Katdish.net

Last week, I told y’all about being mistaken for a celebrity Words with Friends player. It was interesting to play with some new opponents, but there’s something comforting about playing against people you know. Even if you only know them virtually.

It can also be an educational experience. People from different backgrounds and walks of life often play words you never knew existed. For instance, my friend Candy Steele is a nurse, and she consistently introduces me to new and disgusting medical terms:

I believe each of us, no matter our lot in life, can share a plethora of new and exciting words with our opponents who otherwise would never know such words existed. Sadly, the powers that be at Words with Friends refuse to recognize some of my better word contributions to the game conversation:

However, many of my go-to words are perfectly acceptable. As I’ve said here before, we go with what we know. What do I know? Potty words, apparently. Traditional potty words, as in “words your mom would wash your mouth out with soap for saying”:

And potty words as in “words associated with a potty”:

I know…gross, huh? It’s not my fault. The letters on the board just sort of form into those type of words once they enter my brain:

So much so that Ricky Anderson aka Arthur 2 Sheds, aka 1357Bob aka Ricky Bobby instituted a side rule for our games that if either of us has the letters to form the word “FART” we must play it. Because we’re both mature like that.

But honestly? I’ve never tried that hard to use potty words. If I see an easy opportunity to use one I will, but I’ve never actually saved letters during a game in order to form a word, because frankly, I’m not that good of a player. All that changed in a recent game with JGTsd80. I saw the suffix of a word I’ve never played, and before that moment, never knew just how much I wanted to play it:

What can we learn?

That in the game of Words with Friends as with the game of Life, it’s good to have goals.

In case you missed them and would like to take an educational journey through my adventures with Words with Friends, you can find my previous posts here:

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 2

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 3: Strategery

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 4: More words that shouldn’t be

Words with Friends, An Idiot’s Guide Part 5: Know your opponent

Words with Friends, An Idiot’s Guide Part 6: Trolling for Celebrities

Celebrity Words with Friends enthusiast, Alec Baldwin

I’m not sure what your process is for coming up with things to write about, but I tend to write about what I know. Or what I pretend to know. Or what I feel the need to rant incessantly about which I may or may not know.

But almost without fail, when I begin this process saying to myself, “You know what would be a really stupid thing to write about?”, it’s blog fodder gold and the beginning of a never-ending series. Such was the case when I decided to write about my adventures with a little iPhone app called Words with Friends.

Not since I wrote about my encounters with the Pornographic Cheese Butler at my local grocery store has my penchant for being completely ridiculous been so well received. If you’re new here, or have somehow missed the first five parts of this series, you can find them here:

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 2

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 3: Strategery

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 4: More words that shouldn’t be

Words with Friends, An Idiot’s Guide Part 5: Know your opponent

Trust me when I tell you, “An Idiot’s Guide” is an apt title. Here’s a brief excerpt from my first post where I explain my complete frustration and utter confusion with this game:

After much nagging from a few online friends, I decided to download a free Words with Friends app onto my iPhone a few months ago. Of course, having never played Scrabble before, I had no clue what to do. In retrospect, I suppose I could have googled “How to play words with friends”, but that would have been entirely too obvious and logical.

Instead, I would open the app every few days and stare at it. I started a few games, but it kept telling me something about an invalid tile placement or some such nonsense. I’m sure whomever I was attempting to play with assumed a toddler had gotten hold of their mother’s cell phone, and if anyone who doesn’t read this blog asks, that’s the story I’m going with.

Now, before you Scrabble/Words with Friends experts roll your eyes at me (some of you probably already are), let me explain how I interpreted this game screen.

• The Star — Yeah. No idea what that was about. I didn’t realize your first word had to have one of the letters on that star. As a matter of fact, I thought one of the objects was to AVOID the star. (Welcome to my brain.)
• DL, TL, DW, TW, et. al. — As some of you may know, I’m not a big fan of acronyms, so my brain does not seek them out. Imagine my frustration when I would make a great word like hanDLe, or DWight or TWeet and it refused me. Stupid game…

I was very likely the worst Words with Friends player ever to download the app. But it’s been several months and many games since my initiation into the world of online pseudo-Scrabble, and like those tobacco company ad executives were fond of saying in order to encourage women to smoke cigarettes,

“I’ve come a long way, baby!”

So much so, that lately I’ve been challenged by several new opponents. Some of them I know personally or through social media, but the vast majority are complete strangers. A couple of folks even mentioned reading my Idiot’s Guides. Several would send me a text during the game which simply said “Hi”, which I thought was a little weird, but whatever. One of my new opponents sent me a game text which said, “Nice move, Dish!”. I immediately texted him back, “Do I know you?”, because that was my nickname in high school, but no one calls me that anymore. His answer surprised me:

SNORT! I wonder how many people playing Words with Friends with Katdish or Katdish10 (I have 2 accounts because I forgot I had the first one) think they’re playing someone famous.

Come to think of it, I do share a name with a famous celebrity mother. I actually used to get Google Alerts for Kathy Richards, but I unsubscribed because I really don’t care what Paris Hilton’s mother did last weekend, nor do I want to play Words with Friends with her, but again. Whatever.

If you ARE playing Words with Friends with me under the assumption that you are playing someone famous, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Good luck in the future with your quest for brushes with greatness. Maybe Snookie plays Words with Friends…

Celebrity Words with Friends enthusiast, Alec Baldwin

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this important and compelling blog series, so in case you’ve missed earlier installments, you can find them here: Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 2

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 3: Strategery

Words with friends, An Idiot’s Guide, Part 4: More words that shouldn’t be

(Sorry/You’re welcome).

As the name of the game would suggest, I play with friends. At any given time, I’ve got games going with my husband, both of my sisters, my 14 year old son, a friend or two from church and a plethora of Twitter buddies.

On the rare occasion I’m challenged by a random opponent, I typically play the game and neither of us choose to rematch. Such was the case last week when I was saw a WWF challenger’s name which I did not recognize. This doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t know them. I have a friend named Michael whose WWF name is Juan Pablo George Ringo. Why? Because he likes the Beatles and he’s quirky and disagreeable. And of course, there’s Ricky Bobby, who goes by the name Arthur 2 Sheds on the twitter and 1357 Bob of WWF, but I digress…

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. So, I’m challenged by someone whose name I don’t recognize. The only thing I can surmise with any confidence is that he or she is not a Steeler’s fan. I won’t tell you this person’s WWF handle for reasons which will be readily apparent soon. After I narrowly defeated said opponent, he challenged me to another game. I assumed he was a sports fan, so we chatted about sports during our game. Cuz I’m friendly like that. He asked what football team I liked, I told him I was from Houston and that I rooted for the Texans if and when I watched them and that I rooted for whomever was playing against the Cowboys. Then he says,

At this point in the conversation, he’s already expressed that he hates the Steelers, the Red Sox and Tom Brady, and I’m beginning to wonder about all this pent up aggression towards sports teams displayed by my opponent…and then I begin to understand.

Notice how calm I am? Notice how I steer the conversation away from the fact that I’m playing Words with Friends with a ten year old boy? Ha! I immediately turn to the twitter to share my dismay.

And to make matters worse…

The little ankle biter actually BEAT ME!

So, in conclusion, let this serve as a cautionary tale fellow Words with Friends players. You never know who you’re playing against. Unless you actually DO know who you’re playing against. And that you can count on your long time opponents to be there for moral support:

When I heard the blog carnival topic for this week was “Strategy”, I immediately thought of this post.

Sorry/you’re welcome.

If you read the first two installments of this series, Words with friends, An idiot’s guide, and Words with friends, An idiot’s guide, Part 2, you know by now that one can still enjoy this friendly word game even if you’re pretty much horrible at it. It’s all about attitude! And hey, I’ve even managed to win a few games lately.

I attribute these few victories to learning from my defeats (of which there are many), and a little something I call Strategery.

In my first WWF post, I introduced 1357bob, who goes by the name of Arthur on the Twitter and Ricky on his blog. I’m not sure if he’s one of those fancy people who have several names followed by a Roman numeral or if he’s in the Federal Witness Protection Program, so for purposes of this discussion, I will simply refer to him as Ricky Bobby.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

Ricky Bobby has been extremely helpful in educating me about the game. If you recall from the first post, he tried to teach me about strategery. He even left double and triple word scores open for me, to no avail.

Still, Ricky Bobby and others have continued to play against me, even though I’m not exactly fierce competition, and like I said, I am getting better. When I first started playing, I played with random opponents. I’ve since rethought this because people who don’t know anything about me don’t seem to get the fact that I really do play this game for fun. One person thought he would begin with some small talk and then try to intimidate me:

Funny, he didn’t challenge me to another game…oh, well.

When playing WWF, it has been my experience that most of us tend to use words we are familiar with. CandySteele uses horrible and disgusting medical terms, KelyBreez uses big lawyer words, PPBottle and 77Eric…well, quite honestly, I have no idea where they get the words they use except maybe their Giant Book of Scrabble Words. I have a 9 and 13 year old living with me. This may or may not have something to do with many of my word choices.

And speaking of common nouns, I still take issue with the WWF powers that be that decide some nouns which should be proper (LAURA, for example), are accepted while others are not:

Yeah, that’s right. I just insulted the entire State of Iowa. But I was totally kidding. In related news, you should probably not insult the state where your opponent lives.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all of you who have played and continue to play WWF with me. You’ve all made me a better player, a better person, and more importantly, a better procrastinator of tackling giant piles of laundry. It is my sincere hope that while I may not teach you anything about WWF, perhaps you can glean some inspiration from me in other ways:

To read more posts about “Strategery”, visit the lovely and talented Peter Pollock at his blog PeterPollock.com

In Words with friends: An Idiot’s Guide Parts One, Two and Three, I have thus far written what is arguably the most educational and compelling series about Words with Friends on the interwebs. (Feel free to argue with me on that point. I have a tween and a teenager. Arguing is their love language, so I’m used to it.)

In the short time I’ve been playing this game, I’ve gone from mostly horrible to slightly less horrible, surprising many of my opponents:

I’ve also reconnected with some good friends who I don’t talk to as much anymore:

Much of my education has been learning new words. Words that shouldn’t be words in my opinion. I also don’t understand why one form of a word is allowable, while its other forms are not. (See “STANK”: acceptable, and “STANKY”: not acceptable; “NOHOW”: acceptable, “NOWAY”: not acceptable.

The inconsistencies and questionable words continue:

"FATBIRD"?

One can only speculate as to the origin of the word.

And, of course, the disgusting medical terms continue to provide Candy Steele with big scores:

But the question still remains. Who decides which words are acceptable and which ones are not? For those of you who have lain awake at night struggling with this conundrum, I think MsDane and I may have stumbled across the answer to this burning question:

Katdish.net: Solving the mysteries of life and the universe, so you don’t have to. Sorry/you’re welcome.

If you read the first two installments of this series, Words with friends, An idiot’s guide, and Words with friends, An idiot’s guide, Part 2, you know by now that one can still enjoy this friendly word game even if you’re pretty much horrible at it. It’s all about attitude! And hey, I’ve even managed to win a few games lately.

I attribute these few victories to learning from my defeats (of which there are many), and a little something I call Strategery.

In my first WWF post, I introduced 1357bob, who goes by the name of Arthur on the Twitter and Ricky on his blog. I’m not sure if he’s one of those fancy people who have several names followed by a Roman numeral or if he’s in the Federal Witness Protection Program, so for purposes of this discussion, I will simply refer to him as Ricky Bobby.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

Ricky Bobby has been extremely helpful in educating me about the game. If you recall from the first post, he tried to teach me about strategery. He even left double and triple word scores open for me, to no avail.

Still, Ricky Bobby and others have continued to play against me, even though I’m not exactly fierce competition, and like I said, I am getting better. When I first started playing, I played with random opponents. I’ve since rethought this because people who don’t know anything about me don’t seem to get the fact that I really do play this game for fun. One person thought he would begin with some small talk and then try to intimidate me:

Funny, he didn’t challenge me to another game…oh, well.

When playing WWF, it has been my experience that most of us tend to use words we are familiar with. CandySteele uses horrible and disgusting medical terms, KelyBreez uses big lawyer words, PPBottle and 77Eric…well, quite honestly, I have no idea where they get the words they use except maybe their Giant Book of Scrabble Words. I have a 9 and 13 year old living with me. This may or may not have something to do with many of my word choices.

And speaking of common nouns, I still take issue with the WWF powers that be that decide some nouns which should be proper (LAURA, for example), are accepted while others are not:

Yeah, that’s right. I just insulted the entire State of Iowa. But I was totally kidding. In related news, you should probably not insult the state where your opponent lives.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all of you who have played and continue to play WWF with me. You’ve all made me a better player, a better person, and more importantly, a better procrastinator of tackling giant piles of laundry. It is my sincere hope that while I may not teach you anything about WWF, perhaps you can glean some inspiration from me in other ways:

In the first exciting and compelling installment of Words with Friends: An idiot’s guide, I debunked any false presumption that I was a smart or logical person. Clearly, anyone who downloads a game app on their iPhone then stares at it for months hoping to ascertain how to play by sheer will rather than googling “How to play Words with Friends” is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

However…

Over the past two weeks, I have gained priceless knowledge about the inner workings of this game. Knowledge that I will share with you today.

Because that’s me.

I’m a giver.

The following are a few random observations about my journey into the world of Words with Friends (WWF). It is my sincere hope that you will benefit from my learning some things the hard way.

There are certain words used in WWF that I dare say have never been uttered by human lips. No one really knows what they mean, and if you look them up in the dictionary, the definition most likely will say, “word used in Scrabble”. This definition may quite possibly be written in the margin with a red crayon. The Mac Daddy of all of these nonsensical words is:

QI or its plural form QIS

Then there are those words whose root word is allowed, but not their verb form:

"STANK"

But not "STANKY"

There are other words that, if used in a writing assignment, would be circled with a big, red angry pen, but are apparently perfectly acceptable in WWF. Words like “NOHOW”. The use of these words may stir up anger and resentment in your opponent:

These seeds of resentment sometimes spill over into other forms of social media:

And speaking of acceptable and unacceptable words, many of you already know that proper nouns are not allowed. I found this out when my triple word score of “PEZ” was summarily rejected. JUNE is also not acceptable, even though I would argue that “JUNE” is a descriptive of “BUG”. But nobody asked me. You can, however use this word:

"JUN" - yeah, I don't know what it means either.

And finally, in choosing words, you must let your conscious be your guide. There are certain cuss words which are allowed and others that are not. I’ve tried to avoid using any bad words. Unless of course a double or triple word score is involved. (Sidenote: “BADGERASS” is not an acceptable WWF word. Or so I’ve heard.)

If you do choose to use questionable words, my personal recommendation would be only to do so with someone you know, and a quick text to them in the form of an explanation may be in order:

Just to make sure you’ve not offended anyone and everything is COPACETIC.

So what say you, Words with Friends fans? Am I leaving out any crucial information? Care to share some uncommon words with me? Talk to me.

After much nagging from a few online friends, I decided to download a free Words with Friends app onto my iPhone a few months ago. Of course, having never played Scrabble before, I had no clue what to do. In retrospect, I suppose I could have googled “How to play words with friends”, but that would have been entirely too obvious and logical.

Instead, I would open the app every few days and stare at it. I started a few games, but it kept telling me something about an invalid tile placement or some such nonsense. I’m sure whomever I was attempting to play with assumed a toddler had gotten hold of their mother’s cell phone, and if anyone who doesn’t read this blog asks, that’s the story I’m going with.

New screen for Words with Friends

Now, before you Scrabble/Words with Friends experts roll your eyes at me (some of you probably already are), let me explain how I interpreted this game screen.

• The Star — Yeah. No idea what that was about. I didn’t realize your first word had to have one of the letters on that star. As a matter of fact, I thought one of the objects was to AVOID the star. (Welcome to my brain.)
• DL, TL, DW, TW, et. al. — As some of you may know, I’m not a big fan of acronyms, so my brain does not seek them out. Imagine my frustration when I would make a great word like hanDLe, or DWight or TWeet and it refused me. Stupid game…

So now do you see why I never got past the first round of this game? Fortunately, the lovely and talented Amy Nabors, aka @amykiane showed me the errors of my ways. Now I’ve had the distinct pleasure of being completely annihilated by friends and strangers alike! I’ve lost count of how many games I’ve played over the last two days, but I do know the results of every game completed. I’VE LOST EVERY SINGLE GAME! Even when kind people like 1357bob took pity on me and tried to give me opportunities to score more than 5 points per round:

So, there you have it. The complete idiot’s guide to Words with Friends. If you want to boost your ego by playing quite possibly the worst Words with Friends player in the history of the world, I’m Katdish10.