"Vowel drops?" Those are the vowel-heavy words like "aioli" (garlic mayonnaise) that help empty "a, e, i, o, u"-laden racks.
"Fishing" is slang for the ill-advised practice of tossing a tile back into the sack in hopes of drawing a specific letter needed to flesh out a bingo. A "triple-triple," meanwhile, is one of those once-in-a-lifetime plays that spans two triple-word scores at once for a point total multiplied by nine.
And "phoneys" are just what they sound like--nonwords played like poker bluffs which may or may not be challenged off the board.
At the end of the game--each of which is played one-on-one, to minimize the luck factor--don't be surprised when someone whips out a "tile catcher," a "Hints From Heloise"-esque nylon net invention used to whisk tiles from their plastic grid before being siphoned back into a velvet smiley-face sack.
During breaks between games, several players kill time in the bookstore's word game section, testing each other's anagram acumen with a compilation of "Jumble" puzzles. Sarah King, a young Filipino woman who took up the game to improve her English, talks about the latest addition to her living room Scrabble shrine, a collection of various sets which includes a gold-plated Franklin Mint commemorative edition. Harold Ripkin, a stained-glass craftsman, jokes that his wife, an English teacher, doesn't come to club meetings anymore because she "doesn't like being beaten by a truck driver."
Also conspicuous by their absence tonight are the elderly woman who once stalked off in the middle of a game after an opponent played the word "asshole," as well as the hotheaded loser who backed over his Scrabble kit with his van after a bad night at the board.
There are Scrabble players and then there are Scrabble players, many of whom regularly score in the 350-point range.
"I see people studying their lists and dictionaries during their lunch breaks, and I feel sorry for them because they just can't relax," says May Haney, a longtime player who heads up a Mesa club. "I feel that Scrabble is a fun thing, and if I have to work at, it's no longer fun."
Haney would certainly get an argument from Larry Rand, arguably the most tenacious player in the Valley, if Rand had time to debate the point amidst his Scrabble-intensive schedule.
A retired salesman, the youthful-looking grandfather didn't even begin playing Scrabble seriously until about three years ago. That was when Rand, then a competitive runner, was diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer. No longer able to physically exert himself, he refocused his energy on mental pursuits and is currently the second-highest-ranked player in the Phoenix club.
When not using his marketing background to help publicize the club (membership, once perceived as a "bunch of little old ladies," has reportedly quadrupled in recent years), Rand spends hours improving his game. He spent three years anagraming seven-letter words on 10,000 eight by ten file cards. Using annotated score sheets from club matches, Rand, who's parlayed his syllabic savvy into a Wheel of Fortune appearance, even replays past games to see if he could have bettered his score.
And when he can't find a human competitor, he'll often sit down and play against a Scrabble computer--a controversial softwear program that some experts insist doesn't play fair, ostensibly since it not only picks out opponent's racks but also knows which letters are outstanding at any given time.
Win or lose, Rand feels he's a better person for playing Scrabble. "I believe my body is getting some very positive chemicals from all that stimulation that's helping me deal with my illness," he says.
As the evening's fourth game winds down, the conversation turns to what may be the biggest thing to affect the game since the Scrabble association sanctioned its unexpurgated word list: Rumor has it that the next OWL update will include the word "za"--frat-house slang for "pizza."
While that news might not shake the non-Scrabble playing world, some fans of the game see it as the biggest puzzlement since Y2K. Will the newly acceptable "za" have a domino effect that will forever change the face of the game?
Some players shrug it off; if they can live without "da," they can certainly handle "za." Others, however, argue that the move will trivialize what is now one of the two most valuable numbered tiles in the game, and that suddenly being stuck with a "z" during your last play will no longer be the kiss of death it once was.
Ultimately the debate boils down to one burning question: Can you really have your "za"--and play it too?
Contact Dewey Webb at his online address: dwebb@newtimes.com
