I like playing games. I’m hard to beat at Boggle but I don’t absolutely have to win a game to like it. It’s good enough if I can win them sometimes, which is why I quit playing gin rummy with Dave because he clearly cheated or else why didn’t I ever win even once? How was it the last card he played was always the exact card I needed? Why do I always lose to this guy? I mean, if this were basketball, sure.
So I don’t consider myself a poor sport just because there are some games I refuse to play. Like Nertz. It’s competitive group solitaire. Right there, it’s wrong. The whole point of solitaire is that you are by yourself. When I play solitaire, I might come to a point I think I’m all done, and I’m sad. And then a little later I think: Or, I could play that black seven on the red eight, and I could keep going. And then I’m all happy.
And nobody has to know how long it took me to see it.
I play Nertz like a sloth at a sushi train. Inviting me to play that stupid game is like asking a T. rex to spike a volleyball. In short—which I am—I don’t have what it takes. I prove it every day. I can stare at a gadget drawer for minutes looking for the spatula with the bright red handle. Can’t find it until I’ve given up looking everywhere else and go back to the drawer and it’s right there in the middle, on top.
Clearly this is some sort of brain deficit, or as I prefer to think of it, quirk. I looked it up. The term for it is Slow Processing Speed. Which sounds bad, but as King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, the race is not to the swift.
Which would be awesome if it were true.
In reality, I read a lot about Slow Processing Speed and no one seems to think there is an upside. But I believe I’m intelligent in certain very limited areas that are not useful to anybody. Metaphor, for instance.
So, how you play this solitaire game is you have like thirty thousand decks and a bunch of people with big smacky hands and everyone tries to get rid of their cards by playing them all at once and it’s this whole frenzy. Meanwhile I’m off to the side paralyzed, a veritable exhibit in the Gamers Wax Museum, completely unable to recognize an open spot and a card to fill it in time to beat the next person. At some point I just grab one of my cards—one—and hover over the table determined to find the next available slot for that one card and not get completely skunked. But I still can’t see it in time. It’s pitiful.
I’m the old lady staring motionless at a digital ticket kiosk while everyone on the platform is slapping each other with fish and getting on the train. Which is to say: nothing makes sense.
Nertz isn’t solitaire. It’s a circle jerk. And since I can quickly see that I will never ever win this game, not ever, or even get rid of a single card, I don’t want to play. That’s not being a bad sport. That’s removing myself from a dangerous situation with grace.
Some people like to do the deed and some people just like to watch.
This is the exact reason I am terrible at anagrams.
This is the exact reason I am terrible at anagrams.
Hm. I’m pretty good at anagrams but maybe I have a special zippy brain compartment with words in it. Well-insulated from the rest of my brain.
“UP! UP! UP! UP! UP!”
Nobody wanted to partner with my Dad in this game. We weren’t allowed to stand–it all had to be accomplished sitting. We all had long arms, however.
If a boyfriend could play this game with us, he was golden. It broke many.
We always played in partnerships–one person manning the tableau, the other holding the rest of the cards, flipping the top one over and playing it where it could be played. “UP!” was The Command to get that card either on the tableau or in the middle. The first one to rid themselves of that pile (not the entire deck, just that pile of remaining cards) belonged to the winning team (and announced their achievement with a loud “OUT!” Absolutely NO hovering allowed!! Seats in chairs the whole game.
But…but…that means shorties are even MORE inept! [sigh]
Oh! The boyfriend comment… triggered my PTSD. I became a boyfriend again in my early sixties and my partner’s folks introduced me to old school Mahjong, tiles and obscure rules , the lot. I appear to have survived, but I’m not sure I would’ve coped in my twenties, let alone these days. Revenge of sorts was serendipitous… Bananagrams!
Yes SIR Bananagrams! Mahjong is very similar to Nertz, in my experience.
I’ve always been good at the Cryptic Byword in the newspaper. It’s where each letter is replaced by another letter and forms a quote by a famous person. When I used to watch Jeopardy I was good at it, and for the same reasons. One letter words are always either “a” or “I.” If a three letter word keeps appearing, it’s either “the” or “and.” The most common letters are T, R, E, and N. If you get a lot of repeating letters, chances are it’s one of those. If three letters repeat at the end of words, chances are it’s “ing.” One you get these letters filled in, it’s easy to guess other words. Because it’s stimulating enough without being too difficult for me, I like it better than other single person games or puzzles. I can sometimes get the Boggle in my paper, but not if it deals with geographic terms. Or sports terms. Not great in either of those subjects.
Boggle is a family favorite, but I really enjoyed the digital version called In Your Face–I think that’s what it was, but it was only available on microsoft machines, so I haven’t played that in ages.
Sports and popular music are issues for me, but not entirely. I have some knowledge of historical sports and some genres of popular music. I used to wander over to neighbors’ houses when Jeopardy was on and have disbelieving looks leveled my way when I often had the answers before the contestants. I was dubbed the Walking Encyclopedia when I was a kid and still know random facts that average people don’t know.
I’m the same, except I make up random facts that average people don’t know.
We called it Pounce (for obvious reasons, I’m guessing), and my sister and I played it every year when we’d travel cross country to one another’s home for Thanksgiving. Our children called it The Quiet Game, because if they came running in to complain about something, we’d screech “QUIET” at them. It was always a very heated contest, and after a year a few years, the Littles changed the name to The Crying Game, and I’m sure that’s also for obvious reasons!
Our holiday family game was Pit, which everyone professed to hate but played at my insistence. Once. A year. Loudly.
“Pit’s Open” “Two! Two!! Two!!! Er… One! One!! One!!!”
Yep, another family favorite, and I used it as an analogy for trying to explain a possible distribution of my mom’s estate stocks when not everyone wanted their inheritance to include stocks.
Anyone interested in a corner on barley?
Crazy Eights- the last game I was good at……………
The kids’ games. Crazy Eights, Old Maid, and what’s that other one?
War?
go Fish?
Go fish! Thanks!
My family used to play Uno, spades and some board games when we were on vacation. I’m pretty sure I would have cleaned up at Scrabble, but that wasn’t a game we had or played if our hosts had it. I was very good at Trivial Pursuit. We played it as pairs, but I don’t know if those were the rules. We played it one time with everyone against me and I still won. That was the end of playing that game. Later I found out that new card decks were available.
Oh, I killed at Trivial Pursuit, too! I also was good at playing those trivia games in bars. However, I’m sadly out of touch with what’s going on in these days (outside of politics.) When I watch SNL on streaming (because I don’t ever stay up that late anymore), i seldom know who the hell the guest host even is, let alone the musical guest. (I always skip through the musical guest.) I seldom recognize references to TV shows, as I don’t watch them. I just stream the late night comedians for their monologues, The Daily Show, John Oliver, and Bill Maher. All political, but with a dash of humor, which certainly helps keep me from smashing my head repeatedly against a wall.
Since I subscribe to the online version of the NYT, they send me weekly quizzes: Flashback, in which you move a bunch of events in historical order; and a news quiz about the week’s events. I usually do well in that, except when they inevitably come to a couple sports questions. D’oh!
Not me. I grew up with a good ability to retain information long enough to ace a test on it, and no longer. So I had a great grade point average and don’t know anything anymore.
Yes, but you do other things so beautifully. Your humor and your words.
You have this great blog for a reason!
https://archive.org/details/wwww_20251119