Scrabble with sharks

[memelaina]

Just returned from my Monday night Scrabble group. I left after one game. Our resident Scrabble pro was playing two games at once since we had an odd number of people there, and I happened to look over to the other board and he had just played "QUAI". Now ten months ago when we were just getting started with this league and I tried to play "QUAI" against him, he told me that it absolutely was not a word and I should take his advice to remove it from the board before declaring it so that I wouldn't lose a turn. Even though I was pretty positive it was a variant spelling of "QUAY", I did take his advice and removed the word and did something else for fewer points. Well, it is a word. And he knew it. And he used it himself. Why didn't I bother to look it up after the game you ask? Good question. I ought to have done so. But I think it was the same game where I put a "D" in front of "ELOPE" to build really big triple word score, and he challenged it and was correct. I absolutely could not believe that the Scrabble dictionary did not have "DELOPE" and was so distraught that I spent my time looking up DELOPE and managed to forget QUAI. Until today. I realize that "table talk" is not considered unethical in high level Scrabble circles, but I just can't deal with the dishonesty of it. These are folks that spend hours upon hours memorizing lists of words and alternate spellings while having no idea what the words actually mean. I've always enjoyed Scrabble as an outlet for a large vocabulary, but this methodology of words as lists of letters without meaning just doesn't appeal to me. Don't think I'm going back. Think I will just stick to living room Scrabble. Grumpf.