Good Lord

[tahnan]

I've been on a rather serious losing streak in Scrabble lately; I'd lost five in a row, and while I'd won a few before that, I've been watching my rating (on the ISC; not an official NSA rating by any means) slowly slide downward.

The game I just played was astonishing.



(Tiles I played are in blue; my opponent's are in red.) Some things worth noting:

• I had the Z, Q, X, J, and K; opened with 104 points; and still won by less than fifty points. (We each got one blank, and she was ahead of me on S's three to one.)


• Only three of the triple word scores got used (one on the penultimate play of the game).


• That's two bingoes apiece--one on each of our first plays, one later in the game (with the help of a blank). Added bonus: a blank used as a Z.

Definitely the highest-net-scoring game I've yet played. And a pleasant way to turn around a streak whose lowlights included having the word CAZIQUE played on me as a bingo (Cazique, your nom was much cooler before it scored points against me)--a game I would have won if I had used my blank as an S to make CAZIQUES when playing on the triple, and not as a C to make CHIDE while playing it on another triple; and a game lost by two points in spite of having the two highest-scoring plays in the game (SIXTY on the triple for 47; MOSQUE, with the Q on a triple letter and the O attached to the front of ROTUND, for 44).

Perhaps I'm playing too much Scrabble. Well, at least it's an intellectual distraction.