Scrabble in Music City, and that starts with S

Big Scrabble tournament in Musical City yesterday. There were six of us "experts" in the top division. I finished second. In my most interesting game I led off with ANTEFIX for 100 points. My opponent was stunned, of course, but then he went to town adorning the word, first hooking it with an A (ANTEFIXA) and then hooking that with an E (ANTEFIXAE), scoring 40 or so on each play. Meanwhile I was busy elsewhere, following up my opening play with IODOPHOR and then RECURVES, all without the benefit of a blank. I had 247 points after three turns. I added another late bingo, and if it hadn't been for a little lull when I was saddled with a surfeit of vowels I would have scored over 600. I had 542.

Dumb word of the day (mainly because I challenged it and lost): toileted. The Scrabble dictionary says this the past tense of the verb toilet. Merriam-Webster does not count toilet as a verb, but since when has that ever deterred the intrepid adventurers responsible for the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary?

The litmus test for including a word in the OSPD, to my way of thinking, ought to be this: Has anyone in the history of spoken English ever uttered the word?

How the Grunch stole driving

Every hick down in Hickville liked driving a lot,
But the Grunch, who lived north of Hickville,
Did not!
The Grunch hated autos, and people who ran them;
If he'd had his way, the government would ban them!
It could be that his head was screwed on the wrong way;
It could be, perhaps, that he just had a sleigh.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
Was the Grunch, being Arab, didn't want to play ball.

(Grunch: proper noun, a portmanteau word composed of gas and crunch)

Born in Bath (or "sanitizing water")

Today is the birthdate of Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), the English physician immortalized by the verb bowdlerize, which means to censor something, often in a schoolmarmish manner.

Bowdler published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work, edited by his sister Harriet, intended to be more appropriate for 19th-century women and children than the original. He similarly published an edited version of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

These were widely ridiculed, although they did have the effect of bringing Shakespeare to new audiences.The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne said, in fact: "More nauseous and foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of Bowdler. No man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children."

An example of Bowdler's modus operandi:  In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's famous cry "Out, damned spot!" was changed to "Out, crimson spot!"

Any portmanteau in a storm

On July 4, 1865, Alice in Wonderland was first published.

In the book, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that the word “slithy” in the poem Jabberwocky is a "portmanteau" word – a cross between “slimy” and “lithe.”

He also points out that the word “mimsy” in the same poem is another portmanteau word, a cross between “miserable” and “flimsy.”

Cynic pothers

My neighbor starts shooting off fireworks about a week before the Fourth (and also prior to New Year’s) every year. This might be endearing if he weren’t now at least 22 years old, and if his fireworks were at all interesting instead of the inevitable cherry bombs and firecrackers—mere noisemakers.


I’m not disgusted, to paraphrase P. G. Wodehouse, but I’m far from gusted.

Interestingly enough, pyrotechnics is an anagram of cretin psycho (and also chronic types. And the title of this entry).

A heads-up to the baggage handlers

“60 severed heads were discovered on a Southwest Airlines flight to Fort Worth, Texas.” -- Harper’s Magazine.

Today's Perverse Verse:

Were they all in one trunk?
Don’t you think it would flunk
Pre-boarding inspection?
Did Economy section
Lose their heads when they learned
That these riders had earned
Discounts that were moreso?
(Flying without torso.)

He didn't hit a homerun as far as everyone is concerned

Today is the birth date of Abner Doubleday (born 1819), the purported inventor of baseball.

Abner Doubleday is an anagram of bored and blue, ay?

Today's ghost word: abnermal, adj. Exceedingly boring, tedious, slow and overblown.