Scrabbled

Scrabble is a fun game, but only if I'm playing it with Little Smoot. At 10 years old, she is actually getting very, very good at the game, but I can still consistently kick her butt. Therefore, it is fun. I'm sure that within the coming months, she'll be able to beat me once in a while, and the game just won't quite be as much fun for me. For now, I enjoy it though.

If I want to lose at Scrabble in a pathetic manner, all I have to do is play against Mrs. Smoot. Playing Scrabble with Mrs. Smoot has become no fun at all, even if she lets me double my points in a futile attempt to permit me to be competitive.

I made the mistake of agreeing to play Mrs. Smoot this weekend. She had over 100 points by her third turn. I was still struggling to find words like "of," or maybe "the," while she was whipping things up like "rebranding." And of course she was dominating all of the triple word score locations.

She has some sort of gift where she can just look at a bunch of letters and words will simply jump out at her. For example, if she had ZEQLAUT as her letters, she'd instantly recognize that QUETZAL is a tropical bird, and she'd figure out how to stretch it onto a quadruple word score, plus finish a few other words, and she'd accumulate a score of 312 on that turn. And that would be one of her weaker turns.

Given the same letters, I'd grab the dictionary in hopes that "Zeqlaut" was a word, and then I'd say the heck with it.

And if you really want to scream in agony, try playing "Boggle" with her.