August 10, 2008

Weekend Tiebraker

The Wife and I played five Scrabble games this weekend. The tiebreaker went like this, with seven-letter words earning the bonus highlighted:

Her
Him
swivel38carouse22
starting68airfield63
hoaxed27we, weaning79
dirtiest66affect28
phobia54at, anomaly77
equine37razes, affects43
rev18globules78
jump, ja, my31sky20
drop21gluon7
mint6E, I, O-3

End score: The Wife 379, Transplanted Lawyer 414

Normally, you'd think 379 points would be enough to win even a two-person game. But I got extraordinarily lucky and got not one but four long words and that really helps out. And fortunately for me, only once did I open up the triple word score to The Wife in a way that she could really capitalize on it (phobia) and I kept on getting good opportunities. In fact, if you look at the running count, you'll see that the lead went back and forth between us the entire game, until "globules."

I still think The Wife is better at this than me. Even when I jump out to an early lead, she finds a way to sneak up on me and even in a game like this, she didn't lose by all that much in relative terms. But sometimes you'd rather be lucky than good.

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