Olof and I have been playing Scrabulous, Facebook’s Scrabble application, for the past several days, and it’s with a certain sense of shame that I report that he beats me most of the time. I went in thinking that I had an obvious advantage, being a native speaker of English and fancying myself a pretty clever wordsmith, but the statistics speak for themselves: 4 games to 2, in his favor. Clearly I was mistaken.<\/p>\n
Annoyingly,\u00a0 his not being a native speaker actually gives him a bit of an edge, I think. He often doesn’t see what to me are obvious words, and tries, instead to use up his high-score tiles in bizarre combinations that the program accepts as often as not. Say I play “horded” for 13 points. That’s respectable, right? Only until he counters with “jee” for 20. I give you “league” for 12, and he spells out “soh” for 22. My “unquiet” yields me 16 points, and he parries with “jut,” adding 30 to his score. I am so very–and so very obviously–overmatched.<\/p>\n
I assure you, however, that though my spirit may be bowed, it’s not yet broken. As of this moment, I stand in good stead to win our current match. I’ve taken a leaf from my opponent’s book and started playing letter combinations that I can hardly bear to think of as words. Not long ago, for instance, I played “jeeped,” a move that pains me anew every time I see those letters arranged on the board. On the other hand, the 72 points it garnered are like a cool, soothing balm. Adding another notch to my wins list might just take the hurt away altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Olof and I have been playing Scrabulous, Facebook’s Scrabble application, for the past several days, and it’s with a certain sense of shame that I report that he beats me most of the time. I went in thinking that I had an obvious advantage, being a native speaker of English and fancying myself a pretty… Read More Word jumble<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}