Today was the first day in four years that I played bookworm. I won’t link to it here because it’s addictive and I don’t want to be a pusher.

But here’s the thing. That game has more made up words than any round of Scrabble from my childhood. And I know…we used to spend our turns at grandma’s reading the entire dictionary for the letters we had. I learned “xat” and “firn” while reading the unabridged. Our turns took so long that we all played Rummy as a side game while the other cheaters “thought” about their letters with a dictionary.

Anyway, I play bookworm to win, despite the fact that no matter how many points you get they pretend you’re the king of all lexicography, making up titles to stroke the ego of even the lest compitent player. After my thesis was submitted I played a marathon game that netted more than a million points and I went online to find out how awesome I was in the bookworm geek community. Turns out there’s no hierarchy or bragging rights because every point you get earns you a new title. And all of the six or seven people who cared were all bragging about a couple hundred thousand points. Pedestrian.

Tonight, in hour three of play, I worked my way to the word “Tuesday.” Took a lot of playing just the right side of the board, because I had to wait and wait and wait for a “y”. Well, bookworm says Tuesday is not a word. It, does, however, accept the following:
trad
quate
waly
caff
seis
jee (come on, seriously, it’s gee.)
shott (come on, seriously, even chott is pushing it)
lang (seriously? I get the whole British thing, but not the ancient Scots)

but it won’t accept Tuesday (or shrove. Or Narnia or Jedi, but I get those. Purists. I gotcha.)

Look, it took me almost an hour to get Tuesday. I took a lot of sucky four letter words along that right three columns just to get that word. I wish I could say I’m totally boycotting your game, you maker-up-ers of words.

Unfortunately, I have to go. I got “baroque” last round, and I’m working on hellion just to see if you accept it.