When I play Quordy (and Boggle, but it’s been a while), I enjoy taking my time to spot long words for big points. I also value the strategy of finding many short words quickly. The shortest playable word has three letters, so I thought it’d be handy to compile a list of three-letter words that are also words when spelled backwards. Put more simply(?), I wanted a list combining palindromes with other “reversible words.”

I found a list that appeared satisfactory. But compared to the small handwritten one I’d been keeping, it missed some obvious words (HAY, NAW, MAY) and some not-as-obvious ones (AHS, TEW). So I developed my own master list, based on my research and that of others. It has156 words, which I’ve alphabetized and listed below.

The reference for these words, by the way, is the second edition of the Official Word List, used for North American tournament Scrabble. (Quordy’s dictionary is “based on” this list, according to the game’s instructions.) You can download the list as a nearly 2MB text file from the Internet Scrabble Club’s “Lists of Words” page.

ABA
AGA
AHA
AHS
AIR
ALA
AMA
ANA
ARB
ARE
ATE
AVA
AVO
AWA
BAD
BAG
BAL
BAN
BAS
BED
BEN
BIB
BIG
BIN
BIS
BOB
BOG
BOS
BOY
BUB
BUD
BUN
BUR
BUS
BUT
CAP
CIS
COD
COR
DAD
DAG
DAL
DAM
DAP
DEL
DEW
DID
DIG
DIM
DOG
DON
DOR
DOS
DOT
DUD
DUO
EAT
EEL
EKE
EME
ERE
EVE
EWE
EYE
FER
FIR
GAG
GAL
GAM
GAN
GAS
GAT
GEL
GET
GIG
GIP
GOT
GUM
GUT
GUV
HAH
HAY
HEH
HEP
HEY
HOP
HUH
KAY
LAP
LAS
LET
LIN
LIT
MAN
MAT
MAY
MEM
MHO
MIM
MIR
MIS
MOM
MON
MOP
MOR
MOT
MUM
MUS
NAP
NAW
NET
NEW
NIT
NOS
NOT
NOW
NUN
NUS
OHO
OOT
OXO
PAP
PAY
PEP
PER
PIP
PIS
PIT
POP
POT
PUP
PUS
PUT
RAT
RAY
ROT
SAT
SAW
SIS
SIT
SIX
SOS
SOW
TAT
TAV
TET
TEW
TIT
TOT
TOW
TUT
ULU
VAV
WAW
WOW
YAY

I stopped by Andie’s after work for a game of 10 rounds of Big Boggle. It’s been awhile and it was a squeaker: she beat me by eight points, 172 to 164. I’d like to say the TV in the background blasting parts of Seinfeld and a basketball game prevented me from realizing my full potential, which is code for kicking Andie’s ass, but I think I’m merely rusty. There’s room for improvement when my highest-scoring words (and my only unique seven-letter finds) are station, setters and mottoes. All else was a sludge of one- and two-pointers.

Here we go again. Early this year, you’ll recall I found many more animal names than required in my Page-a-Day Boggle Brain Buster puzzle. I was able to find many more animal names than required in today’s puzzle, too. The instructions were to locate five animal names but I found more than twice as many. I suspect that in both cases this is simply because there are so many possible animal names in the English language; it’s not as restrictive as most of the Brain Buster puzzle subjects, which are usually along the lines of, “Find six words that have to do with tennis.”

Anyway, here’s the animal puzzle, if you wish to have at it yourself; let me know if I missed any.

For my solution, highlight this hidden list:
1. CHOW*
2. COW
3. ELK*
4. HARE*
5. HAWK*
6. MULE
7. OWL*
8. PIG
9. WALRUS
10. WHALE
11. WORM/S*
*=Not given in the official Boggle Brain Buster solution.

I don’t mean to suggest I’m some kind of genius, but my Page-a-Day Boggle Brain Buster today required me to find the names of seven animals in the following grid, and I found 12. Any more I’m missing? I say singular, common nouns only, so no BALTO, you wisenheimers.

For my solution, highlight this hidden list:
1. ANT*
2. BAT
3. CAT
4. CRAB*
5. GNAT*
6. MINK
7. MITE*
8. MOLE
9. MOTH*
10. PIG
11. RAT
12. SLOTH
*=Not given in the official Boggle Brain Buster solution.

I was playing Big Boggle with someone recently—let’s call her “Mary” (Warning: not her real name)—and we entered into a disagreement over the validity of “cide,” which she had played for a point. I didn’t think that was a word, so I challenged it and looked it up in the American Heritage dictionary. There, it is listed as a suffix, used in words such as suicide, genocide and patricide. I argued it was not a legal Big Boggle word and shouldn’t count; she argued otherwise.

My Argument

1. The Big Boggle rules state that “each player searches the assortment of letters for words of four letters or more.” (emphasis mine)
2. A suffix, like a prefix, is not a word; it is an affix, which is “a word element” (emphasis mine) “that can only occur attached to a base, stem, or root.”
3. Therefore, suffixes aren’t playable.
4. Also, I know everything about Big Boggle, or at least act like I do.

Her Argument

1. The Big Boggle rules specify nothing about suffixes, only “words that can be found in an English language dictionary.”
2. A dictionary is “a reference book that contains words listed in alphabetical order.”
3. Suffixes are found in dictionaries.
4. Therefore, suffixes are legal to play in Big Boggle.
5. Furthermore, the Big Boggle rules list “Types of Words Not Allowed”:
   1. proper nouns
   2. abbreviations
   3. contractions
   4. hyphenated words
   5. foreign words that are not in an English dictionary
6. Suffixes are not on this list, so they count.
7. Finally, what do I know about Big Boggle anyway, seeing how I grossly misstated several rules to Mary directly before challenging her to her first-ever game:
   1. I said words of eight letters or more are worth 10 points; they are worth 11.
   2. I said the “Qu” cube counts as one letter; it counts as two.
   3. I said playing proper nouns was legal; it is not.

With whom do you side, dear reader, and why?

Andie and I, both feeling a bit under the weather, played a game of Big Boggle tonight. I got my butt whupped, 193 to 144 in 10 games.

The temperature hit the high 30s today which made the snow momentarily great for kids. Walking through Riverside Park, watching the kids sledding and building snowmen, I thought of that great Bill Cosby routine, “Revenge,” where Coz gets nailed with a slushball thrown by Junior Barnes, then exacts revenge by crafting his own perfect slushball, made with “little bits of gravel.”

At the W. 87th Street dog run in the park, there was a Bassett hound, draped with a tiny red plaid afghan and lumpily settled in a Red Rider wagon. The other dogs were scampering around, as dogs do in dog runs, and why the Bassett hound was in a wagon, I’m unsure. As bad luck would have it, I was cameraless, so you’ll just have to use your imagination when picturing it.

Walking back, I passed several people finally attempting to move their cars out of the snowed-in spaces they’d been stuck in since the big ol’ snowfall last weekend. Fortunately for carowners, the City occasionally has a heart, and had suspended alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules all week. Of course, you could successfully argue it’s the City’s fault the cars couldn’t move to begin with, since City snowplows were responsible for thoughtfully covering them with five-foot-tall hills of snow.

Other than lots of walking around, it was another lazy day lounging about the homestead. Andie and I busted out the Big Boggle for the first time in awhile, and she beat me by 34 points in 10 games, 225 to 191. My best effort was playing the word “hoagies,” but it just wasn’t enough.

I had a hell of a time waking up this morning and I’ve been bone tired all day. Despite the brevity of my flight, I’m theorizing it’s jetlag, which William Gibson put poetically in Pattern Recognition:

....her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here.... Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

Jetlag. Or maybe just waiting around airports. Posture-deforming chairs, everyone slumping and shuffling about like they just got back from the labor camps, soul-softening muzak punctuated with unintelligible bursts from the loudspeaker about how much longer your flight’s delayed.

Or maybe it’s just watching movies about waiting around airports. I watched part of Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal on DVD last night. It was all right. Tom Hanks was convincing enough as the lovable Eastern European imp that’s trapped in a fairytale wing of JFK populated with fun-loving and ethnically diverse janitors, baggage handlers and other public servants. And the heartless Homeland Security bureaucrat who keeps hatching schemes to get Hanks out of his hair. And Catherine Zeta-Jones as the woman he loved. Merham Karimi Nasseri, the guy who inspired The Terminal, was initially expelled from Iran for protesting against the shah, landed at de Gaulle in 1988 and has been marooned there ever since. As a documentary, I think that would be a more interesting story.

On the positive side, it seems my Big Boggle skills are still somewhat sharp. After a long reprieve, Andie and I played 10 rounds tonight and I won 228 to 209. Nothing too crazy, no ten-pointers and only a handful of seven-pointers. There were a lot of “Jason words”: Saxons, hector, satire, sweaty, Cornish. But I cannot claim sweet victory as Andie was suffering a stomachache—hopefully not from the devilishly delicious slice of holiday nut loaf she ate earlier.

Round 20? It seems like more than that. But I’ve only been counting the Big Boggle rounds, and not those untold numbers of Boggle “Classic“ games early on. Andie not only won this one, she predicted her total; at the end of each game, we try to guess, but neither of us to this point had correctly done so. In 10 games, she got 194, to my 185.

We played a quick 10 games this afternoon (round 19) and I won +30, 196 to 166. But Andie was feeling under the weather which makes my victory less sweet.

We played our first game of Boggle (round 18) in more than a week and it was a good one, rife with big words. My 10-pointers were “sweetens,” “carpenter,” “torrents,” “pardoner” and—although not the preferred spelling, it’s still acceptable by American Heritage—“enquired.” I won by 40 in 10 games, 247 to 207.

After a multi-day cooling-off period from Boggle, we kicked it back into gear yesterday, a lazy Sunday, with two games, rounds 16 and 17.

The first one, Andie won by 35, 294 to 259, in 15 games. It was a strange coincidence when, for each of the first four games she shook, the “Qu” showed up.

We took a break by watching The Triplets Of Belleville which was surreal and refreshing. Before renting the movie, I hadn’t realized it didn’t have any dialogue, but that didn’t detract from the story at all. The characters move in exaggerated yet realistic ways, and the protagonists, Madame Souza and her obese dog, Bruno, are hilarious. The style is very “sketchy,” like 2D cartoon characters in 3D, and, in fact, several scenes were computer generated (many of the bicycling scenes, for example) but purposely made not to look that way. Highly recommended.

After I returned the DVD, we played another game of Boggle, which I somehow managed to win, 370 to 339 in 15 games. I’ve decided I tend to play the best when I can capitalize on a root word with multiple endings. For example, for my highest scoring game, I extended “please” to “pleased” and “pleaser,” and, by extension, played “lease,” “leased,” and “leaser.” I’ll have to investigate this theory further next time I win.

Andie declared a celebratory round of Boggle (Round 15) after I secured my first job interview. I was concerned because I figured when I lost it’d bring me down. It did, but not that much. I lost by 26 points in ten games, 215 to 189.

Andie busted out some of her reserve-stock wine, along with some tasty bread, with vinagrette and olive oil for dipping, to complement tonight’s Boggle game, #14. Which, of course, I lost, 208 to 181 in ten.

On the flipside, we found a new favorite word definition:

firn. Granular, partially consolidated snow that has passed through one summer melt season but is not yet glacial ice. Also called old snow.

No definition has made Andie laugh as hard as the previous record-holder, “dey,” which is from way back in our “classic” Boggle days. For the record:

dey. Used formely as the title of the governor of Algiers before the French conquest in 1830.

We decided the ridiculous specificity of “dey” is what made it so funny. “Firn” was funny, I think, mainly because I read the phrase “but is not yet glacial ice” in a sarcastic “but of course it’s not” voice, as if Andie obviously knew that when she played it. (That’s another aspect of the humor: both words were played in the hope that they actually were words; we were just grasping at straws when we played them because Boggle doesn’t seem to penalize word look-ups, unlike Scrabble.)

Boggle Game 13 was played today and Andie won in 15, 290 to 237.

Is this how Agassi felt?

So technically I won Boggle Game 12 today, 185 to 176 in 10 games. However: the margin was slim, only nine points.

Furthermore: Andie talked me into playing a bonus round which she said wouldn’t count towards our totals up to that point. Of course, we ended up adding those bonus game points up, just to see what might have been. And, of course, if we would have counted game 11, Andie would have won, 205 to 197.

Game 09. Another maddening loss to Andie at Boggle, this time in 15 games, 290 to 268.

Game 10. And another, by a whopping 83 points in 10 games: 283 to 200.

Game 11. And another in 10 games, by 35: 233 to 198.

Had a fun time last night hanging out with Katie, Megan and Kelly. After finding out the concert we wanted to attend at the Bowery had sold out, we went bar hopping. A nice variety of five places, the last of which was some Hawaiian tiki-lounge type place where we all enjoyed piña coladas.

Got back to the apt at 3:30 a.m., so needless to say I wasn’t in top Boggle form when Andie convinced me to play around noon. I didn’t use that as an excuse but she whupped my ass good, +77, 274 to 197, in 10 games.

Game 07. This was a quick 10-game set, started at 2 p.m. before Andie left for work. I started out strong, but she kicked my ass as the games progressed. I lost by one point, 149 to 150. Grrr.

I was in my room sketching some web site designs when I heard the clarion call of rattling Boggle cubes. When I emerged a few minutes later, I discovered Andie had done it specifically to get me out to play. And we did...Game 06.

It was a bunch of low-scoring boards, but we made the most of it. I won by 24, 202 to 178 in 10 games, played from about 10:45 to 11:55 p.m. Afterwards, Andie was doubting her better-in-the-evening theory, but I contend it requires more testing.

Game 05. Another evening game (begun around 9:40 after BBQ with Andie at Brother Jimmy’s) and another close call. In 15 games, I won by 12, 324 to 312.

Games 03 and 04. After Saturday’s heart-rending loss in Big Boggle, I made a comeback of sorts today. From about noon to 2 p.m. (we’ve been timing the games lately and have been surprised at what time-suckers they are), we played 16 games. I won by 112, with a total of 420 to Andie’s 308. My 11-point words-of-the-game were “reported” in game 2 and “sauntered” in game 8.

Despite the win, my gameplay remains erratic. Andie hypothesizes she plays better in the evening and I play better earlier in the day. Backing this up, I scraped by in round two (253 to 250 in 11 games) which was played from 5:50 p.m. to 7:10 p.m.

Game 02. After my Friday Boggle victory, it is poetic that I would lose the next big game. Today’s was 10 games of Big Boggle that Andie won by 33 points: 184 to 151. I played a bunch of test games afterwards in order to enrich my word power and exact revenge.

Game 01. In the absolute height of nerd-dom, the highlight of my day was playing the word “squeegee” in Boggle for 11 points, the most you can get for a single word.

I ended up winning, 257 to 199 versus Andie in 20 games.

The nerdiness was leavened somewhat by the fact that this was the first Boggle game we’ve played correctly. Andie doesn’t have the rules for her Boggle board, so we had been scoring one point each for each player’s unique words.

But according to the rules that came with the Boggle game I brought back recently from my parents’ house, words longer than four letters score additional points, based on their length.

Another aspect of our gameplay we had to correct upon reading the instructions, is that proper nouns can be played, as long as they’re in the dictionary (“Jason,” leader of the Argonauts, for example). We’d been using the Scrabble “no proper nouns” rule, but the Boggle instructions don’t specifically disallow the use of any dictionary words, although we’re still banning abbreviations in that they’re not “true” words, merely parts of them; the jury is still out on contractions.

Watching Adaptation. on DVD this afternoon, Andie pointed out the fleeting scene where the Kaufman brothers talk to each other on the phone as Boggle is played in the background:

Charlie:

[incredulous] Catherine Keener is in my house?

Donald:

[laid-back] Yeah, we’re playing Boggle.

Later in the day, we watched the Seinfeld rerun (“The Serenity Now”) where Elaine begrudgingly attends a bar mitzvah:

Jerry:

You know, if you don’t bring a guest, they save a catering. You should be able to buy a cheaper gift.

Elaine:

[Taking out Boggle] Oh, I don’t think that’s possible.

Then, later in the episode:

Adam:

Well, if I’m not a man, then this whole thing was a sham! First, they said I was gonna get great gifts, and then, somebody gives me Boggle. I renounce my religion!

Mr. Lippman:

Who wants cookies?

Adam:

As of this moment, I am no longer Jewish. I quit!

Two Boggle references in one day!

So is Boggle hip yet?