Collections - 6. Chapter 6 -- Scribble

Scribble

Lately, I’ve been playing computer Scrabble. I was given the CD some time ago as a present, then stalled before installing it. Why? Because I have no willpower, and I knew what would happen. Finally, my fingers were hurting too much from playing computer Hearts, even though I limited myself to one game a day and switched the mouse back and forth from my right to left hands. So I hooked up Scrabble, set it on Champion, the top competition, and got the crap beaten out of me.

It happened every game. The computer used words I couldn’t even find in my dictionary. Seven-letter words, almost every time. I was scoring in the low 200s, well below my usual game. It regularly broke 500. A nice challenge, though terminally frustrating. Then I set it back to merely Expert -- the range is Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Champ. That let me beat it almost half the time. It beat me the other half, though we both scored in the mid-300s.

It still used seven-letter words I didn’t recognize, while I was playing in street English. Expert didn’t seem to know as many seven-letter words as Champ, though, it did know the monetary units for every Third-World country. You’d think, after a while, I could learn some of them and use them back. No way. They’re as confusing as my Iranian students’ names.

Here, in the order they were played, along with their definitions, are the 12 words it used to beat me in one game:

Tantivy -- a hunting cry

Uraei -- the figure of the sacred serpent on the headdress of ancient Egyptian rulers

Corium -- a skin layer

Ut -- the musical tone C in the French solmization system now replaced by “do”

Bezil -- alternate spelling of “bezel” (a slanted surface)

Aviso -- advice

Stemware -- a type of glassware (not a word using all seven of its letters; it added to my “Stem” on a triple, but hit another triple)

Vow -- a solemn promise

Debasers -- one that debases (using all seven of its letters on a triple and killing my lead)

Fie -- interjection used to express disapproval

Orbed -- to form into a circle or sphere (building on my “bed”)

Un -- pronoun meaning one

A sampling of my words in the same game: Gunk. Ply. Stem. Jet. Bed. Malted. Fax.

I lost this game, 309 to 349. I almost always lose by the 50 points it gets for a seven-letter word. If it gets more than two seven-letter words, I get smeared. Otherwise, I can pretty well keep up. Amazingly, it didn’t use any financial terms in this game. Its usual favorite is “Baht” -- a monetary unit of Thailand.

(Pausing for a moment to edit my work, Spellcheck just kicked out nine of the words the game used to win.)

After a couple months, I got pretty good at beating Expert. It would still have runs when it made three seven-letter words in a row, “unhaired” -- to get your locks trimmed -- being the most hair raising. But, feeling confident, I moved myself back up to Champ.

Now this is less big than it seems, as there are probably ten Champion settings, and the bottom one is only slightly above the top Expert level. But it did let me strut a bit. Still, I’m back to barely winning half the games, and, as before, I do that by dodging and feinting and blocking, while the computer continues to play elegantly. It uses Latin terms known only to first-year medical students. I use Ax, Eh, Ab, and Jo. And it taught me that Sh and Hm are words -- though Eek isn’t. Still, base Champion level is far better than Expert, Novice, or Drooler, though I just had a series of games where I got repeatedly destroyed. I had terrible letters and kept losing by 200 points.

Or I thought I had terrible letters. But there’s a feature I never use, called Hints. It gives you the best way to play the letters in front of you, and, in the middle of another embarrassing defeat, I started looking at the Hints -- to see what the machine would do. Half the time, it came up with more medical and foreign monetary terms, which I could dismiss because that’s not the way I play. But the other half, it came up with perfectly ordinary, easily accessible, English words that were right in front of me, and I was just too dense to see them. Even worse, far too often, it was able to use all seven letters in every round, getting the 50 extra bonus points.

Now here’s a metaphor: I’m a pretty decent scene designer -- that’s what I do for a living. I have strengths and weaknesses like all designers, and I’ve always kept myself working at the college level, or the lower, non-competitive professional levels, so I don’t overextend my talents. But after I’ve gotten a set finished, and I’m sitting in the otherwise empty theater evaluating my work, I’m always aware it doesn’t really fly. It just kind of sits there, looking back. And I’ve always wondered what someone else, more talented, would do under the same restrictions. Well, the computer just showed me.

It’s taken a lot of my pleasure out of playing, and I’ve gone back to reading more. This is probably better for both my fingers and brain, and certainly best for publishers. Still, it’s irritating when you reach your limits and know other folks can easily sail by. I don’t mind it in things I’ve long compromised on, like sports. I’m never going to hit that World Series tiebreaker, or triumph at Wimbledon or Pebble Beach. But words -- I’m pretty good with words. Except if you’re talking about those cockamamie crossword puzzles in The Manchester Guardian.