Carol’s North Metro Report: July 12, 2012
Greetings,
We had 15 players again at LaCasita last Thursday.
Zbigniew’s bingo stats for 07/12/2012.
WINNERS
Steve Pellinen won all four: 460 — 389 — 484 — 379
Harriet Strasberg won all three: 444 — 455 — 416
Other winning records:
1/0 David Herfel
3/1 Lisa Odom
2/1 Carl Voss
HIGH SCORES
502 Lisa Odom
487 Lisa Odom
484 Steve Pellinen
474 Fran Galt
472 Lisa Odom
460 Fran Galt
460 Steve Pellinen
458 Zbigniew Wieckowski
455 Harriet Strasberg
The bye list is probably identical to last week’s, since nobody got crossed off last week: Pete, Derek, Dave H., Jerry, Zbigniew, Mary A., Steve P.
What are you afraid of? In Scrabble, there is not much to fear: only 11 valid words end in PHOBIA. For efficiency, I left out the phrase “ABNORMAL HATRED OR FEAR OF… ”
ACROPHOBIA -- high places
AGORAPHOBIA -- open or public places
CLAUSTROPHOBIA -- being in narrow or enclosed spaces
COMPUTERPHOBIA -- computers
HOMOPHOBIA -- homosexuals or homosexuality
HYDROPHOBIA -- water
NEGROPHOBIA -- Black people and their culture
PHOTOPHOBIA -- light
TECHNOPHOBIA -- fear of the use of or the effects of technological
developments
XENOPHOBIA -- that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign
peoples
ZOOPHOBIA -- animals
I was really surprised at this short list. Most of these are quite well-known, but so many are missing! “English for Students” lists 147 phobias. I won’t give you the names, since they’re not good in Scrabble, but some of the “funnier” fears are fear of men (or of women), fear of flowers, of gravity, books, paper, ugliness, mirrors, snow, colors (black, white, purple, or all colors), clocks, trees, knees, feet, houses, rooms, numbers, teenagers, the figure eight, vomiting, fear of large things, of small things, and of beautiful women, just to name a few! (See www.english-for-students.com/Phobias.html.)
Perhaps a Scrabble-playing psychologist could chime in here. What’s the strangest phobia you have encountered?
All of the above words also spell “-PHOBIC”. LYOPHOBIC (with a complicated chemical definition) is the only “phobic” word that does NOT also spell “phobia”.
All of them also spell “-PHOBE” except HYDRO and PHOTO (that seems like an oversight, as both of those phobia words were added with the last update). “-Phobe” words that do not have any of the other forms are AEROPHOBE (one fearful of drafts of air) and GYNOPHOBE (one who fears women); both are also recent additions. Can’t think of any other reason for these inconsistencies…
If you are not afraid, try this site for “Phobia Mania Insania”, featuring trivia questions about phobias: www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/Phobia-Mania-Insania-331170.html.
Phobia JOKE:
A complex is a phobia.
A complex is a large building.
A complex is another word for complicated.
So if you have a phobia about complicated large buildings, you might be said to have a complex complex complex.
[source: www.jokebuddha.com/Phobia#ixzz20mbS4l78]
QUOTES:
“All men are born with a set of instinctive fears — of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, or speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words “Some Assembly Required.” ~ Dave Barry
“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.” ~ German Proverb
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Completely unrelated to phobias: this Decatur online news source has an article by Eric Fleischauer in which he uses Scrabble players as an example of a select class of people, in order to make a political point. You can read it here: www.decaturdaily.com/stories/Dont-throw-poor-overboard,98764.
See you soon, I fear!
Carol
