each game taking about half an hour (though it is possible to play while doing something else, as the computer takes a while to have its go - I am playing at the moment, as it happens!)
I like to kid myself that at least I am doing something intellectually stimulating, and that I am learning something about words. But it's just another form of procrastination
I have always loved Scrabble and generally annoy any human opponent I play because I have learnt all the acceptable 2 letter words, but can't tell you what they mean. Of course any serious Scrabble player knows this is the minimum requirement of the serious player. Up til now I have always resisted trying to learn all the three letter words, or worse all the allowable 7 and 8 letter words (those can really help you score big), but today I found myself attempting to start this task. Which is slightly worrying.
In the back of my mind is the notion that, if I put in a lot of study, then one day I might become the Scrabble World Champion. This is a ridiculous dream. I am simply not anal or autistic enough to beat the people who really love this game. There are thousands of Scrabble nerds out there who are a million times more committed than me. I think "goaters" is a word (of course it isn't) and I have to go to the anagram section of my OSL (Official Scrabble Lists) book to see that I hadn't even noticed "storage" as a possibility, let alone "toerags". And how could I have missed "orgeats"? What does that mean? It doesn't matter. That's why there is nothing educational about Scrabble. I have no interest in finding out the meaning of words. I just need to know if they are allowed or not. The Scrabble dictionary is just a list of words. No definitions. I don't care what "suq" means or "euoi" or "viold". All I need to know is that I can play them, and they are all very useful words to have up my sleeve.
All right, I had to find out. Orgeat is a syrup or drink made from almonds and sugar (formerly from barley). It comes from the Latin
hordeum meaning barley. So has actually finding out the meaning of the word made my day any more worthwhile?
No.
If you are interested, I tend to win about 75% of my games against the Gameboy expert (who frankly isn't all that sharp a player, though he does know all the words that are allowed - plays like a twat a lot though). In recent games my highest score for one word was 140 for "sledgers" (over two triple word scores) and my top score in a two player game is 548.
Anyone think they can beat me? I've had a lot of practice.
As the Comic Store Guy says as he's about to be hit by a neutron bomb in the Simpsons "I've wasted my life."
