Mark and I visited Corning and Ithaca, New York over the Victoria Day weekend. It was our first trip out of the country since our holiday in Florida in late February and early March 2020. I loved the Corning Museum of Glass and could have spent two full days looking at all the exhibits of glassware from ancient Egypt to the present day. I liked the display that showed how glass occurs in nature, as in obsidian and also when lightning strikes sand. Some of the art displays looked deceiving, where in one case a box, from a distance, looked to be covered in thick fur, yet up close you could see that the “fur” was made of long thin glass razors. If your hand even gently brushed up against the box, your fingers would look as if they had been caught in a paper shredder:

We hiked to three waterfalls in Ithaca. Here we are at Taughannock Falls:


Ithaca Falls:

Buttermilk Falls:

Mark and I only managed to play four games during our trip and I won three. I averaged 422 and Mark 346. Here is the bingo breakdown:
Craig | Mark |
BAWDIEST (80) | OUTRIGS (76) |
ALlEGED (71) | EXULTErS (72) |
AZURITE (72) | ETOIlES (69) |
REQUINTO (118) | |
FACTORS (76) | |
dEPLETER (72) | |
SANIOUS (85) | |
RAREbITS (66) | |
OVERSAID (89) * | |
ANdIRON (62) | |
SALiNES (73) |
My placement of AZURITE gave no chance to front-hook it with L-.
For my play of REQUINTO, my rack was EINOQRT and Mark gave me a U, slotting it between two DWS squares.
SANIOUS was a successful fish. There were four unseen N’s very late in the game, and I considered fishing off one of my two A’s. Yet Mark played a word with an N just before, now leaving three N’s in the bag. That caused me to rethink my fish strategy and I tried to find another play, yet came back to what I thought was my best move: I dropped my A to score 8, and then picked an N, giving me SANIOUS to play in two spots. In this game there were only two I’s on the board about halfway through. After I played WINO I chose IIII as my replacement draw, and had to exchange tiles in my next move.
I should have known better than to play OVERSAID. I didn’t like its base infinitive at all and considered it instead as an acceptable adjective in the form of a past tense (insofar as INVECTED is acceptable while INVECT itself is not a word). My rack was ADEIRSV and I never even saw ADVISER. I don’t believe there was a place for it however as I was solely focussed on the O that was on the lower left TWS. I well knew both of my phony’s acceptable anagrams yet saw neither–AVODIRES and AVOIDERS–because my tunnel vision wanted to start a bingo with the O and that OVER- prefix was staring me in the face.
The Corning Museum of Glass even had an all-glass version of Scrabble for sale for $100. I merely looked at the box and did not attempt to open it or lift it to see how heavy it was. Maybe the contents were depicted on the bottom of the box but these novelty versions do not interest me. One can view the contents on-line. Mark snapped a photo for me:

2 Responses
The Scrabble is the equal of the waterfalls!
Yes it is, and the Corning Museum of Glass even had a glass version of Scrabble for sale for $100.