Words with S-c-h-o-l-a-r-s



There are, roughly, about 250,000 words in the English language. Some people say even more, depending on what you count as a word. Evidently, I know about 17 of them.

I have this very addicting game on my phone called Words with Friends. Now, it’s really just Scrabble. J’s are still worth 10 points, M’s are still worth 3, etc. And there are still double-word squares and triple-word squares and everything else that Scrabble has. My guess is they have to call it Words with Friends to keep from giving the folks at Scrabble tons of money.

Anyway, the cool thing about this game is that you can play it against complete strangers or against friends and family if they have it downloaded onto their phones. Some folks check and update it once a day, others are checking and updating it every three minutes. I’m a three minute guy.

Up until this week, I hadn’t been playing anyone that I knew. It was all random people that the game had set me up against. But this week my aunt out in California sent me a message on Facebook that she wanted to play against me.

Now listen. I love my aunt, and she has always impressed me as a very educated, intelligent, well rounded woman. But I just knew I was going to take her down here. Hello? I’m a writer, remember? The English language is what I do.

Luckily I didn’t say any of that to her, because she proceeded to beat me like a drum. At one point she held a 70 point lead, using words like “firth”, “fane” and “dilly”. What the Hell is a “firth”? And the only “dilly” I know is a “Dilly Bar”, that awesome good ice cream thing that you get at Dairy Queen.

It reminded me of the time that my buddy’s wife beat me in seven straight games of checkers. I was devastated, and haven’t played a game of checkers since.

And it wasn’t all just four and five letter words with my aunt, either. Oh, she pulled some humdingers out of the bag. Some of them were six and even seven letters long. Sometimes she would build on two or three other words at a time, stacking them like bricks and scoring three or four different ways.

Me? Let’s just say I was limited. I’m more of a “hat”, “cat” “bat” kind of guy. Every now and then I’d get lucky and draw an “S”, so I could turn “hat” into “hats” and use the same word twice. You give me a “Q” or a “J” and I’m stuck with that joker the whole game. And unless I already have an “O” to make “ox”, then “X” is no good to me either.

Here are some other words I’ve seen on there- “chao”, “sox”, “tine”, “gilt”, “el” and “qi”. How do these people know these words? When they used the word “qi”, did they know it meant “energy flow”, or were they just guessing?

One friend that I’m playing against used the word “droit”, and admitted she hadn’t heard of it either. Turns out that “droit” is some kind of French law or constitutional right or something like that.

One thing is for sure. You lucky people will be reading a much smarter column in no time if I keep playing this game.



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