Party Animal

Here we have a zonkey – one of the many fascinating hybrid animals that walk the earth, but doubtless one of the most adorable. Our stripey friend’s in a jubilant mood, clearly, though who knows why that could be…!

(party horn)

I suspect  it’s not – in fact I know it’s not – to celebrate Scrabble, much as the word game is surely synonymous with the most uproarious shindigs, but today is also Scrabble Day. This should explain to you why I’ve stuck massive tiles with the incorrect font down the side. Hmm! I’m sure I had something more clever in mind initially, but by the time I came to it, I had obviously drawn a blank.

With my tendency toward word games as is, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to learn that I rather enjoy Scrabble, and always have. I think I liked the idea of dealing with tiles and letters after watching Countdown. I was very little, and didn’t really know what I was doing – this is my primary excuse for placing WANK on the board at the age of about three or four, and unsurprisingly rendering my father speechless. It’s funny how I just remembered that, in writing this post. I think I was just making the best of the tools that I had. Honesty – it was a stroke of luck, and thankfully I pulled it off.

But indeed, I remain utterly, utterly hopeless at the game. I was going to say that ZONKEY would probably be quite an impressive play, but who knows? I suppose it’d be a good way to dispatch some unwelcome tiles, but in terms of score there’s all that triple word and double letter carry-on to consider. It’s all about geography – and that’s where it starts to become too much for my feeble brain. That, and the fact that there was no way of fixing the tiles into the sectors, of course. Even at three, this bugged me, not least because certain feline spectators took to making pitch invasions and changing the entire configuration.

Minor niggles aside, it’s still a lot of fun and an invigorating challenge. Is there a way to play online? I expect so. If anybody reading this fancies a game,  now or sometime in the future: you’re on! You are so going down (as the next person to trounce me, convincingly, at Scrabble).

(party horn)

• animals
• Art
• doodlewashaday
• drawing
• hybrid
• portrait
• scrabble
• zonkey