The strange, the bizarre and the unexpected

[bwt1213]

Strange, bizarre, and unexpected, all right. Talk about a score variance! I played both boards today. Spike got the big word after my first play and before my second. I didn't find it the first time around and did the second, but that wasn't the whole reason for the difference in scores. Anyone else have anything similar?

Game Results

YOUR STATS:Total points: 655 New record!
Total words: 98 (46 common,12 wide,10 rare,30 ultra rare)
Best word: UNCONVERTIBLENESSES (36 pts.)
Longest word: UNCONVERTIBLENESSES (19 letters)

PUZZLE STATS:
Played: 4 times
Average Score: 304.6 points
Average Words: 51.6 words
High Score: 509 points by bwt1213
Most Words: 101 words by bwt1213
Best Word: UNCONVERTIBLENESSES (36 pts) by Spike1007
Longest Word: UNCONVERTIBLENESSES (19 letters) by Spike1007

[Spike1007]

lalatan, thanks for the congrats! I started out last month only going for new words on the board. I started out strong, but realized that I wasn't finding enough to keep my average up. I fell back on clicking & did a lot more of that than I like. Now I'm back to new words only. I have no doubt that you could beat my score (maybe even break 45) if you wanted to.

[Brisul]

As far as strange, bizarre and unexpected, I never thought that when I finally got my monthly average up over 1000 I would have any uncertainty about getting a top three spot in the score charts. Amazing.

[lalatan]

By the way, today I got PSYCHOLEXICOLOGISTS. I assume that's another word for wordtwist players.

Lol, Spike! I found PSYCHOLEXICOLOGICAL but not that word nor DISCOMBOBERATE. Good finds.

I noticed you set a new high of 43.5 pts/word in last month's APPW competition. Congrats and well done!
I thought about seeing how high I could go with the new higher scoring words but honestly can't bring myself to do that amount of clicking anymore. Finding the high value words doesn't challenge me like it used to. Last March I competed for APPW and won but didn't enjoy the process. I may change my mind in the future but that's where I'm at right now.

[Spike1007]

I've gotten PERNICKETINESS (in one form or another) here, as well as DISCOMBOBERATE. I'd never heard them before & figured that they must be local variations or something. It didn't occur to me that they were the British variants.

By the way, today I got PSYCHOLEXICOLOGISTS. I assume that's another word for wordtwist players.

[lalatan]

That's a beaut. It reminds me of 1 of my favorite finds: PERNICKETINESSES (the British equivalent of persnickety). There must be a board where we can find PERNICKETIEST or even PERSNICKETIEST. BOLO

[BoggleOtaku]

I will remember TRAFFICKIEST (helpfully contains-ICKIEST) my next commute

[floppers]

SQUIRRELGRAVYLISTIC, maybe?

[Spike1007]

Kind of on topic... SQUIRRELISTICALLY doesn't work here. I'm sure that it's just an oversight.

[floppers]

oh, bwt1213, I haven't laughed so much since...the gravy covered squirrels of Mothers Day! You couldn't script that!

and Kate, bicycle riders here have cable/zip ties sticking up all over their helmets to try to stop those Magpies...they dive bomb dogs, cats, possums, mirrors, and people. They are extremely territorial. We have a football team here named The Magpies, and their supporters live up to the habits of the bird...

Unlike supporters of The Magpies, the Australian version are clever in some ways. A neighbour feeds a magpie family with minced beef, if he doesn't give them their breakfast by 7.30am, they knock on his door to alert him. After they have had their fill, Mud and Moose are invited the final tidbits, and to vac up the left overs from the lawn, the younger magpies, come to my house to tell the dogs when they have had their fill. Unfortunately, they share a tree with some brushtail possums, and sometimes have noisy altercations in the dead of the night.

If you have the need to fend off a magpie with a frying pan, I recommend you use a mirror too. You can look, via the mirror, for the magpie coming from behind, and at the last moment, duck and flip up the frying pan. Then give the dazed magpie a stern talking too. (The local constabulary could probably use the same method to catch supporters of The Magpies).

[crazykate]

Speaking of Australian species that have the same name as other species but are quite different, I was amazed when I learned about Australian magpies. European magpies are quite pretty, and not very aggressive. When I first saw pictures of Australians fending off "magpies" with frying pans, I was very confused.

[bwt1213]

Comes the time when and Spike encountered an opossum, with great drama. The opossum was moving through our property when we released the two dogs for the evening. It was early in the winter, but still very snowy and quite wet. (Note to Floppers -- the temperature was perhaps 1 or 2, and falling). Sophie had had an embolism on her spine and had relearned to walk only with extensive therapy but was still all dog and not yet old. Spike was young and male and willing to let Sophie lead. Sophie found the opossum and (being a golden retriever) took the opossum with her to the base of the stairs to the house and let everyone know that a major triumph should be declared. (If you think I had an extensive background in Latin, you are correct). The opossum did what opossums do and played the defunct card. The two human players in this drama were my wife and myself. I would usually have been in charge of the dogs, but I was very ill and lying flat and feeling wretched. So my wife exited to see what occasioned the triumph. And slipped and fell on the porch, giving herself what proved to be an enormous hematoma from the edge of the concrete stairs, while simultaneously putting her face to face with what seemed to be a dead opossum. Her screams brought me from my sickbed to the pleasant exterior, from whence I could help my wife inside, remove the opossum from the attentions of Sophie and Spike to the bottom of an empty garbage can, and get both dogs back inside again. My wife could barely move. I didn't want to move. The dogs thought this was paradise and I should do it again. This was act one. Act two came the next morning, when I examined the garbage can to discover that "playing possum" was not just a metaphor. Act three was calling the village office, who told me that they had no animal control officers and the possum was all my responsibility. So I did the responsible thing, and pulled the can to my neighbor's property (outside my fence, and I didn't like him at ALL for a number of good reasons) and released the opossum, which moved as quickly as an opossum can move (not very) and headed away from all the drama and all the humans in the whole world, and good luck to it. Floppers, this is all true. Every word. I hope you're laughing as hard for my true story as I did for yours.

[floppers]

ooohhh, that's creepy......should we name it Jerome, and keep it?

[DonGuy47]

Here's an opossum I found in a bag of garden debris. I think it was attracted to the rotting tomatoes.

[dannyb]

Then you have definitely not seen my cousin Jerome!