Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Using Ormolu to keep the family together

One of the reasons I joined facebook (pretty much the only reason other than being able to share pics/videos of Oliver) was to play Wordtwist/Scramble/Scrabulous (aka Word Twist, Boggle, and Scrabble).

Word games are pretty big in my family. I have a lot of great memories of spending rainy days at the Shore or at grandma/grandpa's house playing Scramble or Boggle with my grandma, Aunts, and Erin. Normally scrabble is the game of choice and can get rather competitive for all of us. So much that a few family members don't dare join a game when my grandma, two of my Aunt's, and I sit down to play.

These days Word Twist has been dominating a lot of my time, as well as Erin's and my sister Elizabeth's. The point of the game is to make as many words as possible from 6 letters. The bigger the word the greater the points. If you use all 6 words you get a bonus. It's simple enough. Of course there's the occasional time when you really have to question the validity/need for particular words in the Webster Dictionary.

Which brings me to Ormolu. Last week I was playing a game against Erin and my sister. In one particular round neither of them had gotten the bonus word. As you can guess I got it. Normally that would be fine and I'd move on to the next round or getting something else done in the house. However within minutes of finishing the round I heard a loud exclamation of !ormolu! from Erin who was playing in the other room and discovered that I got the word. Almost at that identical time I received a text message from Elizabeth that said nothing but ormolu!! Both of them were rather incredulous that I was able to guess (I mean pick from my vast repertoire of vocabulary words) that particular word and use that bonus to propel me to victory a few rounds later.

There really isn't too much of a point to this post outside of the fact that a simple application like word twist can not only improve vocabulary but keep your family close as well.

And in case you were wondering ormolu means...
1. Any of several copper and zinc or tin alloys resembling gold in appearance and used to ornament furniture, moldings, architectural details, and jewelry.
2. An imitation of gold.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! Ormolu, huh? You learn something everyday. I have heard the addictivness of Word Twist.

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  2. ohhh....

    I went through Word Twist rehab...I am almost clean now....you're making me want to relapse.

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