Has it really been three years since I repaired a Scrabble set? Such slacking, I’m appalled at myself. The other day I met up with trademarkable JeffCuter(TM) at Diesel Cafe and later had a nice game of Scrabble with the estimable J, who beat me by three points with the utterly cromulent fake bingo, SOLTERN.
So anyway, I decided to check the Diesel game locker, and found the Scrabble set down by a whopping 21 tiles. On the plus side, at least one kind person had made up some cardboard substitutes, some of them really quite nice. With a quick A A A B C C E E F G I K M N S S T U V _ _ I topped things up from my strategic Scrabble tile reserve.
Across the ‘ville at Bloc 11, I found an even more perplexing situation, a set with 133 tiles, 33 more than regulation. But it wasn’t pure surplus, there were still tiles missing, such as both of the Bs normally in the set. So I contributed the missing tiles and set the excess aside, returning another scrabble set to 100-tile perfection, at least for now. Also, I discovered an interesting message inside the box cover. You don’t get those with Words With Friends, do you?
But what kind of maniac would crate a 133-tile set? It’s can’t have been an accident. Did somebody combine two incomplete sets? Are there merry pranksters at work? Is some speech-impeded supervillan playing a twisted form of megascrabble with twice the D and none of the B? I’m not sure which option is less frightening, but I’m going to have to step up the Scrabble vigilance.
If you know of a cafe Scrabble set in need, don’t be a SOLTERN, speak up!