The other day I was trading tales with the former BBotE Ambassador of NYC, @EditrixW, and after sharing my new favorite Beatles cover song from Mongolia we drifted by COMPLETELY REASONABLE CONNECTIONS to the reason why my Lovely Assistant and I haven’t played Scrabble in quite some time. You see, we used to play it in a way I like to call Klingon Scrabble; you aren’t playing for the actual points but rather for honor. You can claim honor with such things as, but by no means limited to:
Longest word
Most words made at the same time
Dirtiest word
Bingos are still impressive
Most swear words
Most ridiculous acronym which you can explain
Really, you managed to play “HITLER” on the board more than once?
AND “STALIN”?!?!
And because both my Lovely Assistant and I hold science degrees, a PhD in her case, some latitude has been made to allow scientific terms because they also hold honor and are generally pretty hard to play. Also many scientific terms are proper nouns, so we had to kinda give up on that rule too but took it on a case by case basis. A complete list of the words played by each player should be written down for use to create a story, which is also a source of honor. Now that you’ve got the setup, let me now tell the tale of the last game of Scrabble we played which more or less went as follows.
SCENE: a late Sunday afternoon sitting at the dinner table, playing Scrabble.
Lovely Assistant: [plays the word “EXAM”, claims a triple word score]
Me: [looks hard at the letters on my rack, has a staggering realization, starts giggling]
LA: (very suspiciously) What?
Me: I got a bingo! [lays down the rest of my tiles after the M in “EXAM”]
LA: [making a Face™] “EXAMONGOLIA” is not a word.
Me: Sure it is! It’s 1018 Mongolias.
LA: There is only one Mongolia and it is a proper noun.
Me: In the infinite multiverse, there is a similarly infinite number of Mongolias.
LA: No. You can’t just add unit prefixes to things. Mongolia isn’t a unit.
Me: It is too. Mongolia is the unit of hordeosity.
LA: [makes the Face™ again] Hordeosity isn’t a word either.
Me: When you have a group of people, you have to look at them to assess their likelihood/capability of going on a rampage. This is how horde-y they are. Their hordeosity.
EXAMONGOLIA – 21 Points For Straight Letter Value Isn’t Bad (it is totally a word)
LA: [looks at me quietly with the Face™ that says she is working really hard to remember precisely WHY she loves me]
Me: Obviously, the Mongolia is one of those ridiculous basic units that’s hard to use like the Farad, Tesla, and Becquerel.
LA: Nope. We’re done here.
To end this story, she would like me to remind all of you that examongolia is totally not word. I, in turn, encourage you to contact theInternational Bureau of Weights and Measures to get this new fundamental unit recognized.
