Not all word games are equally about language
IN these bubbled times word games have been a life saver, at least for my old mate George.
He is a man of rare excitements. What’s the word? Something to do with coughing a lot. Ah, yes, phlegmatic, that’s it. The first time was in 1968 when he broke his duck after meeting a very attractive young lady in the Worthington’s bar of the dear old European Hotel in George St.
The second came in 1972 when New Zealand won the eights gold medal in the rowing at the Munich Olympics.
‘‘And Australia got nowhere. That’s the great thing,’’ George enthused as he shouted the bar. Since then, nothing. Until last week, with eyes ablaze and face inflamed, he announced, ‘‘Fantastic! OK is OK!’’
When he’d calmed down, he explained that his excitement was the result of finding that OK is accepted as a Scrabble word.
‘‘Twoletter words are the most important words in the entire game,’’ raved George excitedly.
George had turned to Scrabble for solace during The Bubbles but Scrabble is a game I refuse to play. Give me a cryptic crossword set by one of the better English newspapers and I’m deliriously happy.
‘‘That’s odd,’’ you cry. ‘‘Surely they are both word games?’’
Indeed, they are, but Scrabble is so infested with undesirable features that the true word lover avoids it at all costs. That Scrabble is an American invention and the cryptic crossword a British one is just by the way.
Scrabble’s main drawback is the element of luck which determines the letters you have to play with. You begin by drawing seven letters at random and perhaps end up with A, A, E, S, U, X and J. Just an L away from ASEXUAL which would get you 14 points. Frustration and a touch of anger from the very start, as you make do with SEX and get 10 points. (Scores are affected by special squares but that sort of calculating can appeal only to nuclear physicists and bookies). But give a crossworder a clue like, ‘‘Use a lax rearrangement for lack of carnal desire’’ and the answer is slotted into the grid, perhaps with a small smile, and with no pointscoring to clutter things up. (ASEXUAL, of course, is your answer).
The whole world of words is open to the crossworder and the clues can be cunning, humorous and often difficult, but should always be fair and the answer should be a wellknown word, not something like AQUAFABA which Scrabble accepts. (It’s an egg white substitute). A crossword which has answers like AFREET is equally unacceptable. An afreet is a powerful jinn or demon in Arabian and Muslim mythology, but it is so uncommon that a cruciverbalist (a crossword setter) would disdain to use it.
Answers which use simple words but come with clever clues are the mark of a good setter. In fact, a good cryptic crossword should, by and large, have the answer hidden within the clue and having to resort to a dictionary or other reference book is much frowned upon. (Incidentally, a Scrabbler who managed to put an S at the end of an existing CRUCIVERBALIST (24 points) would go home very happy, but if left with only J, X and Q in his last turn his thoughts would turn to selfharm. No fun in that).
YOWZA, GENDERQUEER and FLEEK have also been added to that Scrabble list of acceptable words which excited
George so much but to normal people it’s a nonevent. Whoever uses such ridiculous, arcane words, anyway? Civil servants and dictionary geeks, perhaps, but not sane people like you and I.
George has known me a long time, since school days in fact, and in spite of his outward goofiness, is a deep thinker. He pondered for a moment and then pronounced, ‘‘Jim, your problem is not with Scrabble, it lies within yourself. Remember 1978?’’
I reflected and realised that George was right for he was there.
It was another place, another time and I was keen on a young lady who eventually suggested that I come to her flat for dinner. ‘‘Dinner’’ I saw as a euphemism for a night of debauchery so I armed myself with a bottle of a Marlborough wine called Cold Duck, a redsparkling concoction by Montana which had earned the unfortunate name of ‘‘knicker stripper’’.
The dinner was delightful and afterwards the young lady suggested a game of Scrabble which she won and then announced, as it was getting late, perhaps it was time for me to go, and I did.
That disappointment associated with Scrabble had warped my thinking about the great game, George had suggested. I’ve thought about it, but George is wrong. Scrabble is simply not my thing, nor for that matter, is Cold Duck or assuming a dinner invitation means more than dinner. OK?