How Competitive Are You?

 RHYS BOWEN: I have a confession to make: I am very competitive. Always have been. Always wanted to be top of the class in school, to win the ballet competition. I entered strange competitions as a child: I won a cash prize for my essay on why I liked a department store.  I was a really keen tennis player in my youth--played for my school, my college, but then later in life did not enjoy league tennis because it was so competitive, so perhaps I'm mellowing.

When I am playing any family game I want to win (this became ridiculous when I played Trivial Pursuit with my kids and they ended up handicapping me by having two of them reading out clues from different categories at the same time. And me: Iceland and 1934. Kids: rats!

And I regret to say that I have created competitive children. Two were elite athletes, playing for college and one for the US. But the others are just as competitive. Daughter Clare came home from school furious because she didn’t get a perfect score on a test in driver’s ed and she thought the instructor’s answer was wrong. It was a pass/fail course. It didn’t matter. But it did to her.

Over the years we have had endless family competitions: volleyball, corn hole, bocce ball as well as the games we play on holidays--Taboo, Reverse Charades and the Name Game--the current favorite. Everyone writes the name of a famous person on  a piece of paper. The reader reads them all out and we try to guess who chose which name. It sounds simple but the names are really creative and funny.

You should have seen the family when we went to a fun park with go-karts, water boats, mini-golf etc. The intensity to win as they drove those go-karts!  (especially the sons-in-law) This summer we’re all going to San Diego for a week on the beach. I imagine there will be plenty of beach games, swimming races etc!

Our strangest competition: when the first grandchildren were babies I bought a wooden puzzle of sea creatures you had to lift out with a magnetic fishing rod. The adults (especially the males) turned this into fierce competition as to who could lift all of them out and then put them all back first.  We had crackers one year with racing wind-up penguins in them. Endless races across the dining table.

But just the other day I saw a picture of a competition I would never want to enter: competitive ironing. That’s right. Room full of ironing boards and women ironing. It was for a Miss America pageant long ago when ironing was a skill of every good housewife.  I would be dead last!

So how about you? Is your family competitive? What is the strangest competition you have ever entered?

LUCY BURDETTE: Yes competitive! But sheesh the first thing I thought when I saw this post was that I better get my answer in before Hank did, LOL. And I know not to play scrabble with this JRW crowd either. My family was pretty competitive, I can remember playing rounds of board games like risk and monopoly, which my older sister almost always won. We also played giant games of kick the can while on vacation with all of the age groups represented. Teams would do anything to get near enough to home base to  kick the can and free their imprisoned teammates. I can remember things like adults driving a car near the can so other team members could drop out of the passenger side and take the guardians of the can by surprise. Or dress up in costume and pretend to be a random passerby, and then burst into a mad dash to the can.

On a more serious note, I was very competitive in school too. I think it was fifth grade when I received a report card that had two B’s on it (the rest A’s.) I went to the teacher, crying. She agreed to change my gym grade from B to A-. (Honestly, it wasn’t because my parents were ogres!) And to be honest, to stay in this writing profession, you have to be willing to compete hard with a million other writers. The great thing about our Jungle Red family is that we’ve figured out how to support each other at the same time!

HALLIE EPHRON: I am not competitive.

Stop laughing.

Seriously, I hate board games. Hate card games. I play Candyland with my grandson only under duress. I will NOT play Scrabble with my husband because he always… gets the good letters. All I get are vowels.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Right, Hallie. It’s the GAME’S fault. :-)  But I don’t play Scrabble with Jonathan because he’s too good. I mean--he is incredible. Words on many levels.  I can beat him at every other game, though, just saying. So he won’t play with me, either. We do compete on the Sunday NYT Spelling Bee word, though. (ANd FYI, I STILL insist Provolone is a proper name, and should not count. Anyway.)

(Have you played Code Words? It is SO much fun! We play it with the kids and grandchildren, and it’s amazing. Very brain-twisting.)

Okay, yes, I am competitive, but I kind of don’t look at it that way. I like to do the best I can possibly do at whatever it is, is more how I see it. I understand, though, that psychologically it’s not always ….the most rewarding thing to do. 

I well remember, word for word, a conversation I had with my mother when I was in high school. She told me: Honey, it’s better if you don’t always win. And I was absolutely baffled. I said: Why?  

And she said: someday you’ll understand.

JENN McKINLAY: I am actually not competitive at all. Weird, right? I have always played games for fun not to win -- much to the chagrin of my volleyball teammates. If I (or anyone else) hit the ball into the parking lot or the duck pond, I thought it was hilarious. The men used to get mad at me, but I wore them down. Finally, one of them admitted that while we were the losingest team in the league we were the most fun and laughed through the whole season. Sometimes we were laughing too hard to play -- you can’t beat that with a trophy.

Also, I love board games but mostly because of the ridiculous antics that come with them. Hooligan 2 came out wearing swim goggles, potholders, and a clothespin on his nose when he had to give his Ti Tia a winner’s foot massage at Monopoly! Hilarious!

As for writing, I am mostly competitive with myself and am constantly trying to write a better story, a tighter mystery, or try on a new genre. I genuinely believe that there is enough room at the table for everyone and if another author enjoys brilliant success, it reminds me that I have that potentiality, too.  

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Posting next to last to prove my point. Not competitive. (So that makes three for and three against, right? Julia can tip the balance! Seriously, having grown up with a brother ten years older that was the BEST at everything, there didn't seem much point. I'm terrible at sports (always picked last) so no fun competing there, either. I do want to write the best possible books, but that's because I don't want to disappoint myself or my readers. But I love love love trivia, so if I ever get to play on a pub team again, you'd better watch out! 

RHYS: So, dear friends--how competitive are you? And what is the weirdest competition in which you've taken part?

RHYS THOUGHTS ON ISOLATION

RHYS BOWEN : How many weeks of isolation is it now? Since March 10 for us. Two and a half months. I expect you are getting as tired of it as I am. I really miss the freedom to go out when I feel like it, even if it’s just into Walgreens for a new lipstick. I really miss meeting friends for lunch. Actually I really miss eating out. I’m in Arizona that has now opened up again (unwisely in my opinion) but I don’t intend to eat in a restaurant until my doctor friends tell me that they are doing so!

The weather has now become uncomfortably hot so that outdoor activities have to be limited to early morning or late evening, unless I’m invited to swim in my daughter’s pool—which is a welcome break a couple of times a week. We’ve even dared to eat dinner at her house, sitting outside at a separate table at suitable distance. It felt wonderful.

I know I have little to whine about. I am in a really nice house in beautiful surroundings. We are in a little private community surrounded by mountains. There are palm trees and flowering shrubs everywhere. But I find that life is a constant battle against boredom. I’ve finished and sent off my latest book. I’ve sent out my newsletter. I’ve done endless interviews, podcasts, Zoom bookclub meetings. But the days seem awfully long. We have to take our morning walk before eight or it is unbearably hot. And it’s also too hot to walk before about eight thirty at night. By day I clean the kitchen at least three times.  I answer emails, plot future books, read, play my new keyboard, do some drawing and challenge the computer to Scrabble.

This latter has become a source of pride. I’ve dubbed my computer opponent Ivan since he’s terrible and I’m sure he’s Russian AND he cheats (and yes, I’m sure he’s male too). He seems to give himself the X, Q and Z all too often and if he gives me the Q it’s at the end of the game with no U to go with it!  And he comes up with words that I’m sure are not part of any English dictionary. Yesterday he had grrrl. Now that is not a word! And things like enigbo or swazoodle. (I’m making those up but some are equally ridiculous) But then he denies me perfectly good words that I’m sure must be in any dictionary. He wouldn’t let me have Zen or mitt or even fart the other day. Or even Jew. And yet he had opa and longer, unpronounceable words. I should have written some down except they annoyed me so much. But he doesn’t care if I shout at him. Or accuse him of cheating. He has become my nemesis (and I bet he wouldn’t allow me that word either!). 

However, recently I have begun to beat him. At least once a day. I can’t tell you what satisfaction that gives me. He retaliates, of course. He gives me IIIIEET for my opening letters and himself VOXESTY. I tell him I know he cheats. But it’s all the sweeter when I beat him!

Do you think I’ve finally become unhinged? Have I turned into the equivalent of those prisoners who befriend cockroaches? Or the birdman of Alcatraz? Or inmates of an asylum who chat with Napoleon?

On a more serious note, I find myself thinking about those who have endured real separation and loneliness. Nelson Mandela, for example. Twenty seven years in an island prison and yet he emerged without bitterness, not desiring revenge. That is true greatness.

And what about those women who were part of the Westward movement? Who marched behind covered wagons until they built lonely sod houses. For months on end their world was husband, children and endless prairie. No shops. No TV, probably not even any books except the Bible. And the awful knowledge that if their husband or children injured themselves there was no doctor within reach. That took real strength of character, didn’t it?  And even my mother, saying goodbye to a new husband when she was pregnant with me as he was sent off to North Africa and wouldn’t return for three years. Those women in WWII had to be tough too. They had rationing and the threat of bombing every night and yet they got through it.

So I won’t complain about boredom or not seeing friends. We have the luxury of TV and the internet and the phone. I can Zoom with family and friends. I can binge my way through Britbox. I have one job at the moment and it is to survive. I can get through it. So can we all.

Forwards or Backwards?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The other day a writer friend who was struggling with a plot asked me if I played chess or was good at strategy games, and if so, did it help with plotting?

My answer was a horrified "No!" NO to both questions! My dad tried to teach me to play chess but instead of learning strategy I made up stories about knights and rooks and bishops. My dad could always beat me at gin rummy because I'd forget what cards he was holding. Same with the bidding domino game 42, which my family played passionately. I loved listening to the click of the dominoes and making patterns with the dots, but...  Hmm, it's becoming obvious I'm not a gifted forward thinker.

So how do I plot a complicated mystery? I explained to my friend that I figure out where I think the various parts of the story should end, and then I work backwards, figuring out what things have to happen to get from the end back to the beginning of the story. Is that weird? I do know other writers who only work forwards, but I've always thought it must be really difficult to stitch the pieces together.

Fellow REDS, how do you do it? Do you plot backwards or forwards? And are you good at strategy games?

(I am, by the way, reasonable good at crosswords and Scrabble, so am not completely game challenged!)

HANK PHILLIPPI  RYAN: So fascinating!  I am:  Forward, forward, forward. Absolutely.  Otherwise there's no "this, because of this" to it. And things happen for a reason--because of what happened before. I am a complete cause and effect writer.  I am so impressed, Debs, that you do it the other way.

Scrabble? Love it--and was unbeatable. Until I met Jonathan. He KILLED me, because he plans ahead. Which I can never do. (So I refuse to play with him anymore. He's just too intimidatingly good.) Chess? I still tried to do it step by step, which  spells doom.  And cards? Yeesh, you are supposed to remember? Not me. No way.

HALLIE EPHRON: We'll have to match Jonathan up against Jerry one day on opposite sides of the Scrabble board. I refuse to play with him because I'm a lousy loser. I am pretty good at bridge (better than my husband), and you do have to see a way through from start to finish and come up with "what if's" along the way. So it's not unlike plotting a novel except that SOMEONE DEALS YOU THE CARDS. Oh, how I wish someone would deal me some cards for a novel and then I'd just have to see my way through from start to finish. The ending is always the same in bridge. Someone wins. Someone loses. And you always run out of cards.

 LUCY BURDETTE: Funny Hallie! I'm a decent bridge player too, except for remembering the cards and planning the play out. Okay, I should amend--I'm good at bidding:). I also love Boggle.

With writing, my editor has sort of adjusted to the fact that I don't seem to know what will happen in a book until it happens. At some point in the writing though, I do skip ahead and write a chapter or two close to the end. That gives me something to shoot for the rest of the book. So it's forward, forward, forward, skip ahead, back, back, forward. No wonder I'm feeling dizzy...

DEBS: Hallie, you have just given us the REDS official motto! So it's not unlike plotting a novel except that SOMEONE DEALS YOU THE CARDS. We all want someone to deal us the cards... But in the meantime, we'll have to muddle along by whatever method works best for us. 

But does the backwards or forwards mindset apply to reading as well as plotting? READERS, do you try to stay a step ahead of the writer and guess who done it?  Or do you just go along with the story, then think back over how it was put together when you get to the end? (Assuming, of course, that you were surprised... We'd like to think you were.)

You can probably guess that I fall into the second category, although if the mechanics of the plot hit me over the head in the first couple of chapters, I will probably give up on the book. What about you??

P.S. Lucy, what's Boggle?

P.S.S. Don't you love the red knight in the chess photo? How appropriate. 

P.S.S.S. And one last note, thinking of that master of the crossword, Colin Dexter. Now there's someone who knows how to put a plot together!

Jungle Red Apps

ROBERTA: Even if you don't own an iphone or other smartphone, you've certainly heard of "apps" or software applications for these phones. If you're like me, you've abandoned some of the apps you bought or downloaded already. I chose one called "stress relief" that features various seashells with accompanying soothing noises. I used that once.

I noticed a new one called bedbugs and things--how to recognize the bugs and their bites. I'm passing on that. But I did read about one in my American Psychological Association magazine called "The Grouchies" that helps kids deal with bad moods. Seems like adults could use one of those too!

But now I'm thinking we should be clever and talented enough to come up a few apps that would really take off. What about a biofeedback app in which the phone would measure heart rate and blood pressure and then help you bring it down on the spot? How about you Jungle Reds--any great ideas? (For Jan, maybe an app that screeches if you reach for the email before you've done your words?)

JAN: My husband makes fun of me for all the apps on my phone. But I use a lot of them. MY REVIEW of the best apps: the guitar tuner app;, the MLB (baseball) app.; the Dictionary app (it even pronounces the word for you) the language translation app, and my favorite, the Pandora radio app, which lets you devise your own station with only the music you like.

I've downloaded stupid ones too, that I haven't quite figured out how to delete. And one I haven't tried yet. You are supposed to be able to point it at the song on the radio and it will identify it.

HANK: Yeah, that's Shazam. Cool.

JAN: In that vein, we could devise an app that lets you point at row of mysteries on the shelf and tell you if you would like it given your mystery reading history. Or an app that would fake an emergency phone call whenever you were sitting through a long speech. And maybe an app that automatically deletes apps that turned out to be foolish and that you now never open on your phone.

HANK: Oh, I want an Iphone! I have a phone that only makes and receives calls, can you believe it? (Pandora is on my computer, though, and I love it.) I LOVE the astronomy app, where you can hold it up to the night sky, and via gps identify constellations. Amazing.

How 'bout a tstl app? Where you can enter something or character does, and it will tell you if it's too stupid?

And oh, a naming app! For sure! Where you could enter a characters , say: "hip smart army nurse, about 35, blonde, born in New Jersey to a Jewish mom and an Irish dad." And it would shoot back a perfect name for her: Sarah Mulligan. Ah, actually, how do you design apps? That one might actually work.

HALLIE: I'm so jealous of all your smartphones. I just upgraded from a cell phone that couldn't even text.

Great ideas, Hank. Though I want a wwcd app - you enter something a character does, and it tells you what the character does next. Oh, please please please, can I have that one?

How about a language translation app - you say something into the phone and it says it back in English so you can verify it understood and then says it in the language you pick. Does this already exist?

Or for paranoid tourists, an app that figures out where you are from GPS data and matches it with a database of crime statistics, warning you when you've wandered into a high crime area -- code yellow, orange, red.

But I'll know smartphones have really arrive when I can say to one, "Beam me up, Scottie!"

RHYS: My phone only calls and texts, but I do have an iPod touch which is pretty much like the iPhone without the phone part. But I really only use it for music. My only apps so far--Scrabble and a tennis game. Hallie, you wouldn't want the wwcd app as it would always choose the predicatable action and thus make a boring story. I wouldn't mind a wwjad app--as in 'what would Jane Austen do?" But I'd really like an app that made the phone look like a mirror only I look twenty years younger. And one that translates what my husband says from manspeak into womanspeak so we can actually communicate properly.

ROBERTA: I'm going right now to download the astronomy app, and figure out Pandora. Rhys, the problem with your mirror app is that all the other mirrors in the world would show us just as we are!

How about you, Jungle Red Readers? Any great ideas for a new app? Or old favorites?

On being a Librarian, not just about books

JAN: April Cushing, a reference librarian for 22 years, is my favorite librarian. This has a lot to do with the fact that she's also the unofficial head of my book group and not only offers us terrific recommendations (The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips, I'm reading it now, it's terrific), but also procures the books for us. She also used to write the funniest Christmas letter, ever, spoofing the form to a degree that my daughter and I would rip through the Christmas mail every year waiting for it. But now she's turned her wit to column writing called "Nothing Personal" for the DAILY TRANSCRIPT. And here, she agreed to make fun of her library patrons for me.

APRIL:When Jan asked me to write a short blog for her writer’s group, the only blog I could think of was Julie Powell’s. I actually met her before she became a big cheese at an event arranged by Porter Square Books. We had a three-course French dinner at Chez Henri in Cambridge, met the author and got an autographed copy of Julie & Julia. But back to the blog. Hers just happened to turn into a book and a movie and made her a millionaire so naturally my first reaction was, do I have to? But when Jan threatened to interview me instead, suddenly the blog thing didn’t seem so bad. She said to just write something light and funny about the library.” Does the word oxymoron come to mind?

Library patrons, on the other hand, are another story. I could write at length about them but I don’t want to cross the line. OK, I really don’t care about crossing the line; I just don’t want to lose my job. It goes back to that fear of being sent to the principal’s office. I know the correct spelling because I was taught “the principal is my pal” although we all know he’s anything but, and when you’re summoned to see the principal you can be sure he’s not thinking pal-sy thoughts of you either. But I like working with the public, mostly, and it’s fun to talk books with other readers. I recommend stuff, they tell me what they liked, and I get good suggestions for my book group.

The part of the job I like least is teaching the Dreaded Computer Classes. We all hate this because the patrons we attempt to teach are generally not your model students. Take John, the guy I had last week for the hour-long Basic Computer class. Mid-seventies, affable in a too-loud sort of way, and completely untainted by prior computer experience. The supposedly self-guided Palm Beach, FL “mousing around” tutorial (you can Google it) takes the tyro through the fundamentals like holding the mouse, clicking, scrolling, dragging, double clicking (now we’re getting into advanced territory) and right clicking. Intentional right clicking, I mean. Tedious, but not what you’d call taxing.

Boy, was I wrong. I could not get John to successfully click on a link, any link, to save my life. I adjusted his hand, demonstrated how to hold the mouse gently but firmly, described the motion in excruciating detail and tried every trick in my admittedly modest arsenal of teaching weapons. I could not get the guy to click. “I don’t know what else to say,” I told him, practically in tears. “I don’t know why it’s not working.”

What I somehow managed not to say was, “how can you not know how to click, for Christ’s sake? This isn’t rocket surgery,” as my friend would say.

The one remotely amusing moment was picturing my daughters as flies on the wall watching my near meltdown. I could hear them say, “Are you serious, Mom? You got a master’s degree for this?” The other thing that kept me from totally losing it was the arrival of 25-year-old Jenna, fresh from URI library school and a whiz at computer training. Sensing my desperation, or maybe it was the way I grabbed her arm, Jenna, with infinite patience, taught John to click. Kind of. When I asked how she did it she said, “I could tell right away he wasn’t an auditory learner but a visual one, so I just showed him how I did it.” Right.

After almost two hours the tutorial was mercifully over. I was back at the reference desk grateful that John was finally gone and no one had gotten hurt when I heard a familiar voice bellow, “I want to sign up for the Internet class next.”

Then he proceeded to walk out the emergency exit door and set off the alarm.

JAN: I feel very lucky, not only do I get to hear some of April's war stories first hand, I get to drink wine with her at book group!!

If you want to read more of April's unique take on the reading world, check out some of her columns. Scrabble lovers, especially, should follow the below link.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/norwood/fun/entertainment/books/x749207446/From-the-Library-Hooked-on-Scrabble-at-the-library

Are there any other librarians out there with some good war stories?? Anyone else want to tell us about their least favorite jobs or cute Luddite patrons??

On games we played...

HALLIE: When I was trying to finish writing NEVER TELL A LIE, I got totally stuck. I'd gotten my character locked in a windowless attic room and I could not for the life of me figure out a **believable** way of getting her out.

The answer came to me as I was driving and,for no particular reason, thinking about games I played as a kid. Candy Land--remember those amazing graphics of the gingerbread man and gumdrops? Clue, of course, with its real lead pipe in the days before toys were recalled for being toxic. Careers, a truly bizarre game where you pick a career based on how much money, fame, or happiness you want. (Turns out it was invented by a sociologist and one of its careers was "Uranium Prospecting".) And what about Go to the Head of the Class?

It was Chutes and Ladders that helped me get my character out of the attic, but I'm not telling whether it was a chute or a ladder that did it.

What were your favorite games?

RO: I remember the names of those games but don't remember playing them. Also Operation, Parcheesi, and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. I played a couple of card games, Royalty and Uno, but two board games stand out from my childhood.

The first is RISK. It was about global domination, kind of like Monopoly for those who thought Atlantic City (Monopoly) too limiting. I played with an older male cousin so that's probably why I thought it was cool. For some reason I always wanted to own/invade Kamchatka - or something like that. It was green..I think you could see it from Alaska.

The other game, of course, was and still is Scrabble. I am one of those annoying people who can be 200 points ahead and still agonize over the next word, and more importantly, ruin something for the next player. My husband only agrees to play a few times a year because it's too demoralizing.

I've always wanted to really know how to play mah jongg. In high school,friends and I played with somebody's mother's set. I even had my own cards (there's an annual card with the official mah jongg hands, as I recall.) But I haven't played in years. I bought a gorgeous set on Ebay a few years back and haven't used it once. So, I also bought these nifty bracelets made of vintage mah jongg tiles - I had a feeling that was going to be as close to the game as I was going to get. I just rented the movie Lust...Caution and there was a lot of mah jongg in it. (Also some pretty steamy sex, but that's another blog.)

JAN: At my house, with three older brothers, we always LOST the pieces to the board games. The only games that stayed intact were Trouble, the game where you get to send your opponent (and older brother) back to square one. That was probably my favorite. And Monopoly, which my father kept track of. Mostly, we played card games, especially during rained out vacations down the shore, and next door at my aunt's house. Crazy Eight, Rummy 500, gin Rummy. and some poker. It taught me to be a cagey competitor (hah!)

To this day, when I play cards, I like to have a glass of Coke over ice in a squat "rocks" glass. It reminds me of being a kid who felt grown up, getting to play cards with the big kids.

ROBERTA: RISK! that's what I was going to mention, too. My older sister always won, though she doesn't remember it that way. We also loved Clue, Parcheesi, Mousetrap, Monopoly, Candyland, Chutes...When on vacation at the Outer Banks in NC with my extended family, big groups of both adults and kids used to play Pounce. this involves everyone having her own deck of cards and playing solitaire with them, but all playing to the center of the table. So you were constantly scanning the cards in the center and try to bang yours down before someone else got to what you needed. It was so much fun. I'm certain the grown-ups weren't sipping on Coke in their rocks glasses:).

Recently, we have developed a family tradition of playing Boggle. In my stepfamily, as the kids got stronger and bigger, it was the only game I could win. Even that's beginning to give way:(. I had a lot of fun putting a Boggle game in ASKING FOR MURDER. Rebecca Butterman was a tad annoying to her guests, insisting on using every rule properly, and then keeping score when it was clear she was ahead. Something like your description of playing Scrabble, Ro. Remind to decline if you ask--or make sure we give you a big handicap to begin:)

HANK: Yes, RISK! That's where I learned about Irkutsk (and right, Ro, I think you can also see it from Alaska) and that Italy always loses. We also played Yahtzee. And I adored Go to the Head of the Class. I haven't thought about it for years--but wasn't it pretty much Trivial Pursuit (also fun) with desks? Mille Bornes? We were big on Charades, too, and I'll admit I still love to play it. Another good after-dinner game is Celebrity--do you guys know it?

We also used to make up games as kids, the main goal of which was so that my little sister Nancy would lose. My sister Nina and I would say--hey, Nanc, want to play "Hawaii?" And she, dupe, who wanted to be with the big kids, would say yes.

Then we'd get out the card and proceed to pretend to be playing a game. And then just make up random rules. "Oh, we forgot to say 8's are wild, but only if they're red. You lose again."

We also tormented her in Scrabble. We'd put down any old word-looking combination of letters, and then tell her it was Russian, and Russian words were fair. (She's a very happy and successful person now, don't worry.)
I do adore Scrabble. Or I should say, I used to. When I used to win. But my husband is killer at Scrabble, and it's no fun when I'm making perfectly good words, and then he puts some triple-score word with z and x in it, a doozy that also uses two lines, and works across and down. I yell "Earthquake, earthquake!" and so much for the board.

Roberta, you could probably make something of this...

HALLIE: What is it you ladies had for world domination? I had an Annie Oakley rifle... And I know CELEBRITY. Still love charades. And am a pissy loser at Scrabble, too.

Roberta, loved the way you used BOGGLE in "Asking for Murder" which I just read on the plane back from the lovely Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver.

Please, let us know--what are the games you loved to play?