Game Night for Geeks

Yesterday, my "little" sister, Christina, came over to hang out. Because it started raining shortly after she arrived, we had to find something to do inside. I don't have many games, but she decided she wanted Trivial Pursuit - 20th Anniversary Edition. She's only 21, so I didn't expect her to know too much about news, pop culture, etc. from 1982 - 2001. She didn't disappoint. I was, however, ashamed that I, too, knew very few of the answers. It got so bad, and we wanted to end the misery, that when we had both earned 3 pie pieces, we went to sudden death. She won. I did not care in the least.


After we got back from dinner, we decided to play Scrabble. I was really worried about us. Spelling is not, nor has it ever been, my strongest skill. I don't know what it is - maybe I have a touch of dyslexia. (Did I ever mention that I wrote (plagiarized - did I spell that right? Hope so, cause I looked it up!) a report on dyslexia way back in 5th or 6th grade - way before dyslexia was cool?) So, given my handicap, along with our shameful showing in T.P., I figured there was disaster ahead.


I started out strong (I think) with "MANIAC". We weren't keeping score (we were counting individual scores, but not keeping a tally), but I was pleased that I used 6 of my 7 letters on my first try. Christina countered with "DRIP". I came back with "CLOGS", and then she put down "ADD". I think this was the point where I yelled at her for putting down short words that didn't help the board to grow. (Have you ever played Scrabble with a full-fledged Control Freak?) As she has her entire life, she obeyed my command, and we really started kicking butt. My best move was to use all 7 letters at once by hooking into an I for the word "FRIGHTEN". The placement didn't give me any good Triple Word Scores, but I did get 50 extra points for using all 7 letters. I got a 98. Did I mention we weren't keeping score? Christina had some nice moves, as well. She got "HOAX", "HALVED" and a beauty of a combination when she used "BRAIN" to make a block and also made "FIR" in the same move. She put down "JESUS", which I told her was illegal, but it WAS Sunday, and I didn't want to tempt fate. I did put my foot down when she tried to put down "JEDI" - not in my lifetime, buddy!


So we get down to the end, and we each had 2 letters left. I had 2 vowels, and there were several places on the board that I could use my letters, so I was golden. I didn't know what she had, but she was having some trouble. So (and this is the only "cheating" that happened), I asked her to show me her letters. Then, since I had multiple choices, I placed my letters in a way that she could build off of them. In the end, the only letter that was left was a "K". She used it to spell "KA", which is in the dictionary, but may be questionable as a foreign word.


The cool part about the night was that the 2 of us, both self-proclaimed rotten spellers and Scrabble novices, were able to use up all of our letters. I felt a sense of accomplishment. I guess that IS pretty geeky. But I wonder what is geekier (more geeky?): taking pride in using all of the letters in the game, or going to extreme lengths to get a picture of the completed board???



As an aside to this story, and something I didn't realize yesterday, but it just struck me as I was typing this: when Christina and Paul were younger (and Christina was really young - 5 or 6 or 7), and I was living at home, Christina ALWAYS wanted to play Trivial Pursuit. I mean it was strange. She was way too little to get any of the answers, but she always wanted to play. We ended up getting a Junior Trivial Pursuit so that we could use those questions for her and the regular questions for the grown ups. I guess some things never change!