The Game I Should Have Lost

In the first half of our Scrabble game tonight, I trailed The Boy and Broil (my bro-in-law) by over 50 points because they denied me both pugly and fugly. Neither words were in the already outdated fourth (2005) edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. What to do if the dictionary is behind the times and your opponents are not versed in the vernacular of celebrity gossip? I was resigned to losing.

The Boy, clever and persuasive boy that he is, got me to play a word that left the letter L open for him. Then he tried to bingo with exjailer for 128 points. I challenged it for no reason, I was losing anyway. Were we surprised the word is not in the Scrabble dictionary! In fact, nor were words like exwife, exmarine, and exwrestler. But of course. It dawned on me those are hyphenated words. The Boy lost his turn and suddenly, I had a chance to...lose by less. Only, what could I do with AAIIUUU?

I don't remember what I played, but I got me a whopping 6 points.

The Boy next played azo for 22 points. Broil challenged it. How could azo be a word? But there it was in the Scrabble dictionary and Broil lost his turn. I was becoming a contender.

I don't know how it happened. They taunted me for trailing and got too cocky for their own good. Maybe Broil was too filled with wine and The Boy got confused looking at the board upside down. When they couldn't get me to challenge the other, they challenged each other on good words, but no one challenged me for oys. Oy! I still trailed right up to the last play.

But I won the game. I won because I got rid of all my tiles first. Broil lost 13 points, The Boy lost 3. Add those points to my score and I beat The Boy by 2 points to win. Yeah, there were two very sore losers at the table last night.