You know what today is? April 13th. National Scrabble Day. The celebration of a game where we arrange tiny wooden tiles into meaningful patterns, much like how we try to arrange the random events of our lives into something that makes sense.
Scrabble was created back in 1938 by an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Isn’t that something? An architect – a man who designs spaces for human existence – also designed this little universe of 225 squares where words battle for territory and points. I’ve always thought there was something profound about that.
I was playing Scrabble last night with an old friend… well, I say friend, but our relationship is more complex than a seven-letter word on a triple word score. She beat me by 43 points after placing “QUIXOTIC” across two triple word scores. Devastating and beautiful all at once, like so many things in this life.
There’s something about Scrabble that mirrors our existence up here in the frozen north. We make do with what we’re dealt. Sometimes you get a rack full of vowels and nowhere to place them. Other times you’re holding onto a Q with no U in sight. But you adapt, you find unusual combinations, you make unexpected connections.
Did you know the highest possible score for a single word in Scrabble is 1,778 points? The word is “OXYPHENBUTAZONE” – it’s some kind of anti-inflammatory drug. Imagine that – a word that heals placed in exactly the right spot, at exactly the right time, could be worth more than any other combination of letters. There’s poetry in that, don’t you think?
I keep a Scrabble board set up in the studio. Sometimes between songs I’ll play against myself, left brain versus right brain. The philosophical side of me tries to create words like “EXISTENTIAL” or “EPHEMERAL,” while the pragmatic side goes for the triple word scores with simple, sturdy words like “ZAX” or “QAT.”
So tonight, in honor of National Scrabble Day, I’m dedicating this next set to the wordsmith in all of us. To those moments when the perfect word arrives precisely when you need it, like an unexpected visitor bearing gifts. To the silent conversations we have with ourselves as we rearrange the letters we’ve been given, trying to make meaning out of chaos.
And to you, my nocturnal companions, shuffling your own tiles in the game of life – may you find your triple word scores where you least expect them.
Stay warm out there. The night is long, but the words will guide you home.
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