Buzzer beaters
Last night in San Francisco, my brother Greg and I had dinner with our cousins Anthony, Scott, and Carey, as well as Scott's wife Angie and Carey's girlfriend Jamie. We had just ate a table full of food at Axum, a restaurant on Haight that served up some pretty great Ethiopian food. No Ethiopian coffee, but that was okay. There's nothing wrong with going somewhere else for that or dessert!
When Scott, Angie, Carey, and Jamie left for home in farway Los Altos, that left Greg, Anthony and me. We got down to business and broke out the Scrabble board.
When we were kids, Anthony's dad always crushed us at Scrabble, and one of Ant's goals has always been to beat him. Our cousin plays against his computer regularly, and has gotten pretty good. Greg and I are pretty decent, too. Scrabble was big in the GR office for a while, and I consider our level of play to be pretty high.
I started the first game with HAVOC, a high-scoring word that didn't leave many options for double-word scores. That defensive play actually set the tone for the entire game; the board was jammed up pretty good. I did a pretty good job of stifling Greg, and I think he did't have very good tiles. He was a good sport about it, though, and played through. I think he had the lead for a bit. Ant was complaining about his tiles from the get-go, but eventually unloaded a bingo and took the lead. It looked like Ant would win, but I bingoed out to end the game and win. Using all seven of your tiles means you get 50 extra points. Yes.
My brother and I figured Ant would have to go back to his Oakland apartment to resume studying--our cousin is just about to finish his first year of law school--so Greg asked if he'd leave the game behind for us. Perhaps it was Ant's competitive drive to get a win or maybe we just gave him another reason to procrastinate, but he was up for another round
Once again, Greg took the early lead with a bingo only to be leap-frogged by Ant who had an even higher-scoring bingo. Damn. I was left in the dust, but had a pretty good rack (with the versatile SS_NG tiles) but there were no openings until the very end. Once again, in my last move, I used all seven tiles to spell SITTINGS. No big letters or spaces, but it was enough to make Greg and Ant subtract the points they had on their racks and give them to me.
That play wasn't enough to give me back-to-back last-second wins, but it was cool to go out like that twice in one night. That was probably as close as I'll ever get to feeling like Kobe Bryant, making a ridiculous score as the buzzer goes off.
When Scott, Angie, Carey, and Jamie left for home in farway Los Altos, that left Greg, Anthony and me. We got down to business and broke out the Scrabble board.
When we were kids, Anthony's dad always crushed us at Scrabble, and one of Ant's goals has always been to beat him. Our cousin plays against his computer regularly, and has gotten pretty good. Greg and I are pretty decent, too. Scrabble was big in the GR office for a while, and I consider our level of play to be pretty high.
I started the first game with HAVOC, a high-scoring word that didn't leave many options for double-word scores. That defensive play actually set the tone for the entire game; the board was jammed up pretty good. I did a pretty good job of stifling Greg, and I think he did't have very good tiles. He was a good sport about it, though, and played through. I think he had the lead for a bit. Ant was complaining about his tiles from the get-go, but eventually unloaded a bingo and took the lead. It looked like Ant would win, but I bingoed out to end the game and win. Using all seven of your tiles means you get 50 extra points. Yes.
My brother and I figured Ant would have to go back to his Oakland apartment to resume studying--our cousin is just about to finish his first year of law school--so Greg asked if he'd leave the game behind for us. Perhaps it was Ant's competitive drive to get a win or maybe we just gave him another reason to procrastinate, but he was up for another round
Once again, Greg took the early lead with a bingo only to be leap-frogged by Ant who had an even higher-scoring bingo. Damn. I was left in the dust, but had a pretty good rack (with the versatile SS_NG tiles) but there were no openings until the very end. Once again, in my last move, I used all seven tiles to spell SITTINGS. No big letters or spaces, but it was enough to make Greg and Ant subtract the points they had on their racks and give them to me.
That play wasn't enough to give me back-to-back last-second wins, but it was cool to go out like that twice in one night. That was probably as close as I'll ever get to feeling like Kobe Bryant, making a ridiculous score as the buzzer goes off.
posted by gr at
12:26 AM
Maybe the Scrabble board should be in the shape of an octogon.
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