![]() On her darkest of writing days, she takes the last sentence she wrote and tallies it up for points. She calls into question these rules: is the point system for letters really based on frequency, or is it some larger institutional metric of mind control? He repeats, But those are the rules. But that’s how you play-those are the rules, he replies. In one game, he scores more than seventy points with a well-placed “Q.” She loses that game soon enough and texts him, You’re always doing stuff like that, calculating the value of each word. She is gifted calendar crossword puzzles (yes, three hundred and sixty-five tiny crosswords, one sheet for each day) every December, and is often dragged into long bouts of Words with Friends. What most infuriates her is the presumption that she must be a whiz at words given her vocation as a writer of books. When have you ever used that aloud? Oh, look, over there, that lynx is about to pounce and rip out my heart! She is certain that any person in such a scenario would use the word “bobcat.” In defense of “Y” ’s vowelness, he asks, What about “lynx”? ![]() But it’s not a word she would have guessed. It’s either bullshit or the stuffing that comes out of cheap toys. Given six tries to guess a five-letter word, he is quicker to recall words without real vowels (she doesn’t support the idea that “Y” is a vowel), and he has the nerve to guess words with triple letters, like “fluff,” on the second try. Debates they find themselves in involve the latter, and there hasn’t been an occasion (on record) of him winning one for many, many years.Ĭrosswords, Scrabble, that new game with green and yellow squares, he excels at. Games they like to play involve the former, and he wins the vast majority of them the vast majority of the time. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction from previous years, here. This is the fourth story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series.
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