Say Something...

One of the many wonderful and amazing time wasting activities you can do on Facebook is playing Scrabble against your friends or even random people if you feel bored enough. Playing Scrabble online is especially fun when you have the dictionary at your disposal with a simple click of the mouse. At this point you learn that "Fjod" is not a word, but "Juried" is. Rigged.

Here's one I played against Darren the other week. It took us about a few days playing back and forth. I guess that counts as a fairly quick game, given how often the two of us are wasting our time on that site... just quickly, business analysts figure that we are wasting up to $5 billion per year just by browsing Facebook for an hour each day. Judging from the number of Facebook groups dedicated to using it to procrastinate at work, they just might be onto something.

I like this one a lot because of all the food related words we came up with. Chives and taros (and to an extent, "Cone"... I'll consider "Dog" depending on where you come from) are all truly accepted words in the English language, but since when did "Smartie" become part of the vernacular? Next thing you know, "smartiepants" won't be so far away.

At least "Milo" is a legitimate word with uses outside the powdered drink Adam Gilchrist allegedly uses to hit all those sixes. Perhaps test cricket legend Richie Benaud could tell us about the benefits of a nice cold Milo (Forward the clip to about 4:14). But then again this may all be part of some not so sinister effort by the snack food industry to infiltrate our minds. Expect Twisties, Cadbury and Powerthirst to all make appearances in a Scrabble game near you.


Just a quick word on this one against Peter, which lasted about a week before I got to the lead of 30 which may have helped explain why he stopped playing. Being a closet Magic player (we play in darkened alleys), at one point I was compelled to play "Mana". No real complaints there, but then Pete managed to play "Manana"... I first thought it was some sort of magical banana or something. Something the Israelites might've eaten (That's "manna", you idiot. - Ed). For future reference, manana refers to tomorrow or the (indefinite) future.

Here's one from the late stages of Round Two v Darren. If anything, it teaches you to spend your vowels regularly, just in case you manage to monopolise half the 'E's in the bag. I was half hoping an 'I' would show up just so I could spell "No, Aieeee!!", probably the best way to express my feelings at the time.


In the end, I managed to get out of that little hole by playing "eaten" across a double word score. This was a fairly close one, considering I probably would have lost if I had not played the bingo on "pursuer" early on. The best part about the online version is that randomly typing words into the dictionary will greatly distort your view of the English language and make you think of spellings that have and never will exist outside of an SMS conversation.

By now you might have figured the true purpose of this entire post was to partially annoy Darren in a display of egomania gone mad (cos everyone knows that's how you make friends in life). I'm not sure if it's working, we'll have to wait and see... Either way, I'm quietly awaiting the onslaught that comes from the leader of the opposition. I'll be needing "Gratuitous amounts of energy" to withstand the next game. (Apologies for the self editorialisation with "Manna", it's not some sort of split personality thing going on, so don't send baskets filled with get well soon cards. At least that's what he says...)