Tuesday, 30 May 2023

A local record

BH broke a local record this afternoon, extending a word she had put down earlier to nine letters. She did not do so well with the first installment, missing the double for her 'Q', but did get the double for the second installment, netting her around 50 points altogether. After the event we thought about having a local bonus scheme of the number of letters squared each time this record is broken, but I don't suppose we will get around to it. Not that it would happen very often.

While I used all seven of my tiles with 'WORRIED', netting more than 60 with the 50 point bonus.

I took a chance with 'RUFFED' and was challenged. Whereupon, spread over more than five columns, OED offered two and a half columns of nominal meanings, more than a column of verbal meanings, mostly admitting a past participle, not all obsolete or foreign, plus some compounds and other odds and ends. I was reminded that a ruff is a term from whist like games, when you cannot follow suit and are allowed to trump; a term I have probably used in the distant past. Also that birds can ruff up their feathers. In the words of 'Perry Mason', a once popular courtroom drama from the US, objection overruled. The fact that I had been thinking of a verb derived from the Elizabethan and Jacobean ruffs as in lace collars was irrelevant.

'ZO', top left, is a bit marginal, in OED as a regional variation of 'so', but allowed by custom.

Including a penalty of 2, I won by 293 to 247 points, continuing a run of rather low scoring games. At least BH has the consolation that she would have won without my fluky bonus of 50.

PS: the (Samsung) telephone has certainly brought out the shadows thrown by the sun from the window to the right. Shadows which I had not noticed during play.

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