scrabblephreak

UNSHIRTED, SHIRTED# (DITHERS)

I didn't study all that much in 2011. Most of the time I used to devote to Scrabble study went to reading books. Not a terribly bad thing, except for where my Scrabble rating is concerned. What little studying I did do in '11 (and '10) was spent going through a tonne of sixes.

Why sixes? They were a fun break from studying sevens and the tedious eights and they came in handy in games where I wanted to reach the TWS and a bingo won't fit, also they were great for drawing challenges from the lower ranks because they don’t study sixes. (I've been told that not many of the upper ranks even study sixes)

It may turn out that the sixes might have been the biggest contributor to my drop. I spent too much time playing newly-learned sixes and less time rack-balancing/bingo playing. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that by bingos-per-game had dropped in the last two years because I was no-so-cleverly playing a lot of sixes.

So moving forward, I'm going to make a conscious decision to spend less time playing sixes (except where there's good points to be had) and more time on rack balancing for bingos.

Five things I did for the first time:

1. Became mortgage free
2. Went to Europe (Italy, Turkey and Greece)
3. Read more than 50 books
4. Dropped my Scrabble rating by ~300
5. Sold things on kijiji (sold a car, 2000+ interlock stones and 4 Twilight books)

Five things I did that I never want to do again:

1. Drop my Scrabble rating by ~300
2. Pay for HBO and Showtime shows (thank you, internets)
3. Pay for a full year of a gym membership that I will only used for five months
4. Pay crazy bucks for a phone data plan
5. foursquare.com (being a recurring mayor of three Tim Hortons is not as fun as it sounds

Five things I didn't do that I wanted to do:

1. Get my rating back to where it should be (1400+)
2. Do the CN Tower Edge Walk
3. Learn to play the guitar that I got for my 30th birthday (it's a recurring "want")
4. Get my home equity line of credit down to $0.00 (new pool made sure that wouldn't happen)
5. Carnal knowledge of Halle Barry and/or Deborah Ann Woll and/or Scarlett Johansson Go to more Blue Jays games

Five things I acquired:

1. A new (used) turntable
2. A Western Digital Live TV media hub (lovin' it)
3. A Kobo Touch e-reader (lovin' it)
4. A new swimming pool (to replace the craptastic money-wasting dinosaur of pool I used to have)
5. An Apple iPhone 4 (sans phone contract)

Five favorite TV shows:

1. Breaking Bad
2. Californication
3. Dexter (the season was meh, but ohhh... the finale!)
4. Shameless (US version)
5. A Game of Thrones mini-series

(with honorable mentions to Strike Force, Homeland, Burn Notice, and An Idiot Abroad, Person of Interest)

Five things I want to do in 2012:

1. See more of Europe, or
2. maybe go to Australia (and possibly New Guinea)
3. Do the CN Tower Edge Walk
4. Drop below 180 lbs (currently tipping the scales at 215 lbs)
5. Get back on my bike + rollerblades (that should help with #4)

Un. Fucking. Believable.

When will this madness end?

You probably use "i.e." and "e.g." quite often and you probably get the gist of what they mean. But do you know what those two initialisms actually stand for?

http://scrabblephreak.qinje.com/quizzer/quiz.html

The makings of a word quiz web app. It's mostly just an exercise in JavaScript, json, and jQuery.

You pick a quiz from the drop-down, click the load quiz button and bobs-yer-uncle you have yourself a snazzy little quiz. You can enter single answers for a qiven alphagram or multiple answers to the same alphagram, separated by a space.

It's not that pretty. It's not bulletproof. It may be buggy. But using jQuery it was a very simple to write.

Even though the Blue Jays lost the game last night to Cleveland 13-9 (they looked poised to tie it up in the 9th) one amazing thing from that game was the three back-to-back triples by Eric Thames, Rajai David and Jayson Nix. The last time that was done in the Majors (according to MLB) was thirty years ago, in 1981, by the Montreal Expos!

Have any of you LJ'ers tried the LJ iphone app yet?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

The Scrabble-acceptable nations featured in Yakko Warner's "Nations of the World"

CHAD

a scrap of paper [n -S]

MALI#

a member of the gardener caste in India [n -S]

CHILE

a hot pepper, also CHILI,CHILLI [n -S]

CHINA

fine porcelain ware [n -S]

CONGO

a Chinese tea, also CONGOU [n CONGOS or CONGOES]

JAPAN

to coat with a glossy black lacquer [v JAPANNED,JAPANNING,JAPANS]

NIGER#

a Negro (a dark-skinned African) [n -S]

SPAIN#

to wean (to take off mother's milk) [v -ED, -ING, -S]

ZAIRE

a monetary unit of central Africa [n -S]

ANGOLA#

angora [adj]

BRAZIL

a dyewood (a wood from which a dye is extracted) [n -S]

CANADA#

a small narrow canyon [n -S]

CAYMAN

a tropical reptile, also CAIMAN [n -S]

CYPRUS

a thin black fabric [n -ES]

GAMBIA

an extract from an Asian vine, also GAMBIER,GAMBIR [n -S]

GREECE#

a step, also GRECE,GRECIAN,GREESE,GREESING,GRESE,GRESSING,GRIECE,GRIZE [n -S]

GUINEA

a former British coin [n -S]

JORDAN

a chamberpot [n -S]

PANAMA

a lightweight hat [n -S]

RUSSIA#

Russian leather [n -S]

TURKEY

a large American bird [n -S]

BOLIVIA

a soft fabric [n -S]

MOROCCO

a soft leather [n -S]

SUMATRA#

a short violent squall [n -S]

• NUT: to gather nuts (hard-shelled dry fruits) [v NUTTED, NUTTING, NUTS]
• DONUT: doughnut (a ring-shaped cake) [n -S]
• COBNUT: an edible nut [n -S]
• HOGNUT: a hickory nut [n -S]
• PEANUT: the nutlike seed or pod of an annual vine [n -S]
• PIGNUT: a hickory nut [n -S]
• WALNUT: an edible nut [n -S]
• COCONUT: the fruit of the coco [n -S]
• GALLNUT: an abnormal swelling of plant tissue [n -S]
• LOCKNUT: a nut which keeps another from loosening [n -S]
• BEECHNUT: the nut of a beech [n -S]
• BETELNUT: a seed chewed as a stimulant [n -S]
• BREADNUT: a tropical fruit [n -S]
• CHESTNUT: an edible nut [n -S]
• COCOANUT: coconut (the fruit of the coco) [n -S]
• DOUGHNUT: a ring-shaped cake [n -S]
• EARTHNUT: a European herb [n -S]
• HAZELNUT: an edible nut [n -S]
• THUMBNUT: a nut that is turned by the thumb and fingers [n -S]
• BITTERNUT: [n -S]
• BUTTERNUT: [n -S]
• CANDLENUT: [n -S]
• GROUNDNUT: [n -S]
• BLADDERNUT: [n -S]