Boggle

1/2/06

We went by my sister’s and celebrated the New Year by playing Boggle. Let me preface this by saying no one was drinking.

But we were happy. It seems as we’re getting deeper into middle age, we’re not seeing as much of each other as we used to. So when we do, it’s a party.

And fun we had. The families exchanged presents, reminisced about Christmas past -- I always bring up the bubble lights we had on the live trees the folks used to get in the early 50’s at the old house in the city. Nova lights, were they called?

After dinner and small talk, we repaired to the den for Boggle. I had never played, or at least I claimed not to, but I found the game stimulating. Almost intoxicating. After a while, my blood pressure hit the ceiling upon trying to concoct as many three and four letter words in the space of three minutes as I could muster. I don’t think I was trying to beat anybody -- no one was going to beat my niece, anyway. Experienced Boggle player. Probably peeked at the Boggle algorithms on the Internet. Like I did tonight.

I was up to the challenge. We all did good, especially my wife, who would bankrupt the Wheel of Fortune if she ever went on TV. She’s that good!

But making words in Boggle can be exasperating. Up, down, around -- if you’ve never played, there are about 25 little cubes of letters that are shaken and dispersed randomly into compartments of a large cube holder. You try to make all the words you can from adjacent letters -- each letter of your word has to touch another letter.

We got a little punchy after four or five rounds. I took myself out of the game sooner because it started to remind me of writing under deadline pressure when I was a reporter. Some editors used to make us wait until five o’clock to write eight or ten stories. Then we could go home. Hah!

I watched the diehards try to outword each other until it got silly. That’s when I came back in. My sister had a word: tort. Was it a cake? No that was torte. Someone, a bit hard of hearing, asked if it was “torque.” Torquemada, maybe. Without offering a legal explanation, I simply said that I had a new shirt and I wore it so much that I “tort.”

The tears started to flow, someone spit on me, I thought, accidentally. No, I repeat, we were not drinking. If my sister hadn’t reacted that way, I wouldn’t have either. But I did, and you know, there’s such a joy in that release that I think maybe toxins come out of you when you sob with laughter.

Till next time,

Randy Baran