For about a year and a half now, JG and I have set aside Wednesday as a no-television night. Sometimes, we ease up and turn on the TV after a climbing session, but I don’t feel so bad about that because we haven’t spent the entire evening zoning out. Recently, we added internet browsing and playing video games into the Wednesday ban, so last night’s entertainment consisted of hardcore games of Boggle and Scrabble. Woo! Party animals!
JG beat me to a pulp in Boggle, and I am determined to get better. I have trouble when the letters are not aligned so I can read them easily, and I did not have the advantage of playing hours of Text Twist in college, so there’s that. As for the Scrabble, well, I did not have the best game of my life. Apparently, I was not in the good graces of the tile gods, because I had to trade in my tiles twice, which is absurd for me. I successfully challenged JG’s non-word off of the table, shortly before he bingoed with CREATURE and hit two double word scores with it. Agh! A quadruple word score plus the fifty point bingo bonus! I was sure that the game was over, but I plugged along. As is my habit, I got distracted by playing a beautiful, low-scoring word, but I managed to chip away at JG’s lead until there were just a couple of turns to go. Then I pulled the last two tiles in the bag: the Q and the K. Awesome. I managed to dump both of them (QI and KEGS), but JG used all of his tiles first, so he ended up winning by about twenty points. Still, I consider this game a moral victory because I didn’t get blown out of the water. I will say it again: quadruple word score on a bingo. Bah.
While JG and I were locking horns in nerd warfare, Ted was wandering around on his indoor leash. Boggle was very exciting for him because of the rattling dice, but Scrabble was more of a snooze. Every so often, he snuffled up to the coffee table to see what the fuss was about, and he sat on my lap for a while to help me make sense of my awful tiles. I’m sure that Ted will be able to qualify for a novice tournament in a year or two, that is, if he doesn’t eat the tiles first.
Get your daily dog dose with Smalls, Kaya, Rufus, Ben, Bailey, Gus, and Zapp!
10 comments
Ben always tries to eat our scrabble tiles, too. Or walk across the board when we play on the floor by the fireplace in the basement.
Glad to see you’re training Ted to increase his vocabulary. That’s sure to come in handy someday!
Bingo bonus AND quadruple word score? That is completely insane.
Not only do i think your no-tv/Internet/video game Wednesday night ban commendable, but i think we’re going to definately adopt your idea at our house. Thanks for the inspiration !
Okay I know I say this every week but HE IS SOOOOO CUTE!
I can’t take it!!
HE’S KILLING ME WITH CUTENESS!!
AHHHH
DYING!!!!!
I wish I could play those games with Torsten! We do play Boggle sometimes but I always kick his ass. It’s not his fault because even though his English is completely fluent, you can just never be as good at word games in a non-native language. There’s so much use of completely obscure words.
Somehow Ted playing Scrabble reminds me of the story in The New Yorker this week about Alex, the talking African Grey Parrot… you might have a science superstar on your hands with that dog!
I love the idea of a no television night! Maybe once Ted is finished with school and we actually have nights home together…
I love watching your Ted help with Scrabble.
He looks so happy!
Love the pictures!
I wish I could talk Rob into a TV-and-internet-free night! I might have to get to work on that. These pictures are adorable, too.
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