Sunday Words

Our private Scrabble games are now a championship. I know this because Priya has taped a page to the lounge wall, and information displayed vertically apparently acquires a degree of authority that ordinary conversation lacks. South of Taiwan, while the ship attends to its own progress, my defeats have been given a formal structure and made available for inspection.

There are two competitors. There is a standings table. She is leading six games to two. I studied the figures in the hope that their presentation might reveal some mitigating context, but the page was disappointingly clear. A score written in a tidy hand can look much more conclusive than the untidy experience of losing the games that produced it.

I objected to the title. Championship seemed an ambitious word for two people sitting over tiles in a lounge, particularly when one of them had not been consulted about the promotion. Priya said every championship begins with competitors. She delivered this with the patient warmth of someone explaining a simple matter to a person who had chosen, for emotional reasons, to find it complicated.

It is difficult to argue with a person holding both the pencil and the lead. I could dispute the grandeur of the arrangement, but not the existence of the participants, and certainly not the arithmetic. The paper remained on the wall. Priya remained quietly pleased. I remained the other competitor, which at least sounds more distinguished than a man who keeps losing at Scrabble and returning the following evening.