Andrew Kay: Yak Yak Yak
Game On
How lovely it was to see my dear friend Paco for a beer at pub du Vin and an excellent meal at The Chilli Pickle. Paco has recently left our shores to return to Spain and to open a cafe in Valencia. No ordinary cafe this but one for lovers of board games.
La Base Secreta Café is his latest project in a string of games related activity that includes an online magazine and TV shows. He has unlimited energy and enthusiasm – I envy that energy these days as mine flags.
I am though a keen board game player and wish that his cafe was here so I could see him more often and attempt to thrash him at Catan or Ticket To Ride.
These days my activity in the gaming sense seems to be almost solely confined to playing Scrabble online. Right now I have thirteen games on the go against a variety of friends. Some of them are a good match and we win an equal amount of times. Some though are demons, devil players who have a terrifying ability to play words that I have never even heard, leave aside knowing what they mean.
So it was with great pleasure that a few days ago I actually beat him. I have beaten him a few, and I mean a few times, but this time it was a thrashing. Not only did I beat him, I beat my own best word score with a staggering 140 points. It was a simple word but it just happened to get the seven letter bonus with an M on a double letter tile and the whole word crossing two triple word tiles. It put a big smile on my face.
There is a simple but unspoken etiquette to playing the online Scrabble game. If you have a seven letter word bonus or ‘bingo’ as they call it or when you win a game, you are asked if you would like to post the fact to facebook. No-one does, or at least no-one that I play with. How terribly British of us.
And how terribly un-British of me now to boast of my 140 points. Of course the shine was taken off when I took a look at my Scrabble nemesis’ record only to discover that he had once scored a whopping 158 points. Now that really is hard to beat, although I was sure that someone out there would have done so.
A quick question to Siri revealed the answer. On the 26th of October 2006 two men set three records for sanctioned Scrabble in North America: the most points in a game by one player, 830, the most total points in a game, 1,320, and the most points on a single turn, 365, for the play of QUIXOTRY (A wild, visionary idea, an eccentric notion or act; a quixotism if you are interested).
Funnily enough few Scrabble players actually seem bothered whether or not they know the meaning of the words that they play, which to me seems rather a waste of an opportunity to expand one’s vocabulary. That said it does once again fill my head with rather useless information, a human filing facility that is already cluttered with rubbish, lousy song lyrics and random bits of science and geography that I really have no use for these days. If only the human brain had a waste bin-like facility where we could delete such stuff and make room for more important newer knowledge, and dare I say it, replace some of the stuff that has been proved wrong.
“Like my friend Paco and his compatriot Don Quixote, I will, lance in hand, charge at those windmills that capture my imagination”
I could free up a lot of space by shedding the lyrics to Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, my in depth knowledge of our old currency and the scraps of Latin, a subject in which I was disgracefully poor but still litters the old grey matter.
I do however like the fact that I can still quote great chunks of poetry, well not great chunks, but impressive bits and bobs. Maybe not a life-enhancing skill but one that brings some pleasure, and pleasure sits fairly high on my list of priorities these days.
It will come as no surprise that that list contains food, drink, theatre, music and of course family and friends.
I like a challenge too, never say never say I. I mean what’s to lose? Well I guess there are lots of things to lose – my dignity for one thing. And of course I have to now take into consideration my aging body, some things are probably beyond my capacity for physical activity. I’m not going to go caving or rock climbing anytime soon that is for certain.
Other stuff, bring it on. I can try, I can give it a go and, should I succeed or merely enjoy the experience I can choose whether it is something I would do again. If I fail I can right it off as done, never to be repeated but never a missed opportunity that I regret.
I could wander off now and sing a clichéd bit of Sinatra – but funnily enough my mind library has had the good taste not to store those lyrics. Well not enough to make a decent job of singing it.
Like my friend Paco and his compatriot Don Quixote, I will, lance in hand, charge at those windmills that capture my imagination – and in between I will continue to strive to beat my Scrabble nemesis more frequently and perhaps even top that 150 score – one lives in hope.
