I have a pair of holiday appropriate 'photo-ops' - for my latest edition of "Throwback Thursday" - each one taken at a separate December, 2016 meeting of Scrabble Club 276 in Lauderhill, Florida...

This first offering came from the Wednesday, December 14th meeting, when club president Sandee Bloom was giving away a Christmas prize - in this case, a large, plastic serving tray with a snowman on it. Last year, I had won the prize - a ceramic drinking mug (also with a snowman on it) , which you can see at https://www.furaffinity.net/view/18792495/ - for coming up with the best word associated with Christmas. But this year, Sandee made the challenge tougher, by offering the prize to the player (in the first two of three games) who can come up with the highest-scoring word that contains a 'natural' letter X for Xmas (instead of using a blank tile for that letter)...

It was during Game One when I got the X tile on my rack, and contemplated what word I can come up with. I was tempted to make the word EXCITED, as I had most of the letters to spell it, and all I needed was the second E. So, turn after turn, I gave up the spare useless lettered tile - making very short words for very low points - in the hope that the next tile I'd pull out of the bag was an E tile. In my haste, in one turn, I gave up the T tile on my rack, and (true to 'Murphy's Law') I'd finally pulled out said E tile!

It was halfway during Game One, when another player called out "82 points for an X word!" - which meant that he had a 'bingo' (a word played with all seven lettered tiles, giving him 50 bonus points - along with the score for the word played). In order for me to win the prize, I would have to come up with a higher score, by coming up with an even bigger 'bingo'.

As luck would have it, my rack had the following tiles: a C, two Es, an S, a U, the aforementioned X, and a blank tile. Using said blank tile as the letter D, I was able to come up with the word EXCUSED... with the first E resting atop the 'Triple Word Score' space!

Here's the math: With one point for each E, eight points for the X, three points for the C, two points for the U (as this tile was resting on the 'Double Letter Score' space), one point for the S, and no points for the blank, the word EXCUSED scored 16 points, so far. The Triple Word Score raised the subtotal to forty-eight points; plus fifty points for making a 'bingo' word, bringing said subtotal now to ninety-eight points! I was so EXCITED (the word I was originally intending to use), I almost forgot to include one other score: the vertical word I'd connected the letter S in EXCUSED to - AEON, to make AEONS - adding another five points, which gave me a final total of 103 points!

This word was not only the highest-scoring word with a natural X that evening, this play also got me my first 'bamdinger' of 2016! (For those not familiar with the rules of Scrabble, a score of 100 points or more in one single turn constitutes a 'bamdinger' - named after that 'game of chance' at amusement parks, where one tries to hit the bell with a whack on a lever with a huge mallet!)

After Game Two, when no other players were able to surpass my score, I'd won the snowman platter! Sandee used her digital camera to take a picture of me with said holiday prize and a small sign (with a snowman, again), wishing everybody "Merry Christmas"!

I'll have the second of these two Scrabble-related 'photo-ops' later on...