ACKNSTU
Thrust awake in the dead of morning, as one is when nursing a cold, I was struck by the kind of question that frequently afflicts the Scrabble-addled: is X word valid in Scrabble?
Because I'm me, I've had the Live in Chicago version of Ween's “The Blarney Stone” on the brain for most of the year (I've spent a lot of time with Ween this year, as a future post will attest to). During the final verse of this particular recording of “The Blarney Stone,” as is the case with the umpteen bootlegs I've inhaled this year, guitarist Dean Ween (aka Mickey Melchiondo) ad-libs various ailments befalling our salty-dog narrator, punctuated with mock disgust by the rest of the band. To wit: “I got zits on my back/I got cancer in my crack/I got tumours on my nutsack!”
And because my brain is broken in the specific way it is, on this congested morning after five-ish hours of fitful sleep, I ask myself: is NUTSACK good?
UNSTACK and UNTACKS are the only NWL words in that mess of letters, but NUTSACK# is good in CSW, and I can already hear select people I know chime in with “and that's why Collins is better.”