Shabbat Gaming

Why does a stitch in time save nine? Why not eight? Or ten? Or 215? Better yet, why not save the whales? Isn't saving the whales better than saving nine?

All aphorisms can be improved by changing their ending to "save the whales". A rolling stone saves the whales. Look before you save the whales. He who hesitates saves the whales. Sounds a lot better, right? And we'll save more whales.

Anagrams

I played Anagrams one and a half times with my Scrabble-champion friend. The first game started off rather slow for me; he's better at finding strange words I don't know about, especially of the three-letter variety. However, I'm somewhat more creative when it comes to anagramming on a busy board, and I slowly depleted his words as the game went on. I ended with more letters and words, though he had all the high-point letters.

He challenged me to a rematch, and this time we played a four-letter minimum word length. I started as strong as he did, and that, combined with a headache he had from too much Krupnik's Polish honey liqueur, led us to abandon the game midway. It's no fun to win when your opponent isn't into it.

Plus, it isn't whether you win or lose, it's how you save the whales.