The Mystery of the Missing Nuts


January 10, 2004

The Promise

Remembering how I missed the first game last time at Bayside, I had promised Ginger I'd be on time. My plan was to drive up to NYC, catch a movie, then camp out until morning and photograph some Starbucks before heading out to Queens. But like a bitch-ass girly-man, I let the reports of zero-degree weather punk me, and cowered under three sets of sheets in my room. Of course I had trouble dragging my ass out of bed in the morning, and I foolishly took time to breakfast and shave (to look good for the Scrabbling hotties), and so I didn't get on the road 'til almost 8:00. I made good time up through Jersey and crossed the Holland Tunnel with no delays. Canal St. threatened to delay me with, so I made an illegal left at 6th Avenue. I spotted a Starbucks on the right, and, not seeing any buses behind me, pulled the car as far forward as I could and sprinted into the store past a couple of cops. The barista didn't seem to notice that I was in a HURRY!!! Sure enough, a couple of buses arrive outside. I grab my sugar and sprint back outside. As I pull out in a hurry, I christen my new jeans with spilled coffee. I think I had them for a total of 17 hours unstained. The Queens-Midtown tunnel, though $4, was the right choice--it put me right on I-495 and I was back on track to arrive right in time.


Dark City

A few years ago there was a movie titled Dark City in which a group of beings put people to sleep during the night and altered the layout of the city as part of some fiendish experiment. I felt like I was in such a dark city as I closed in on Bayside. I remembered that construction blocked the ramp to the Cross-Island Parkway and I need to take I-295. But they switched the ramps, so that the left one went south instead of north!!! AARRGHH!!! I ended up heading south and had to double back!

I stopped the car right in front of the Adria Conference Center and asked Arthur to tell Ginger I had arrived and then went to park my car. Jeez, my hands nearly froze off running from where I parked to the conference room holding my laptop and snacks. This freakish cold just ain't right to us southerners.

Holy smokes! The place was packed. I had never seen so many players at one of these tournaments. Ginger was so busy with preliminaries that she didn't notice I was a few minutes late. I thought I remembered seeing something on the tournament calendar about a 60-player limit for the Bayside tournaments. There was no way 60 players would fit in here. Forty names were up on the posters, and even that number was looking to be a tight squeeze.

After I settled in, I noticed my main man Clay "Diggety" Daniel from the Dallas club, only the second Texan I'd seen up here since Chris Cree played Stamford.

After much urging from Ginger, everybody finally got settled down and started. Well, not everybody--a couple of lollygaggers were missing a board. My first opponent Karen Fishman and I offered up the crappy new Hasbro Deluxe set we had tucked under the table. Beat up and worn as Karen's old-style deluxe board might have been, at least the tiles didn't slide around, and the board didn't feel flimsy, like it was made of toilet paper. What the heck was Hasbro thinking?

Even with no bingos, the right combination of intermediate-point tiles and good timing allowed me to build up a good lead against Karen. She was running out of opportunities and decided to gamble on a couple of phonies, DOPENS* and RESOILED*, and it was just her bad luck I'd been studying RE- words in the days or weeks before the tournament. With those challenges and my one bingo, I was able to start the tournament off with a healthy 148-point spread despite getting stuck with the Q I had exchanged just before IgNORINg (double blank Gs!).

I have no idea if Nancy Druskin is Italian or not, so the "Tuscan Druskin" might not make any sense, but it's the only thing that comes to mind. Actually, "Etuscan" is what comes to mind, but I have no idea if that's name even exists. Anyway, I was still miffed at myself for having forgotten the S ORB hook that allowed her to win in an earlier tournament. I had a much easier time during our rematch, admittedly because of good tiles and timing, but her challenge of ISOLEAD (surprising because of her 1533 rating) didn't hurt, and I picked up another 132 spread points. I once again wondered how near-1600 players could fail to know high-probability stem bingos. On the other hand, I failed to recognize even the stem in the phony NEATISH* once. On the other hand, I'm still a relative novice. On the other hand... wait, I've run out of hands.


I WUZ FUCKED!!!

After eking out a 3-point victory against Phyllis Nussbaum, I started to feel pretty confident. I noticed that I did not have to play the #1 player in the division, and I felt this improved my chances. Then I got fucked! Well, that's debatable. I started off getting jiggy with the phony MANCE* (MANSE), and Judy Steward let it go, perhaps to ensure she could get down her OUTGREW. Holding ARSINE+A, I could have come back through the G or the more obvious T, but I missed up and ended up forced to set up the triple-triple next turn with INSNARE, and she got LINGIESt for 140. Too many points for me not to challenge, and I went from a 14-pont lead to a 167-point deficit. She continued to score 25-30 points per turn, and 63 for JISM, and then got down PORTLIEr to run away with a whopping 582 score (that would end up winning the high-game prize) and 229-point spread that nearly wiped out what I had gained in the first three games combined! Aaaaagh!!!

I was fuming as I went to lunch. Had there been a monkey around, I would have wanted to strangle it. Tom Kelly was the only other player in the lunch room, and so I ran to him for comfort. I just wanted a warm shoulder to cry on, but my pleas for commiseration were rejected. He was like, "That's not getting fucked. That's the game." I hope he never takes a job as a crisis couselor. I can hear him now--"Oh, it's not the end of the world that you got an B in trig--that's just life."


Where's Frank's Nuts?

More players joined us, and one starts to talk about how drunk she was the previous night as she was driving home. I told her she was lucky not to get arrested, like my fucking reprobate sister who spent the night in jail for just that, and would deservedly rot in jail if my mother weren't so fucking weak about letting her get away with that shit.

The conversation got positively raunchy, as a comment about big boobs prompted me, ignoring my better judgement, to say "Who at this table has big..." and let it drop. But the a certain female at the table heard, and became irate, and removeed her jacket, as in demonstration. For a moment I thought the blouse was going to come off too, but that was just wishful thinking.

Later still, she kept asking Frank to go get his nuts. I'm not sure what exactly she was talking about, but she said she wanted them for dessert. All the raunchy talk got me thinking that maybe this lady, though older and an irresponsible driver, was kind of sexy. Hmmm...

I moved to the next table to say hi to my man Clay. At the table, another player, who had me at a disadvantage because she knew who I was, mentioned something about my journals. Then she paid me a serious compliment by comparing my writing to that of Hunter S. Thompson. I was genuinely flattered. But when she made reference to my writing coming from god, I became uncomfortable, because her comment went against my anti-religious stance, but at the same time I did not want to offend her. To make matters worse, I had to consider that she would probably read what I wrote about our conversation, and possibly feel offended. But if I wanted to preserve the moment, what else could I do?


When Pounces the Puma?

My first opponent after lunch was Marie Puma, who was having a good tournament and could challenge me for first. At the end of our game Marie Puma said that I intimidated her. I wonder if she realized that I was shaking like a leaf during our game. I wasn't scared of her, mind you, but of the prospect of losing my chance at first. When she exchanged her opening rack, I immediately feared an impending bingo, and I nearly felt PANIC, which is what she ended up playing. I felt better, since she had cleared out five of her tiles, but then she exhcnaged again, and I went into defensive mode. Turns out she didn't have a blank as I had feared, but just bad tiles, and my defensive play wasn't helping her out any. I was able to build up a gradual lead and then pull beyond reach with a couple of bingos for a 123-point win. The spread would turn out to be very important.

Opening up the board cost me against Steve Sikorski. I should have tucked my X away in the corner for 18 points, but instead I played OXO for 20 points and gave him the opening for LINEMEN. It was particularly frustrating because the board had become tight quickly, and it had been painstaking work to try and catch up after his opening ZEBUS. I had expected to have an advantage on a tight board with my knowledge of 4s and 5s, but of course the tiles have to cooperate. I came away from that game chanting the mantra "Don't open bingo lines. Don't open bingo lines." But on the other hand, once I saw the tiles were going his way, perhaps I should have switched tactics and started playing wide open?


Spread, Spread, Spread!!!

My final game was a real pulse-pounder, possibly the most exciting I'd played up to that point. I replied to her opening KINDLE with LANdLESS, but then I let her get away with the phony ENROUGED, since it was so early in the game, and I could tie it up with my 24-point play. Later, Clay would tell me that he would not have feared losing the turn if he doubted the word, not so early in the game. She then outscored me for a few turns, but I regained the lead with the 60-point FIzZES and furthermore got her to challenge the hook, POWS, to extend my lead to 45. From that point on, I maintained my lead and started to gain confidence that I would win, and I began to think about the spread I would need to win the tournament.

After three months of steady competition, I was hot to finally win a tournament, and eagerly anticipating. Marie had finished her game, but not posted her results, so I rushed up to ask Ginger what her spread was. It was going to be close! I needed to win by 41 to pass her. I found an out combination that stuck my opponent with the Q and allowed me to dink out. With only an I remaining, I still needed about 7 points to win. I went back up to Ginger in a frenzied state to make absolutely sure I had the spread correctly. Only six points were obvious, and I was running low on time and began to panic. Finally I managed to find an extra two points to win the tournament. After the game, Kevin pointed out a few more points, and another player pointed out yet more points, 11 I think. Boy, was that close!

After turning in results, I asked my opponent if she understood why I was trying to find those extra points, and she, in a manner that seemed condescending (but might not have been) replied that she didn't care that much. This irritated me, I had to hold back from responding, "Well, why are you here then?" "Why are you doing something you don't care about that much?"

My man Clay won 2nd--I rejoiced that Texans were representing on the east coast. Then he revealed that he was originally from Virginia. But I decided that after living in Texas for a few years, we could claim him for life.

Speaking of Texas, as everyone was leaving, some lady commented that I hadn't gone back to Texas yet. She seemed irritated and disappointed. Geez--where's the love?

After the tournament, I started having fantasies about a certain player who I decided oozed sex appeal, and who probably wasn't that much older than me after all. I had visions of sweeping boards and tiles off the table in a passionate frenzy. Of rattling the walls and door of the cramped and funky bathroom while cries of "Quiet!" echoed throughout the room. Out of my fantasizing it occurred to me that the Scrabble community had perhaps grown large enough to support a market for a series of Scrabble-themed bodice-rippers...

Petra's eyes fixed on Pietro's muscles as they rippled with every tile he placed on the board. She sat mesmerized, and only after a few seconds did it register that he had played PASSION. Petra's intellect was on par with her statuesque beauty, and she replied with an equally valuable play, ZAFTIG. Pietro nodded his head in agreement, and Petra wondered if he was acknowledging the play alone, or something else...

After the tournament, I went to visit the new Starbucks in Syossett. On the way I listened to a very interesting and disturbing NPR report about how the major networks, despite being allocated bandwith by the FCC, were refusing to run anti-consumerism ads created by Adbusters. Particularly interesting to me, as I realize what few people seem to, that the planet cannot long sustain expanding population and consumerism. I wish I could once hear a politician talking about shrinking the economy, but that's just a pipe dream. I'd be perfectly happy if there were no new neighborhoods for Starbucks to expand into. By coincidence, the next day I saw an excellent movie, House of Sand and Fog in which both leads were overly attached to physical possessions, the result of which ended up being tragic.

At the Starbucks I tried to work out my new rating, but could not do so accurately because I was waiting for my current rating to be re-computed with the correct ordering, Oshawa, then Farmington, then Parsippany. Depending on the recomputation, I might be as high as 1470-1480, surpassing my peak and well-poised to crack 1500. Otherwise, I'd only be at 1446. Later, I would receive a reply from Edley explaining that he would not recompute my rating because too many tournaments had passed. Aye yo, that's wack!!!

As I returned from Syosett on the LIE nursing a mighty hunger, traffic came to a standstill because of a collision. At risk of of being thought a heartless bastard, I'm not ashamed to admit that while other drivers may be rubbernecking with prurient interest and perhaps even concern, I'm cursing all the drivers involved. I be like, "You stupid motherfuckers. You can't drive and you fucked up and now you're costing me MY time. I hope you die. I hope at least you break both legs and can't ever drive again." And while I would never wish harm upon children (only that they not be born in the first place), I kinda want the kids of stupid drivers to die and remove those bad driving genes from the gene pool.

At the Starbucks I had also looked up Latin restaurants, and I settled on one called Agozar, in part because they had their menu online, and I spotted the green plantains (tostones or patacones) I love so much. When I arrived, I saw that it was as much a bar as a restaurant, and kind of trendy for me. I just sat at the counter and ordered some beans, rice, and plantains, and hoped that the two girls also sitting at the bar would take notice of me, though I didn't expect they really would, considering my nose was buried in the latest Stephen King novel. But what they hey--women have disappointed me much more often that Stephen King ever has.

After the movie, I went to the Angelika to see The Cooler, as I love the gambling genre. During the movie, I realized that I was pretty sure that I had see ???'s clock go over time. I needn't have scrambled about for those extra points like I did--and to think that had I not found the points, I might have lost if no one had noticed the clock. D'oh!



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