New Scaratings

Discovered the game in Mr. B's. There were a lot of folks playing, and the game we walked in on was won by MERLIN. We grabbed a box and tried to think up who MERLIN's nemesis was. Best I could come up with was BLKNIT, i.e. black knight (shrug). Played that for the year or so before I latched onto the folks at Yankee Doodles. There I decided on FRIALE, i.e. the thing we hoped they'd give us for winning games (and they weren't bad at it, at least early on).

YD is a big place, and for awhile they set aside one end of it for a little late-night dance club. So one Friday, a few games after Spotlight, some of the crew decided they wanted to dance a little. Presuming they'd be back, I, a non-dancing sort, kept five boxes running. And said screw you guys, I'm gonna put my own handles in (old grey boxes). All variations on ALE. I decided I liked MR ALE. Sounded like MR BOND, or MR TIBBS, or something.

ROONEY is 'cause one of my baby's former bosses liked to call her Beth-a-rooney. I don't remember if she was playing it the night we met, as the handle me & HOUND most noticed the new visitors playing was PRAVDA. This was a Tuesday night, a few hours after Showdown, he and I were the only ones of our team left, and since they still had the grey boxes, for which I'll always be thankful, I switched one in the middle of a game to ZVSTIA for fun. When I went over after the game to say hi, in a well-lubricated spirit of friendliness, it turned out PRAVDA was a Russian-American guy who was her half of a double date. Just said hi, and then she turned up by herself a few days later and began playing with the team, and then, well, again, yay for the old grey boxes.