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| Name: Ryan Roe Email: prawnrr-rmv@this.com-yahoo.com Position: Movie / Television / Comic Book / Trivia Geek View Ryan's Personal Profile |
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This story has no ending… YET! But YOU can change that! Read on to find out how… It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and Doug and Miranda were playing Scrabble. Miranda was staring, irritated, at the letters on her tile rack. Doug was half-listening to the AM talk station on the radio in the corner and growing ever more impatient with Miranda. Finally Miranda picked up her letter tiles. She placed all of them on the board, carefully playing out the word QLERFER. “Hold it,” said Doug. “’Qlerfer’ is not a word.” “Sure it is." Miranda closed her eyes for a moment as she did the math. "And with the triple letters, that’s 47 points, plus the bonus for using all my letters… 97 points for me! Your turn.” “Hold on. Back up,” said Doug. “’Qlerfer’? If that’s a word, what does it mean?” “Look, Doug, don’t try to take my points away just because you don’t know words.” “Tell me what it means.” “Well—“ Miranda began. In the momentary silence before she continued her thought, they heard the radio station’s news on the hour. “What is a qlerfer?” said the announcer. “Ask your favorite birdwatcher, and he might tell you it’s the psittaciformesa qlerferi, a new species of parrot that has just been found in a Brazilian rain forest. The team of scientists who discovered this brightly-colored squawker gave it the unlikely common name ‘qlerfer’. This unusual moniker was created by combining the first letters of the last names of each of the seven scientists on the research team: Q, L, E, R, F, E, R. So far only two qlerfers have been found, but the team hopes to find more soon. And in the world of sports…” “See?” Miranda smiled. “It’s a word!” Doug was stunned. “It wasn’t a word until just now! It wasn’t even a word when we started this game!” “Of course it was. They didn’t say when those scientists discovered it. And it takes time for a story like that to get reported from Brazil.” “But you didn’t even know about the bird when we started playing.” “There’s no rule in Scrabble,” Miranda declared, “that says you have to know whether a word is real or not when you play it. It just has to be a real word. And it is. I get the points.” Doug frowned. What do YOU think? Should Miranda get the points? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning in the comments box below. Your responses will determine the outcome of the story! Or maybe it will just end with Doug throwing his K tile at Miranda. Update: Click here for the exciting conclusion of this story. Comments on this post are closed. |
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| What's the prize? |
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| What? There's no prize. You, the readers of the journal, tell me whether you think Miranda should get the points, and based on what the majority of you, the readers of the journal, say, I'll write the ending. Your prize will be reading another update to my journal. I've already had one very persuasive comment e-mailed to me. Post yours today! |
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| I think she should get it, if only because she was dead lucky. |
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| I definitely think she should get the points because the word she played was a real word. Of course, if you were playing by official Scrabble rules, the word would have to appear in a dictionary, and due to the newness of that word, it would probably not appear in any dictionary. But still, I think she should get the points just on the principle of it. And now my question is: is this a real word, and can I use it the next time we play Scrabble together? |
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| It's as obvious as the parmarlty on your dublewerner that she wins. |
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| Miranda wins the points, but I wouldn't play Scrabble with her. At a Scrabble impasse such as this, the obvious answer is an impromptu dance party. |
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| I agree with Sara...she should get the points just for being that lucky. |
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| It's all about semantics. Whether or not the word is real is not the point, nor do the rules imply that this would be the case. She obviously gets the points in this story (at least as you told it). Doug just frowns, but doesn't have the guts to challenge the word. There's nothing wrong with making up or misspelling words if nobody is willing to risk losing a turn. Since you're supposed to decide on a dictionary at the beginning of the game, the decision to challenege depends entirely on how recently said dictionary was updated. I would have certainly challeneged Miranda, and she would have lost the points, because I seriously doubt the dictionary they were using would have the word, 'Qlerfer.' Heck, even Dilbert was denied the word "It" when playing against Dogbert and his mother because they were using his company's faulty "Wibsters Dicshunary." Seeing as the biggest physical dictionary around here (a Webster's dictionary from the early 1980's) doesn't even have the word "update," (sweet irony), I'm going to insist on using an online dictionary for all future games of Scrabble. |
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