Bozo's Montreux

a puzzle if you like

2008-07-02T18:21:46Z

You hold AGINOST. The sevens don't play, but on the board there are five letters to use for eights: D, G, K, M, and P. Do you have a bingo? If so, how many, and what are they?

EDIT: Answer given in comments.

I don't want to go to work tomorrow but I probably will anyway

2008-06-27T04:32:13Z

So yeah, beer. I'm playing vs. Quackle, and there's a C floating on the board, and I have ADILOUV, and I see what's there right away, but I can't convince myself it's good. Thus, my countenance is fallen and I weep softly in a place no one but me can enter. (But with a large container of beer, it's OK.)

Odd statistical breakdown for '08 so far:

Club record: 55-13-1 (last year: 89-35-1)
Tournament record: 78-40
Scrabulous record: 23-21

My tournament field is about as strong as my Scrabulous field, I'd guess. The club field is somewhat lower but not that much - you can't swing a dead opossum in the Austin club without hitting a 1600 player. (Maybe I shouldn't say that, since no one has yet tried to do this. Not sure if the rec center has a policy regarding the swinging of dead animals in the meeting rooms.) Don't know what to attribute the odd splits in the W-L record to, really.

Here's a strange unforeseen thing: I have gotten to the point where I have no idea whatsoever what words I know and don't know. (Not with SOWPODS; I *know* I don't know a bunch of those.) Over the past few years I'm sure I've practiced every word in the OWL2 except maybe the lower-prob half of the nines. I've seen 'em all. But words come up here and there that I figure I sure ought to know 100%, but it's more like 70%. Or 100% one day and 40% the next. I know I need to work on my words, but I have very little idea what specifically to work on. Every time I test myself, the results come out different. Feels like I'm just stirring one big cauldron of soup now. Yeah, I know lots of words, just not sure which ones. Any of y'all ever get like that?

Hi!

2008-06-04T05:12:14Z

So why did I delete the archives here? Simple answer: I read through them, some were fine or even interesting, others were kinda dumb, most of them were ordinary, the same mixed bag as anyone else's LJ. Didn't really see the need to keep any of them. I don't mind if my writings are ephemeral - so am I and so is everything else. I'm not much of a pack rat. Every time I move to a new apartment, the most enjoyable part is getting rid of what I don't use or need. Throwing out stuff (or giving it away, or whatever) feels empowering. (I need to do some more of it, truth be told...too much junk lying about the apartment for my taste.) Wonder if death is like that, whether I'll think when the time arrives (hopefully at least 50 years from now) that my life has become another keepsake that isn't compelling enough to keep anymore and thus I can make peace with cutting it adrift. It doesn't strike me as a sad thought.

There are exceedingly few sentimental objects in my possession. The one I've kept the longest doesn't sparkle in the least. It's a now-ratty corporate giveaway blue tote bag. Seriously. I keep it because of the date emblazoned on the side: November 6-12, 1974. It is the only truly old object I own. My dad went to a health-care convention in Hawaii and took my mom along. I was 4 and my brother was 2 at the time. Mom and Dad did the smart thing and stashed the two of us at an aunt's for the week. When they came back, they had these blue bags with the American Health Care Association logo on the side and gave one to each of us. I've put all sorts of things in the bag in the 34 years since then, from toy blocks to baseball cards to contraband mags and substances to folders of painful poetry to musical instrument cables to Scrabble stuff. The bag has seen nearly my whole life. I don't travel with the bag anymore - it stays in my closet. I'll die with it in my closet, or maybe not: It's still just a thing.