Reader's Digest: May 25, 2024

This week, two essays conjured epiphanies from my youth.

One was about scrabble, which my parents enjoyed and forced me to play. At a certain point, I lodged a formal protest: “I object to scrabble,” my tween self argued, “because it neglects the meanings of words in favour of mere spelling—but it’s the meaning that matters.” I loved words, but hated scrabble, and I could now articulate why. But this was not the real epiphany.

The real epiphany was about serious jokes. Was my objection to scrabble a precocious insight into who I was, a testament to my core values? Or a pompous excuse for not competing in a game I invariably lost? With delight, I realized that it could be both.

It was with similar delight that I came across an essay about scrabble and addiction by Brad Phillips, in the Paris Review, that includes these lines:

The unwilling, unconscious anagramming of words is the primary side effect of a life devoted to Scrabble. This is ultimately what the game is about: memorizing words…