Baby's first Scrabble game

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Funny things Joel Says

I have yet to come up with a feature for my humble not read Scrabble blog. I correct that oversight now!
The Director of the New York Scrabble club is a dude by the name of Joel Sherman. I'd say he's in his late fifties. He is most surly. And I mean, whatever you think of when I say surly...surlier. Anyway, I've actually come to like him a lot. There's no chitchat with him, he matter of factly says either you suck or you don't. He is slow to compliment and quick to mock. There's no bullshit whatsoever with him and it's a trait I've come to appreciate.

Now, when you deal with lots of different people and you, essentially hate them all, you tend to say things that would make the ordinary person cringe. Like when I told him I played in my first tournament last June, he looked at me and said "that was a stupid way to waste money."

And when my friend told him I won a tournament in Australia he said "I don't doubt it, they have horrible players there."

And now for tonight's gem:

An orthodox woman who plays at the club regularly was doing her usual complaining that all the big tournaments inevitably involve Saturday games which she can't play in because she can't count points or hit the clock or something like that. So, I told her there were monthly Sunday tournaments out in Queens. So, she asks Joel for the contact information. He gives it to her and tells her the next game is Sunday. She again starts to whine because evidently Sunday is Passover. Joel sighs heavily and says "Well, too bad for you. Anyone that keeps the Sabbath is an idiot that is wasting half the weekend for no reason." And then he walked away. I covered my face, but then peeked through my fingers to see her standing there speechless. I wonder if she'll come back.

Victory!!

Not only did I beat Paul last night, I beat him three times!!
This was the first victory:

He challenged Gritters...mostly because when I played it I had that "uh...umm...whatever, I'm behind might as well give it a shot," face on. Turned out it was good. Then I drew both blanks and bingoed with strains...Ah good times. 40 point win for Dawn. Plus I had some nice three/four letter word plays HexFax, Jew/Yaw. Good game by me. He won the first and third, I won the second and fourth. When we were two and two I got all cocky...and then got smooshed in back to back games, but then I won the last game and went home in triumph.

Unforgiving

Scrabble is cruel and evil. That is the thing you should know about it. You can play for hours everyday for a month and a half, then you take just a week off to enjoy your other interests and when you go back to Scrabble, you suddenly can't remember what satine + s is or what satire + a makes. You're looking at the rack ovalite and you're playing oval. Instead of the most obvious bingo of all time. Sigh. So, in fact, the Scrapple group did kind of break up over the last uncomfortable outing, which is kind of good so I can stop pretending to like Barbara. I've mostly been playing with this guy Paul. We met up on Wednesday at this cool outdoor "artspace" thing on the East side.
He is much, much, much better than I am. Which, I gotta say, I didn't really know until, he fricking back to back TO BACK bingoed on me, in a disgusting fashion during the first game.

He opened with cluster. I then took a shot with rootiest -- which was, surprisingly, good. Then he played cratonic...or cratoric, I forget what the blank was -- wtf?? and then he played sedating. At this point I was down by three hundred points and had this been a game at my house, I would have so thrown my tiles in and said 'new game.'
Ugh. Then I started to play badly - ion and the like, so anyway, I get destroyed in the first game and he's like "I can play with a time handicap, if you want.'
I glared.
"Or not."
We set up the board for another game, when the security guard came over and was like "no games in here." Paul started to argue with him for a bit, but I was totally psyched. I'm like one of those skater kids being hasseled by the man! Woo hoo!
We ended up going to a bookstore coffeeshop on 3rd ave. We played four more games. I was losing the second game pretty badly, when I missed the entasis play and sent myself on Scrabble tilt for the next two games. (Including one game where I swear I didn't draw a single vowel. I kept turning over my tiles and seeing an endless string of ens and arrs and I was like ARRGGGHHH. And Paul was like, Dawn, you need to work on your drawing. You'll never win a game if you can't manage to pick an a every now and then.)
Finally, FINALLY, I was winning. I had two bingoes, I was scoring a solid 25-40 points a turn, I was in complete and total command. There were no tiles left. He had six on his rack, so I didn't even have to fear him bingoing out on me. I had four tiles left luut. There was nowhere to play ulu, but there was an open z. I should have played lutz. I didn't. Instead I played...i dunno some crap which left me with a u and an l. Paul was like...wow, you missed a big play...I might be able to win this.
He put down an s and scored 17 points. He was now still behind by 24. I didn't see how he could win. But he assured me that if I didn't score more than two points on my next play, he would win by 1 point. I had five minutes left on my clock. Up by 24 with two tiles left. I looked and looked and looked. I could only find 2 point plays with either the u or the l, the clock was running down. Finally with ten seconds left, I put down the l to make el for two points. He then played off all his letter for 23 points on a double word square...making the words raggs and ar. (I think it was raggs, anyway, I was pretty much crying in my soup at that point.) And then he got two point for my remaining u. I lost by one. I fricking hate Scrabble. And everything it stands for.

Scrabulous

This post has nothing to do with the facebook game. I'm just infringing on their name because I think turnabout is fairplay. Although this doesn't really count as an infringment because there is no way someone would confuse this post with the game Scrabulous. Unlike the poor saps confused into thinking that playing Scrabulous is playing Scrabble. I played one of my marathon sessions with the Scrapple folks last night. I learned a new bingo that I now want to play someday. But I can't list it here because one of the best things about this bingo is that guaranteed challenge and free turn! I also pulled a Fisch on Nancy. I was down 169 -26 and ended up winning by 23 points. She was so crushed. I laughed. I was 6-0 on the night, until Adam destroyed me in a game 565 to 270. And then Old Fischwoman beat me, but I've never beaten her, so that wasn't entirely unexpected. A bit of a a controversy broke out when Clive was beating Barbara so bad that she was like I concede and he wouldn't let her. He said it was bad form and she was pissed off and said she was leaving and then he said he would never play with her again.

I drink your milkshake

"Dawn's problem is that she likes to fish. But it's so obvious what she's doing that she fishes and I just eat the bait. - old fischwoman

She did say I was getting better though, so for those of you who think that after playing almost daily for more than a year, three tournaments and about a thousand dollars, that I was getting worse at Scrabble. You were wrong.

0-4

I hate Scrabble. I quit Scrabble. I will never play Scrabble again. Or something like that my post was gonna go if I lost all four games tonight. It's weird, when I got to Honors --where Scrabble club is played-- I really felt like I was going to have a good 3-1/4-0 kinda night. It was a light crowd due to the Christian holidays and I dunno...I've sorta been studying. But the thing about light crowds that I oft times forget...they're the diehards. And they're better than me. I lost my first game to this kid, then I got stomped by an old man, and then this lady kicked my ass. Funny thing about the game with the lady, the director of the club has taken an interest in helping me since my showing at Saratoga, so he watched over my shoulder as I played the game. She was crushing me by hundreds of points, but in the end, I ended up losing my high two digits. I said something like "well, at least that wasn't horrible." And without missing a beat, he goes "that was horrible." He then pulled out various racks that I had during the game including stated? and showed me the bingoes I should have played. "You're not always going to have satire or satine...if you're waiting for that all day, you're going to miss big plays, Dawn. Shuffle your tiles!"
Groan.
that stated? will haunt me long time...everyone who was listening was like "starter" "toaster!" And I was like "fuck you!" "bite me!"
Ugh.
Anyway, my last game was against a man that I've never beaten. He's a really strong player that was having a baaaad night. Which meant my night just got worse. I was given the matchup and I groaned. This will be my first 0--4...I wasn;t even 0-4 on my first day.
"Against Ed?" The director said snorting "you can beat him."
Huh.
I can?
I looked at his card. I do have a higher rating than him. Okay! I can beat him. I will beat him!
We drew to see who went first. He won. I was sad.
But he exchanged five tiles and I went first with Hare.
He then play qis/share for 40 points.
I was sad.
He was outscoring me horribly, until I made a move on him and played moe/mae for 36 points. I insta went to draw tiles out the bag and he challenged moe too late.
"Sorry, already have my tiles." I said looking like I was sorry, but I so wasn't.
He seemed rattled after that.
He played scone down a triple line, giving me a place for my bingo tiniest.
Then I drew both blanks...I had bacar?? There was an open t...I think that made baccarat, but I wasn't sure how to spell it...so I played off the ba and then bingoed with scarred.
He played putz with the z on a double letter and the p on a double word score for fifty plus points, but he hung the z over the triple line and I played zeta for 39.
I ended up winning by 35 points.
So, my resignation from Scrabble is on hold...for now.