I’m sure that nobody who knows me is surprised to learn that I love words. I’m a logophile, which means “a lover of words,” and I’m a bibliophile, which means “a lover of books” as well as “a book collector.”
Again, no surprise to anyone who knows me.
Thus, I love word games and word puzzles. Scrabble is one of my favorite games, but nobody will play it with me because they say I’m too good at it. I say it’s all a matter of the luck of the draw as to the tiles you get because I’ve lost many a game to drawing vowels only or getting the W, Y, Z, Q, J, X, and a random S thrown in for good measure. It’s also a matter of how the game plays out because no game of Scrabble is the same.
I used to play Scrabble with my students in Spanish in my advanced Spanish classes and in English in my Linguistics class to get the kids’ minds working. The elation and celebration that took place when a student would win a game of Scrabble against me was almost equivalent to the craze that happens after a Super Bowl win. Ha ha. In fact, there are still past students who, upon running into me somewhere, will immediately say to me, “You remember that time I beat you in Scrabble?”
Yeah, yeah. Good for you.
But, seriously, when any of them would beat me, I was always proud of them because they were demonstrating a level of mastery of language that, until I pushed them, they didn’t know they had. They only looked at it as the fact that they’d beat the teacher, but I looked at as I’d scored a victory through them because they had learned so much from me that their Spanish was advanced or their English vocabulary had improved.
However, my own family doesn’t like to play Scrabble with me, so my game board is currently sitting idle awaiting the time when I find someone who would like to play the game with me.
A few months back, I noticed a lot of people commenting on the game called “Wordle.” I mentioned it to my daughter while visiting her last month, and she told me that it was a New York Times game. I looked it up, and she explained that if your letter is correct and in the correct spot, then the square turns green. If your letter guess is correct but in the wrong spot of the five-letter word, then the square turns yellow. If the square doesn’t turn color at all, then that letter isn’t in the word.
She and I started playing it each day and comparing how many guesses it took to get to the right answer. You only get six guesses. Most of the time, I average 3 or 4. Later, I told my mom about the game, so she has started playing, too, and she’s trying hard to beat me every day — so far, she hasn’t.
Today (Friday), in fact, it only took me two guesses (Since I don’t want to spoil anyone’s “Wordle” game, I will be sending this edition of “Tomes and Topics” tomorrow instead of today):
While I enjoy doing “Wordle” every day, I’m more obsessed with “Quordle.” In “Quordle,” you have nine tries to guess four different five-letter words. You do these guesses simultaneously. I tend to start with whatever my first guess at “Wordle” was and then go from there. It works the same as “Wordle,” but it has four words. For some reason, though, it doesn’t always save my final guesses, so when I go back to it, I have to redo part of it. Today, I had all of them done in seven guesses, but it didn’t save, so when I went back to it, for this, I had to redo part of it and had already forgotten what I’d guessed, so it took me eight guesses to finish it for the photo. Ugh. Oh well.
I enjoy both of these online word games, but I prefer the variety word game magazines that I frequently buy in the grocery store checkout lane. I guess I like them so much because I like the variety.
No matter the game, if it’s word based, then I’ll probably enjoy it.
Due to my newfound interest in “Wordle,” though, I’ve also taken to watching the TV game show called “Lingo,” which works the same as “Wordle.” They have five-letter rounds and six-letter rounds on it, and those six-letter rounds are definitely more difficult. They also have two times where the teams face off to guess a much longer word that contains a clue to the answer.
“Wheel of Fortune” has long held a special spot in my heart, and I hope it will continue once Pat and Vanna decide to finally retire. I’m sure it will be soon as they are both at and even beyond retirement age.
As a writer, words are my tools, so it’s natural that I love words. I’d be a strange writer if I didn’t love words.
Sometimes, though, even though I love words, they elude me or I don’t feel like writing. Here is a poem I wrote years ago about that:
Wordless I’m wordless today as the sky is sunless Blah, blah, blah is all I emit and how I feel Nothing new, no interesting thought Just that I’m getting old and squandering My life on a normal existence -- One that has everything I should want But very little of what I truly need. Doldrums, humdrums, ho-hum Great life, sad life, full life, empty life.
Fortunately, now that I commit time every day to writing, I usually get some done. This week, though, I have felt a little blah. I think I’m just tired of the cold weather.
My love of words led me to my interest in linguistics, too, and to my desire to write my other Substack piece called “Cognate Cognizance.” If you’ve never checked it out, consider doing so. It’s free twice a month, and there’s also a paying component, like there is for “Tomes and Topics,” in which paying subscribers receive a posting every week.
Here’s a link to it if you’d care to check it out: Cognate Cognizance
If you know of any word game that I might enjoy, feel free to tell me about it.
Until next time.
Tammy Marshall, logophile
I’m including another piece of my work in progress called “Distant Dedication” for paying subscribers below. Remember, this is a first draft, but I’d still welcome any comments about it. If you haven’t read the first two sections, you might want to go back and do that.
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