Over And Out

After the long two days of Yom Tov/Shabbat, my head is spinning like I have just come out from a cycle in the washing machine. It's like Groundhog Day where you following a pattern of eating, davening, sleeping over and over and over again.

In between that we played Anagrams which is where you take the Scrabble letters and try to build words. You can steal other people’s words by adding one of the newly flipped letters to their existing word. The only rules are that you have to create a new word. So if someone had DOG and a S was turned over you couldn’t add that to make DOGS but you could make GODS.

I was more interested in stealing other people’s words and it can be a frustrating game when the free letters are used to spell AIR, TAT, CAN and YOU.

The other major issue of course is what defines a kosher word? Slang words clearly are not ok but some are because their use has become so widespread. For instance I wanted to add EE to PING to form PEEING but it was denied.

Another game which can be dominated by what is and isn’t allowed is pool. There was a pool room where we were so we also shot some stick. We asked our friend what the house rules were and played by them with no dramas only for his dad to come by and watch later in the piece and tell us what the real house rules were. Pool is the only thing which has as many minhagim as Judaism.

Who would have thought that trying to shoot eight balls in six holes could be so complicated?