Words with Frenemies

Words with Friends, or Scrabble for those old enough to remember it is an actual board game, is ruining my life. I have become upset over the world "jovial", excited about the word "excrement" and seriously questioned how someone found out that "vrouw" is an actual word. Come on people.

*sidenote: Vrouw is a married woman in Dutch, learn something new every day.

Every time someone gets a new smartphone and asks their friends what apps they should buy, it never fails that someone will suggest Words with Friends. I admit I was hooked when I first downloaded it and was excited to see how many friends I could play against to show my word prowess.

I played a game with my friend Matt and it went well - a close match and some great words were used in the battle. I was a little disappointed that some of my words were only 3 and 4 letters, but that's what TW and DW scores are for, amiright?!

The next game I played was with Luke, a kid I worked with back in the day down at Countryside Village. I am not friends with this kid, the only interaction we have had in the past 5 years was this Scrabble game so I thought it would go quickly. Wrong. The first day it took me about 24 hours to respond to his move and I noticed I had messages left on the board from him:

"Ur turn."

"You there"

"OMG GO"

Woah woah woah compadre, I am so very sorry. Next time I will patiently wait by my phone for you to play another 4 point word, douche. At least give me something to work with that shows you at least passed 4th grade English. I played "jogger" for 40+ points and smiled at the thought of him throwing his phone across the room in anger. About 30 seconds later he came back with "JEUX".

JEUX? What the flying crap is a JEUX?

Considering he had been playing elementary words the entire time I knew there was no way he knew what that word meant. Being the fair player that I am, I politely asked him in the messages what that word meant. He responded, "Ha, crazy right?". Yes, indeed that is crazy my four eyed recluse, but it did not answer my question. Not being one to just let things die I asked him again, "Ive never even heard of that word, what does it mean?" There was no way he was getting out of answering my prodding question (and for my avid readers at home questioning why I didn't just Google it myself, I actually did - I just wanted him to answer out of sheer principle.) He finally responded "I dunno, I just put the words in a database and that's what it came back with, geez"

I knew I smelled a rat. That little punk was cheating and I intended to beat him. It then dawned on me that the only thought he was putting in to the game was entering the letters he had and having a machine jumble them up into a gold mine of points for him. Meanwhile I was at home shuffling my letters around and using my brain like a schmuck. So I did what any American would do, I cheated too.

I'm not proud of the fact that I cheated, but I am proud of the fact that I beat him. When it got down to the last few letters I used the "lets-see-if-these-2-letter-combos-will-actually-work-so-I-don't-have-to-resign" method, which worked pretty well. Needless to say I did not accept his next game request, and I am pretty much ignoring all my other requests to play that stupid game. I like crossword puzzles better, they don't require me to make up ridiculous letter combos and hope they hold up in the court of Scrabble.

Scrabble, I hate you.