So you already know about my obsession with Scrabble, but there are other games I like to play, or watch others play. Nan said she likes to play poker, well, I’ve never played, but I enjoy watching the World Series of Poker, especially Phil Hellmuth, who can be a real brat. Basically, I like games that interest me. For example, the MSN home page had a “Are You Psychic?” quiz link, which caught my attention; I failed miserably, so don’t ask me to divine your future. Once there were some sample LSAT questions in the newspaper, which were fairly easy and which I did well on. There was a quiz the other day about opening lines in famous books which I did badly on, which surprised me since I had read all but I think two of the books. Sometimes the MSN page has trivia games links that I like to play, I do pretty good on them. I do good playing along with Trivial Pursuit on television.

I do average at Jeopardy questions, but the show bores me and so I don’t watch it, except when there’s a Tournament of Champions, it’s fun to watch when you know every answer is going to get a right question. My best Jeopardy moment was watching a Champs Tourney, and one of the answers was something like “Designed the colonnades in St. Peter’s Square” and they didn’t know the answer, and I did: Bernini! So Art History 101 at City College, take a bow!

I wasn’t very good at spelling bees in school, always lost out in the classroom rounds, and pretty early, too. I had hearing problems when I was a kid, so maybe that had something to do with it. There are sites on the web where you can challenge yourself to spell words, I like the UK Times Spelling Bee Training, it’s fun, a robot speaks the words to you and you have to try to spell the words as fast as you can, and they keep a scorecard on the site so you can see where you’re ranked against others. The first year I played, I climbed to 8th, but stopped playing after a while, so I don’t know if I would have done better or worse over time. I believe you have to register to play, also a warning, the site prefers British English pronunciations and spellings. So for instance, “lieutenant” is pronounced “leftenant,” and “maneuver” is spelled “manoeuvre.”

I enjoy doing the New York Times Crossword puzzle -- on Mondays! Okay, it’s easy on Mondays. Tuesdays, I can complete it, just takes more time. Wednesdays, add even more time and may not get all the puzzle. Thursdays, if I go at it all day, I may get 80 - 90% done, depending on the difficulty level. Fridays, well, if I get 50% of it sort of halfway completed, that’s a good day for me.

I worked for a time in an office, some years ago, with a bunch of very smart people. Every day at lunch I would sit in the break room and do the NYT crossword. One of the big bosses, assistant to the director of the office, would come in and sit next to me and we would do the puzzle together. I don’t even remember how this routine started, but almost every day, he would slide in to the chair next to mine and we would work the thing. Maybe it was his help, maybe I just didn’t want to look stupid, or maybe it was his thigh against my thigh, but I had no trouble completing the puzzles, even on Fridays!