Short: Triple Word Score

We were given an optional quick exercise in class, writing a piece of fiction no longer than 250 words, or a 15 line poem, and including at least one from a list of bizarre words. We could use them in anyway we want, some people used them as descriptors, some as names...anything. The ones I used here are Gowpen, Nelipot and Pentrichor. I had to edit it down to hit the word limit, but this is the full version. And for the record...the Granny is loosely based on my own, mostly the Scrabble...and the cucumber.

Really, it was hardly fair. “Gowpen. That’s eleven, plus double letter on w. Sixteen points,” she said smartly, her thin, wrinkled fingers setting out the tile pieces with almost reverent care. I bit my lip, looking between my jumble of letters and the board. I shuffled them around in vain, as if it would magically change them into something obvious. My finger tapped on the wooden table as I worried my lower lip. She just watched me silently, the same look of patient expectation she’d had since we started. Her hands were folded primly in her lap (no elbows on the table dear) and her back was ramrod straight in her chair. I awkwardly straightened a little, feeling massively hunched over in contrast. Sighing, I picked up my tiles and set them down in a line. “Lama. Six points,” I declared dismally, picking up the pencil and adding the number next to my name. “Good dear, but if you moved it to here you’d get double word score,” she pointed out, giving me an encouraging smile. Grinning, I moved the pieces and changed my score, then reached for the drawstring bag full of tiles. “Nelipot,” she declared, the tiles settling with little clicks. “Nine, with triple word score. How’s your school going?” “Good, almost finished for the year.” I wrote down her twenty-seven, feeling like a right nelipot myself. Visiting Granny always involved a game of Scrabble, and believe it or not, this was her going easy on me. She’d played in tournaments all her life, just for fun. I’d lost the game before I’d even entered the house. But still, here I was, being slaughtered by a woman that forgot to peel the plastic off the cucumber in last night’s salad. I didn’t even bother to pretend this time. “Pen. Five points for me.” She hesitated over her tiles. No, that’s not the right word. She reassessed. There was some more clicking as she rearranged them to her liking. “Pentrichor,” she smiled, adding her tiles onto mine. “That’s seventeen plus double word score, and fifty bonus for using all seven tiles.” Eighty-four. Yeah, I didn’t even have eighty four in total. But I smiled anyway, because for once I knew the word. Granny always used the unusual words, and none of us ever called her on it. Truth be told, she could have been making them up for year, and we wouldn’t have known the difference. But she never needed to. “Pentrichor. I know that one! It’s the smell of rain on dry soil.” I’d always liked the imagery of the word, and felt ridiculously pleased that I knew it. She smiled kindly at me as her hand reached for the bag to retrieve her replacement tiles. “That’s petrichor, dear.” Damn.