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was meant to be supportive, and I realized then that he and most of the rest of the people in the room were all pulling for me to knock off this Scrabble gunslinger of a champion who had blown into town intent on showing off his erudite ways and wooing all of our intelligent women, only to blow out of town the next day, leaving in his wake a trail of scattered Scrabble tiles, disillusioned lady literati, and humiliated but fragrant men. So I should have been flattered. But instead, I found the whispering very distracting—and the clock was counting down.
    “Ten seconds,” said the organizer.
    “Seeeeeee the worrrrrrrd,” said Billy Dee.
    “Everything all right over there?” asked the Champ.
    “Could we have quiet, please?” I yelled.
    The room fell dead silent. My powers of concentration came back in a rush, and I could see not only the word, but the theme of my entire life. The structure, the design, the grand pattern… it was all perfectly clear now.
    “Time,” said the organizer. “Put down your words.”
    “After you,” said the Champ.
    I smiled, calmly selected my tiles one-by-one, and laid down my word: MOTIF.
    Billy Dee Williams and his date and the ninety-eight other onlookers broke into a round of applause.
    “Nicely done,” said the Champ.
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “Now for your word,” said the organizer to the Champ.
    The Champ didn’t bother with putting down his tiles one-by-one. He picked them all up in one hand and laid them before us in an omnipotent motion, as if to say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was… FOMITE.”
    FOMITE?
    “What the hell is FOMITE?” I said, before I could stop myself.
    There was a quiet gasp from the audience at my crude inquiry. The organizers and volunteers instinctively moved in, lest I pull a blade and try to cut the Champ.
    “It’s an inanimate object that serves to transmit infectious organisms,” said the Champ.
    “It’s in the dictionary,” said somebody in the audience, holding up a pocket electronic Scrabble Dictionary.
    “FOMITE?” I said. But the world was already moving on.
    “Good game,” said the Champ. He stood and held out his hand to me. I stood up and shook his hand, then one of the organizers yelled, “Next!” and I was ushered away.
    I won’t bore you with details of the rest of the Scrabble tournament. Most of the details of the remainder of that evening are kind of fuzzy in my memory anyway. I know that we lost our third round game by a wide margin, and I recall that my coworkers observed a somber and respectful silence on the drive home later that night. But the thing that sticks with me most was my walk through the crowd after my loss to the Champ. The Tribune Company representatives gave me a pat on the back as I went by. The young copywriters from Leo Burnett shook my hand and said, “Better than we could have done.” The editors of Playboy magazine were genuinely bummed: “We thought you had him with ‘MOTIF,’ man!” And one of my coworkers came over and put an arm around me and asked, “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine,” I said. “I just need a minute.” So they all went off a left me alone by the fireplace with my thoughts. I wasn’t alone for long though. I soon sensed a presence behind me. I turned around and saw Billy Dee Williams and his girlfriend.
    “FOMITE,” said Billy Dee. He was shaking his head in a motion that conveyed both disbelief and sympathy.
    “Yeah, FOMITE,” I said.
    Billy Dee shook his head again. “That’s rough,” he said.
    “Yeah,” said his girlfriend.
    “What are you going to do now?” asked Billy Dee.
    “Nothing,” I said. “I’ll just keep playing.”
    Billy Dee nodded. “That’s right, man. Just keep playing.” He gave me a fist bump.
    “You, too,” I said. “See the word.”
    Billy Dee nodded again. “That’s right,” he said. Then he turned to his girlfriend. “C’mon, Baby. We got a game to play.”
    They turned to walk away, but