Yep, I let him cheat. To be honest, I was a little surprised that Andrew was even willing to sit down and play with Lexie and me in the first place. I should have known he wouldn’t bend to the rules of Scrabble. He tried to get away with proper names and abbreviations at first, and then finally he just started making things up.
Fine, I said. If you can use “quirt” in a poem or story, then it counts. So he did and of course it involved his younger brother getting attacked by a quirt. Or was he the quirt? I forget.
I wonder if Lewis Carroll’s mother had to go through this. “Frabjous is a word, Mummy. For reals.”
Tim had better luck in the puzzle department. We started the puzzle tradition a few years ago to give us something to do on January weekends and evenings when it’s too cold or dark to go outside. Before we put the furniture back in place after taking the tree down, we set up a card table and put out a 1,000-piece puzzle.
Tim can spend hours working on the puzzle, but the rest of us wander in and out, adding a piece here and there. I think last year’s puzzle took nearly the entire month to do, but this one is going very quickly. So Tim bought a couple more when he was at the calendar store yesterday. (I completely forgot to buy a new calendar, but the upside is that it—and the puzzles—were 50 percent off.)
How about you? How do you while away these long winter days and nights?
Frabjous is a word. Turns out it’s a nonce word.
As is quirt.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nonce_word
At least we know where he gets it from.
I always knew when my sons were starting to understand how to play a game. They would rig the game so they would win, then call me to play with them. They outgrew that when they got older, but it was very interesting to watch when they were younger.
I could go for allowing new words if they had to pass a vote by the other players and if the inventor had to use them in a consistently correct manner five times in the next 24 hours. I think Scrabble is more fun when you can use words from the online slang dictionary too!
June, you’ve got to admire their creativity! I’ll have to check out the slang dictionary–it could change how we play the game. 🙂
Oh of the quirt many things are known,
None of which should be of your concern.
For it is a simple beast; quiet and tame,
If simple were you, you’d call it lame.
Not many know of the quirt’s true power,
Pursuing its enemies into their darkest hour.
For the quirt can be deadly and huge in size.
But still it could tremble on small, weak old thighs.
For the quirt is an interesting beast at that,
It could be much like a tattered old hat.
Because this is the creature that through all its rabble,
Really comes down to your skill at Scrabble.