The Bigger Cheat

Skimbleshanks and I were playing scrabble the other day. Skimble by the way, is my younger brother. And despite the three year difference between us he manages to beat me regularly. Well, to be perfectly honest, manages to thrash me.

The game started well, I'd opened with a bingo and for once it looked as if I might actually beat him. But there he was, inching along, slowly eroding away the 50 point lead. I needed another bingo and I needed it fast. That was when three e's, an i, s a t and a blank showed up on my rack. There was a relatively isolated n on the board and flipping through the dictionary (house rules allow it) I found eternize. And hey, I'm human, how much thrashing from a kid bro can you take? So, I put eternise on the board and tried to bluff.

Have I mentioned I'm not a good liar? Skimble looked at me suspiciously and reached for the dictionary. A moment later, he snickered and told me that the dictionary only allowed etern-i-z-e. So, ruefully, I took my letters off the board. Karma, apparently, has moved with the times and delivery time is faster than ever before.

But that's not the end of it. A few more moves into the game, Skimble chuckled. What was so funny I wanted to know. He picked up the dictionary and found the right page. There, sandwiched between eterne and eternity, was eternise.