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New blog
I've started a new blog where I'm going to post on various things, probably mostly literature and music. I hardly post on this blog anyway, but I'll probably continue to post Scrabble-related stuff on here from time to time, and of course use this account to follow and comment on all y'all's blogs. For those who are interested, the new blog is at < -
A club game
In which somehow I manage to make a thoroughly terrible play immediately after finding a pretty stylish nine: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5700#0 -
Note to self
When opponent exchanges 5 with 10 in the bag, you probably shouldn't turn over a bunch of tiles. I never remember to think about this. -
Scrabble sightings: World's End, by T.C. Boyle
A lot of the novel takes place in the Dutch settlements in 17th-century New York, so words like MIJNHEER and PATROON (a landowner granted manorial rights under old Dutch law) are all over the place. SCHOUT# and COMMIS#, Dutch words for low-ranking officials, crop up a lot too ( Read more... ) -
SNIDY# sighting
From Jean Toomer's Cane: "She says all manner of snidy things about him, and swears that she'll never go out again when he is along." -
Scrabble sightings - spoilers!
There's lots of Scrabbly goodness in The Mayor of Casterbridge. It opens with Michael Henchard drunkenly auctioning off his wife for five guineas after overindulging in rum-laced FURMITY (a dish made from boiled wheat - also FURMENTY, FRUMENTY, FROMENTY, or FURMETY, but there are no Collins-only variants as far as I know). After a whole bunch of ( Read more... ) -
(Untitled)
In a Facebook Scrabble game, my opponent just opened with NUTMEG and my rack was EIKOORZ. I was really tempted to just play IT, fishing for OZOKERITE. -
This year in Scrabble
Boy, this is gonna be easy:
Tourneys: 2
Games: 38 (21.5-16.5)
Win percentage: 56.6
Total spread: +189
.500 or better: 2/2
Winnings: nothing at all
Rating in: 1747
Rating out: 1792 (also the peak)
Average performance rating (weighted): 1832 -
More sightings
From Silas Marner: "Mr. Crackenthorp, too, while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from him because he thought too much of it, and never came to church, enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs' pettitoes, well calculated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character." PETTITOES apparently means pigs' ( Read more... ) -
My favourite books of the decade
This list isn't actually that meaningful, because I haven't read too many books from the noughties (I still haven't got around to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao or White Teeth, for example), but here goes anyway:
1. Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
2. Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections
3. Cormac McCarthy - The Road
4. Jonathan Safran Foer - ( Read more... )