topaz

We had an hour or so without the children on Saturday, and wanted to relax and play a game. We settled on UpWords, which is sort of like Scrabble except you get to change existing words by stacking tiles on top of each other.

"What do the rules say about legal words?" Ellen asked craftily.

I checked the rules sheet. "No capitalized words, hyphenated words, abbreviations, or foreign words."

"But archaic words are okay?"

Uh-oh. "It doesn't say anything about archaic words."

Ellen played PALETH.

"``Paleth''?" I asked.

"You know," she said. "Like, the present tense of ``pales''... ``paleth.''"

"Sweet Jesus," I said.

"There's no rule against archaic words!"

I didn't put up a fight. A few turns later she threatened to turn it into PAGETH.

"``Pageth''?" I asked.

"As in ``he pageth through his website,''" she suggested.

"I suggest not," I said, "lest you want yon mouse shoved up thine arse."

But I had a ``C'', so I turned it into PACETH. Ellen raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

Then I scored gold. I turned it into SPACETH.

"Spaceth," she said.

"As in ``he spaceth out on mescaline,''" I offered helpfully. "Or..."

"Or ``he spaceth through his website.''" she filled in. "Fine, fine."

Shortly afterward I got to turn it into SPADETH.

"Good thing you didn't have an I," she noted.

"Why?" I asked. "Where would I put the I?"

"I'm not going to tell you where to put your I!" she retorted. Then she reconsidered, "Actually, that's not true, because I'm really tempted to tell you just where to put your I."

"But you love me."

"If you had an I you could have made it SPICETH."

On my next turn I put down the I and the C for SPICETH. "Me and my big fat mouth," she growled.

"You mean your moutheth?" I asked.

Somehow I got out of there alive. I think the ice cream saved me.