The many faces of Scrabble

After a delightful Thanksgiving in which we all felt too full too, y'know, do that whole moving thing, my family and I decided to play an intense game of Scrabble. You'd think this was all fine and pleasant until you discovered that said Scrabble game was played with an English professor. Throughout this game, I discovered that one's true personality can come through in that "life or death" moment.

I present to you the many faces of Scrabble:

1) The sneak attacker.
This player claims she doesn't know what she's doing, then proceeds to screw everyone else in the game over. They preface each turn by saying "oh, I was taking too long to think of a good word", lays down two magic letters, then gets five hundred million points. They claim that someone else could think of a far better word, only to present zebraxylophone to all the other players, who are now drowning their sorrows in coffee and excess amounts of pumpkin pie. The game ends with the sneak attacker saying, "I would've gotten five hundred billion points if I weren't so tired."

2) The "double or nothing."
This player is so intent on getting thirty thousand points per turn, that if he can't create two words with a couple letters, he refuses to play anything at all. However, "double or nothing," is, as we guessed, the English professor, so the trouble of finding two words usually takes as much effort as the rest of us would to brush our teeth. And just as much gleeful humming takes place (yes, I've been known to hum while brushing my teeth. Don't judge). No matter that these words are painfully simple--they still rack up all the points in the world! No one in the universe, the galaxy, will never win another game of Scrabble ever again! 

3) The "aw, screw it."
This player, who sees Scrabble as woefully similar to a puzzle, or a strategist mastermind's heaven, will spend ages staring at her set of words, and when she discovers that "Zaaaaarmof" is not, in fact a word (though we all know it very accurately describes the emotion of having too much work to do), she freezes in that moment of panic and puts down "ear" or something equally ridiculous that will give her three points. Minus three for unoriginality, so she's back to where she started.

4) The "I know something you don't know."
This person has that sneaky little grin whenever you lay down a word, and is all, "oh hey, instead of having negative ten thousand points, you could make the golden word."
I always thought the golden word was "dountoothersasotherwoulddountoyou," and I certainly don't have that on my letter selection. But when I raise my eyebrows and say, "oh really?" like I'm in some bad mystery movie, this Scrabble personality will say, "yes, but I'm not going to tell you what it is." Then they watch you flail with words such as "la," "is," and "as," and then proceed to take the spot you had your eye on the entire turn and gain enough points he could win Scrabble ten times over. Plus two.

5) The "I don't know what this means, but surely it's a word."
This person takes two consonants and sticks a random vowel in between, hoping that "pof," or "ges," is a word. When someone challenges this person and asks what it means, she says, "look it up," like she's known it all along. And if it's not in the dictionary, then surely it means something in another language. For all we know, "pof," in French, means a turtle who lost his shell in battle.

Namaste.