184 The Hell That Is Scrabble

I hate Scrabble.  I refuse to play if ever someone suggests a game.  

Even though I always lose, that’s not the reason I won’t play.  I really am not a bad loser.  Goodness knows I’ve had enough practice!

I always seem to lose at any board game I play.  I haven’t won a game of monopoly since 1993 and I have never won a game of Cluedo.  The nadir was my 6-year-old grandson consistently beating me at Guess Who last Christmas.

When I was a kid and played Scrabble with my friends, it was quite enjoyable but I remember that it all went wrong when Paul, who had recently moved to Suffolk from Newcastle, put down GAN.  We said it wasn’t a word, but he insisted it meant the same as “go”.  

Consulting a dictionary just made matters worse.  According to the dictionary, GAN was not there as a synonym for “go” but it was a Chinese dialect. 

“So, it’s OK,” said Paul.  “I can use it.”

“No, you can’t,” we all yelled at him, insisting that you had to know the meaning of any word you put down.  

“Where does it say that in the rules?” asked Paul.

“It probably doesn’t, but would you let one of us use 'squit'?” someone asked.

“That means what you’re doing now – talking a load of old squit.  Rubbish or nonsense.”

Paul grabbed the dictionary.  “It’s not there but ‘squits’ is and it means diarrhoea.  So, no.”

After that, Scrabble was never the same again.

I was reminded of my antipathy to Scrabble by a recent feature in The Times puzzle page that consisted of a Scrabble problem.

The article featured a point in a match between two contenders in a Scrabble competition.  Readers were shown the layout of the board and the letters in the rack of one of the players.

We were asked to determine the play he should make that scored 24 points and at the same time, severely restricted his opponent’s immediate scoring opportunities.

When I looked at the board, I assumed that some mistakes had been made.  Of the 23 different words on the board, there were only 8 I had ever heard of before and I wouldn’t have allowed 2 of them to be used in a game of Scrabble that I was playing.  

These words below must all be legitimate in Scrabble as the article stated that all words were featured in “Collins Official Scrabble Words”.

Maybe my vocabulary is limited compared with other people’s.  Here are the 15 words on the board that I have never come across before:

AE, BRR, DAWT, EN, ES, FAE, GAE, KAE, KAT, OOT, OUPA, QIN, RUANA, XU, ZINE.

Only 5 of those words appear in my dictionary but I researched and here are the meanings of them all.

AE	Internet domain name for United Arab Emirates.  Why is that allowed?
BRR	BRRR is a reaction to extreme cold.  Maybe BRR is just a bit chilly.
DAWT	A Scottish variation of daut*. And we all know what that means.
EN	A unit of measurement in printing that is equal to half an ‘em’.
ES	The chemical ‘einsteinium” and the internet domain name for Spain.
FAE	A Scottish word for ‘from’.
GAE	A Scottish word for ‘go’.
KAE	An obsolete Scottish term for a jackdaw.   Ridiculous!
KAT	Is a variant spelling of ‘khat”.  Obviously.
OOT	American abbreviation for ‘Out Of Town”.  American?  What!
OUPA	From Afrikaans, an affectionate South African term for a grandfather.
QIN	A Chinese dynasty from the 3rd century BC.
RUANA	A woollen wrap resembling a poncho.
XU	A Vietnamese monetary unit that is one-hundredth of a dong.
ZINE	A fanzine.

It appears now that Paul was quite right all those years ago.  If GAE is allowed as a Scottish variant of ‘go’ then surely, GAN must be as well.

Based upon these ridiculous, allowable words, here’s a tip for you if you play Scrabble again:

Just before you start, tell your opponent what a twontx day you’re having and that you hope the ugats in the town centre have skulted before, later in the day, you arzz collect the amelerants and lofs you ordered from John Lewis.  

That’s why I will never play Scrabble.  I really don’t mind losing at all but how can you possibly enjoy playing a game that by its very nature, is wide open to interpretation and probably, will lead to an argument?  

*  You were right.  Daut means “to stroke, pet or cuddle”.

133. Enjoyably Wasting Time

I don't know how it's happened but this post from December 2016, has suddenly appeared here and so if you think you've read it before, you're right.

TW 6-1-22

Around about 10 o’clock every morning, I start thinking about what we are going to eat in the evening.  I have responsibility for food because Caroline works and I don’t.  There are always three alternatives: eat out, buy a ready meal, or cook. 

I like cooking.  I’m no good at it but I rather enjoy everything that goes towards the outcome and sometimes I enjoy eating the end result as well - but not often.  Other people usually seem to enjoy what I’ve cooked more than I do.  There may be some psychological influences going on there or people are just being polite?  I suspect it’s the latter.

Eating out is the simplest and easiest option but it is expensive around here and not something to do every day.  When we lived in North London, we were within walking distance of tens of restaurants and maybe, it was the fierce competition caused by the high density of restaurants, that kept prices low. 

There are no cheap, independent restaurants in this area the way there are in London, just chains like Giraffe, Prezzo and Nando’s.   The days when we would pop out at seven and be back by eight because we had nothing in the fridge have gone. 

Every time we go to a restaurant nowadays, it is an “Event”.  Of course, the event is usually nothing more momentous than the fact that it is a Friday night, but our social life is such that Friday night is quite an event for us. 

I spend most midweek afternoons preparing food to be eaten for dinner that evening.  I made Prawn Caldinho the other day.  First, I had to marinate the prawns.  I had to grind the cumin, coriander seeds and peppercorns to a fine powder and then pound garlic cloves to a paste. After the preparation and cooking, I was left with four dirty pots that had to be washed up and put away. 

It was very nice but it took me more than two hours in all to prepare and cook.  Much simpler and easier to pop a ready meal into the microwave.  I have never had a ready meal from a supermarket that I didn’t enjoy. 

A King Prawn Masala ready meal for two costs £3.30 and it is really good.  As I said at the start, I only bother cooking because I enjoy it. 

I know that many people disagree, but growing your own food seems a particularly daft thing to do.  A couple of years ago, my brother, who appears to have turned horticulture and plant husbandry into an obsession, gave us a cucumber plant.  Cucumbers need to grow in soil that has to be kept moist.

We were supposed to go away for a few days but we nearly didn’t because we were worried that the cucumber might suffer from neglect.  We went but only after my son offered to stay at our house for the time we were away and water the damned thing.

What a to-do!  Look at it: prickly, stunted and thick-skinned.  We looked after it like a newborn baby on life support and at the end of it, all we “harvested” was just one cucumber.  Why bother?

Last March, we planted potatoes.  At least they don’t need nurturing while they grow but what you dig up is nothing like the potatoes you buy at Waitrose.  They are caked in mud for a start!

A few years ago, I spent an October afternoon making date pickle. That is not cooking.  There is virtually no preparation necessary apart from chopping the ingredients.  Mixing is the only technique required.  If you can measure weight and volume, it is impossible to get it wrong and it is worth doing because I’ve never seen it for sale in a store.

The first year I made date pickle, I didn’t know that you could buy pitted dates and I spent two hours removing the stones from two kilograms of them.  I also had to buy several ingredients that I'd never used before such as sumac, tamarind paste and asafoetida (on its own, it smells as its name suggests it might, but it adds an oniony flavour with no odour).

The date pickle I make in October is perfect by Christmas and two kilograms of it lasts a year.  It would all be gone earlier if Caroline liked it but she doesn’t and so I eat it all myself. 

“Why not make a normal pickle?” she suggested.  “Something that I like.”

I bought ingredients to make four kilograms of “Classic Pickle” and at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, I began.  Apples, onions, beetroot, turnip and swede all had to be peeled and chopped.  Tomatoes had to be skinned before chopping.  It took hours!

I don’t know whether it’s an age thing but my eyes have recently become extremely sensitive to onions.  The moment I start to remove the peel from an onion, my eyes hurt.  It never used to be that bad.  In the end, I had to admit defeat and Caroline finished the job. 

She only moaned about it for about a week.

Unlike date pickle, these constituents of “Classic Pickle” have to be softened for an hour by simmering and it required regular stirring.  As the pan was cooling, I could see I was going to need more containers and so I went out and bought eight Kilner jars.

This pickle is fairly bland but it tastes good and goes particularly well with cheese.  It is unlike any pickle I’ve ever tried before as it doesn't have the sharp, vinegary tang of shop-bought pickle.

I’m making a rather special dessert for Christmas and I need glacé clementines.  I found that I could buy them online but the smallest quantity available is 1 kilogram.  I only need 100 grams and I wasn’t prepared to spend £12.99.  So, I spent 95p on three clementines and glacéed them myself.  It was very easy and they taste pretty good.

Is it worth it?  Making the glacé clementines and date pickle certainly is - but making the classic pickle most definitely was not. 

Branston Pickle in a supermarket costs around 35 pence per 100 grams.  The ingredients that I used cost £25 and so that works out at 62p per 100 grams.  However, if you add in the cost of the eight jars I had to buy at £2.99 each, that puts up the cost to £1.22 per 100 grams.  

But it doesn’t end there.  The value of my labour has to be worth the minimum wage and so that’s another £45.  I ignore the cost of the electricity used over six hours from the first peel to closing the last lid.

Consequently, to make my home-made pickle cost £2.50 per 100 grams.  A 360-gram jar of Branston Pickle is £1.29 in a supermarket. That low price shows the advantages brought about by economies of scale.  Making your own pickle really is not worth the bother. 

I will sell a 400-gram jar of my pickle for just £9.00 and that is a saving for you of 10%.  However, you can have one for £6.00 - but I would like to have the jar back, please.