WordFixx

Sometimes while resting, by brain feeds me word exercises.  Apparently, relaxation is not an option in there.  So I roll with it.  I will often do word unscrambles in my head: mostly 4 or 5 letter words, so if I see one of those in a puzzle, I can rattle off all the words within it. A different exercise which is good not just for unscramblers, but also for Scrabble (and related apps), is to pick the end of a word and run from A to Z finding all valid words.  So, for "-AR", it would go like this, with real words in uppercase: BAR CAR dar EAR FAR GAR har iar JAR kar lar MAR nar OAR PAR rar sar TAR uar var WAR xar yar zar.   It's funny how the mind spins off related items along the way.  I would almost certainly hear CHAR and TSAR in between the 3-letter words, and would probably insert BRA after BAR since it uses the same letters.  The word assocation throws all kinds of things at me, as it decides which combinations qualify as "real words".  Dhar i...

Here is something that popped into my head randomly while trying to sleep last night ... Back in the late 90's, I was in my one and only Scrabble tournament.  It was a local fundraiser at the Escondido Public Library.  My wife-at-the-time was on my team, and two close friends were a couple on another team.  There were about 30 players, and our entry fees went to a literacy charity. I won a few rounds, and as I recall I made it to the round where there were only 2 games being played.  So if there were 32 players to start, round two would be 16, round three would be 8, round four would be those two games.  That all adds up (in my head). My fresh opponent started by saying, "Let's not add up the scores each round, so we can focus on the game.  It's such a hassle." I didn't know if there was an actual rule against doing that, but I figured I could ignore the total score.  Why should those numbers affect my choice of words anyway? In the end, we ...