The King of Boggle
Ok, I really just need to write this story down because every time I think about it my brain starts to ache and I need to turn of the lights and put my head down on my desk. And the story didn't even happen to me. It's not even my story. But now I'm going to tell it to you. And it can be your story, and your brains can hurt for a while:
(Before we start, if you have a copy of The Beastie Boys' 1998 release "Hello Nasty" put it on and skip up to Track 9 " Putting Shame In Your Game ")
Ok, so some years ago a friend of mine was playing the classic word gameBoggle with her brother and a friend. It should be noted that both my friend and her brother (and, I assume, the friend) are giant geeks. Geeks of epic proportion. The kind of geeks who actually play boggle.
So here my friends are, in this heated and riveting game of boggle, madly scanning back and forth up and down rows of little cubes with letters printed on them, trying desperately to link those letters together into words, searching frantically for the longest word possible while the little grains of sand tumble through the hourglass, counting down the seconds until they can shake the damn think up and do it all over again. It's a miracle that people even bother with Playstation.
Anyway, so here they are, mid-boggle. Pencils scratching, brows furrowing, grains tumbling, words forming. The time runs out and they begin to add up words and points. My geeky friend slowly notices that her brother isn't counting, isn't adding. He's written but a single word. Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E. 11 Points. (At this point I'm sure most of you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about or why this is a big deal. A few of you may be impressed by the Boggle prowess. And a very select few of you have just tumbled off your chairs in fits of laughter. But I'll continue.)
So here's the brother, sitting smugly with his 11 point word which caps his 107 point boggle victory.
He then declares himself to be the King of Boggle.
A crown is made, and the self-declared Boggle-King parades about the house waving regally to his subjects (who all ignore him).
Now, being the geeks that they are, neither my friend nor her brother realized what had happened. It wasn't until YEARS LATER when my friend called another acquaintance of theirs and got on to the story about his-royal-boggleness. She gets into the story, no doubt conveying the tension and excitement of the game, the riveting boggling that had taken place. She gets near the end of the tale and relays the 11 point Quagmire event. The friend, who is not just a regular geek, but a giant music geek, begins to chuckle. My friend, not knowing the import of what she's about to convey, gets to the part about the crown and just when she begins to say "And he made himself the K-," the musically geeky friend cuts in with following lyrics from "Putting Shame In Your Game", which happens to be Track 9 on the 1998 Beastie Boys' release "Hello Nasty":
Well I'm the king of Boggle
there is none higher
I get 11 points
off the word quagmire
Like Mike D had been hanging out outside their window or something. Or MCA had gone through their trash and found the "King of Boggle" crown. Or maybe Ad-rock had been a friend of the unidentified third boggle geek and the story got out. Whatever, I just want you all to know that I know the REAL "King of Boggle" of who there is none higher. And who got eleven points with the word "Quagmire". And he ain't no Beastie Boy.
