Fun Playing Scrabble

[catbirdseat]

My wife and son are Scrabble fanatics. They talked me into playing even though they always beat me. For once, I drew the letter A, giving me the opportunity to go first. My first word was "cwm", which neither of them had ever seen before. I just love that word because the letter W gets to serve as a vowel. My son looked up the word in the dictionary and told me it was the same thing as "cirque". Then he asked "what is a cirque?"

 

Well, the game went as usual and I got my ass kicked again. Family members can be the most ruthless of all competitors.

[ChrisT]

I *love* scrabble!

[Dan_Harris]

Great word "cwm". Are you sure he's your son if he didn't know cirque?

[catbirdseat]

Climbing is not for him. I could see my daughter getting into it though.

[klenke]

Cwm is from the Welsh, where 'w' is a vowel or can serve as a vowel. The word is etymologically related to combe, which is the British Celtic variation of cwm. How many points does cwm get you in scrabble? About seven?

 

I once fooled my competitors with oner saying it was the root of onerous. They were obviously thinking along the lines of onus. Well, onus is actually the root of onerous, not oner. Score! There was much debate but they ultimately allowed my little subreption. Of course, at the time, I was also thinking that there must be this root word oner. But in scrabble one must never show one's uncertainty. After the game (after I had won) we verified that oner wasn't a word.

[catbirdseat]

It ain't called "double U" for nothing.