Which came first, the duck or the knockout?

This post was originally going to be about my first tournament and my various misadventures there. I promise to get to that soon, but felt the need to respond to a comment made in the replies to my last post. On a related note, if you want to leave a reply or to read the replies already made, you can click on the line comments at the end of each post in light blue lettering or that's not your style, you can click on the beginning title of a post and then scroll to the bottom again and click on the cryptic command "post a comment". Either way, share your voice. I really don't want to feel like I'm here alone with the people who have posted so far. Specifically, this lovely response was recently added to my last post:

PiCurious said...

I came hear for scrabble knockouts. Nerdy babes hopefully spelling naughty words on the board. Instead I get just one picture and its a duck. Whatis going on here?

Wow. So the poster is either someone who really should not be left unattended in a bakery, or they have "special feelings" for slightly more than three!? genders... Other disturbing questions to ponder: This site is not currently covered by yahoo or google search. Did someone just decide out of the blue that scrabbleknockouts.blogspot.com would just hit the spot and would actually exist? Were their previous blind searches as well like scrabbleseductresses.uk.gov or naughtyandniceracks.edu. Maybe tiletrysts.blogspot.com just would not load fast enough... The more likely scenario is that this is one of my friends or family's idea of a joke. I'm not sure if this is better. That still means someone close to me has the online alias of PiCurious and thought this was the best way to ask their question. I just know I am not looking forward to my family's next Thanksgiving:
"Try the pie! It has a special ingredient and I spent five hours on it...."
"Um, before I do, do you spend much time on the internet, Aunt Gladys?"
"Why do you ask? Is there a good place for me to learn more about pies and all the exotic ways you can..."
"Never mind, I think I'm just going to have some ice cream."

So about that web address... While its true that there are in fact some beautiful people who play scrabble (in a wholesome and nonthreatening and unattainable sort of way if you are reading this lovely wife) the term came from a list I recently devised. Warning the following couple sentences are vaguely related to scrabble strategy. So the j,x,q, and z are big shots in scrabble. You get a fair amount of points just for being able to play them since they go in relatively few words. You also get a bonus of 50 points if you manage to play all the tiles on your rack at once. I seem to have to a knack for being stuck with high point tiles and no words that I know to make out of them. The list I made is all the seven letter words that contain any two of these high point tiles. Managing to play one of these words usually results in around one hundred points and a highly demoralized opponent. Hence the boxing term, knockout. I have so far manged to play two of the words on the list (bezique and quezals) and scored big victories in both of those games. End of explicit scrabble content. I originally called the blog that because it was a term and a list that to the best of my knowledge I was the "inventor" of. I quickly made a horrifying (if somewhat obvious) discovery when reading over my first post and some of the other scrabble blogs (yes, heaven help us, there are several of these out there) its really, really boring to read about other people playing scrabble. Mostly they sound something like this (parentheses have my commentary):

I went into the tournament as the third seed. I hoped to be able to do better than the first and second seed(but not the lower seeds I guess). In my first game I played two bingos, anestri and stearin. My opponent foolishly (calm down there tiger)tried to challenge stearin off the board. But of course it was good (of course because we have all been stearin for years...) Unfortunately, she got both blanks and an x and there was nothing I could do (hold on a sec while I call for the waaahmbulance). I start off with a loss 376 to 377 (and I start and successfully accomplish falling asleep).

Don't get me wrong. Coverage of the top players at big events like a national or world championship is neat (for me at least) and sometimes there is useful strategy tips to be found online. I'm not a top player though and the amount of bandwidth I would need to share my strategy secrets would be, umm I actually don't know anything about computers or the internet. Awkward... So I want to talk about scrabble, but the typical genres aren't my forte. What do I have that is halfway useful then? I have...A duck! Scrabble is fascinating to me because of the crazy people who play it. I feel comfortable saying this because I am aware that I am thoroughly one of them. I have gotten so stressed out at tournaments that I have had blurred vision and felt like I was going to pass out. This is obviously the appropriate response while playing a board game with strangers for pride with no chance even at the pitiful financial reward that would not cover the cost of the gas it took to drive across two states to get there. I sincerely promise we will get to this first calamitous experience next time by the way. Oh yeah, the duck. So I am crazy enough to freak out in the heat of the moment, but sane enough to realize afterwards that maybe all that heavy breathing was not pleasant for either myself or the poor lady I just drove to quit scrabble and go back to knitting sweaters for her cats. To prevent further incidents such as that I found the cutest least threatening object I could. The winner was new Ducky friend. She now accompanies me to every tournament. I have "fixed" my problem by simply talking to my duck when the going gets tough. She looks in the bag to see what tiles are left, whispers suggestions to me, and does her best to cast little ducky spells of confusion on my opponents. So, umm..., I am all better now. Problem Solved! I will leave you faithful (and/or psychotic) readers with this last little nugget to think about. When I went to change the address of the blog to match the new title, both ScrabbleDuck and ScrabbleLuckyDucky were already taken and unavailable. I shudder to think what kind of weirdo they belong to...