Bourbon Cowboy

The adventures of an urbane bar-hopping transplant to New York.

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Location: New York, New York, United States

I'm a storyteller in the New York area who is a regular on NPR's "This American Life" and at shows around the city. Moved to New York in 2006 and am working on selling a memoir of my years as a greeting card writer, and (as a personal, noncommercial obsession) a nonfiction book called "How to Love God Without Being a Jerk." My agent is Adam Chromy at Artists and Artisans. If you came here after hearing about my book on "This American Life" and Googling my name, the "How to Love God" book itself isn't in print yet, and may not even see print in its current form (I'm focusing on humorous memoir), but here's a sample I've posted in case you're curious anyway: Sample How To Love God Introduction, Pt. 1 of 3. Or just look through the archives for September 18, 2007.) The book you should be expecting is the greeting card book, about which more information is pending. Keep checking back!

Friday, October 27, 2006

I Am A Scrabble Godling!

This screen, from an online Scrabble game, represents what I think is the highest score I've ever managed, in or out of a tournament. 578 points! FIVE bingoes! This is just shortly after I crossed another threshold, getting an online rating of 1300, which I think is just about as high as I can go without memorizing The Top 500 Bingoes and the four- and five-letter words.

Of course, it's hard to get a really high score without facing a player who was having a bad game or using weak strategy. I don't know what the deal was, but I was playing a player named Neldajo, and the game went like this:

Neldajo: change 5
Me: JAPER (44)
Neldajo: GOT (17)
Me: OUTLIVE (67) [bingo]
Neldajo: YE (26)
Me: FROZEN (41)
Neldajo: WE (24)
Me: change 6 (I had UOIIIB)
Neldajo: NEAT (19)
Me: ADO (23)
Neldajo: OWE (25)
Me: jAILBIRD (90) [bingo]
Neldajo: SQUAB (49)
Me: MINX (21)
Neldajo: PUG (12)
Me: BLUE (18)
Neldajo: GRAVE (10)
Me: SITUATE (63) [bingo]
Neldajo: FRAY (42)
Me: COOF (9)
Neldajo: EN (2)
Me: INCHOATE (89) [bingo]
Neldajo: ZIP (14)
Me: DEIL (21)
Neldajo: HM (28)
Me: ALKALIDE (80) [bingo]

Part of me thinks I may just have scored more than that at an early tournament (the numbers 581 and 612 keep floating around in my head), but I'm not in the National Scrabble Association anymore, so I don't have access to the tournament files. Sigh. It was the New Orleans tournament, probably four or five years ago. Anyone know where I might find those records?

LATER:
In other Scrabble news, read this really fun report on the highest-scoring Scrabble game ever.

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posted by Cowboy Dave Dickerson | 12:53 PM

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

we so have to play some time!!

10/27/2006 1:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The one-stop shop for all such questions is cross-tables.com. Take a look here: http://www.cross-tables.com/results.php?p=3340

Click the plus signs to reveal further details on a given tournament. (Things like individual scores aren't always known, though. That's a new feature.)

10/28/2006 10:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dave!you'll be proud..and you know how much I love it when that happens in Scrabble!ok so i thought i'd warm up a bit before our next game and give a game a go..ready?..TWO Bingos!woot!!
TOURNEY and ALUMNUS.i know..pretty groovy..oh and my score you ask? 414!! to 196..so it was a fairly inexperienced opponent as it happens but regardless it was nice to get some decent looking letters for a change..the fun factor was way down though since you weren't playing with me.

11/09/2006 12:42 AM  

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