Perquackey
Update: The Perquackey site works a lot better now—I’ve just switched to a better word list and made the dictionary lookup much faster!
Valerie’s parents were here visiting for a few weeks, during which time her mom and I played Perquackey every chance we got.
Perquackey, pictured above, is a word-spelling game like Boggle, except word length matters, so you take more time to think.
Update: My bad. Alan Hensel points out that word length does matter in Boggle. What’s additionally true about Perquackey is that it limits you to spelling just 5 words of a given length.
Smack
Which, apparently, gives you more time for trash-talking. Weeks before their arrival, I started getting gems like this in my inbox:
Perquackey players like you don’t grow on trees. They swing from them.
And, well, you just can’t let something like that slide. After the inevitable escalation, we’d raised the medium to an art form:
In the great wild Serengett,
A dik dik grazes, ’till he’s met in
Millisecond lightning flash,
Tim-tumbled over, turned to
Hash.Eaten live by
Powerful beast,Eviscerated
Raw, deceased.Quite the scene
Under the sun,
Although another “death” shall
Come, when self-appointed Queen Per-
Kathy, unsuspecting,
Minces daftly,
Aligning letters one by one,
Slowly, surely, not much fun.Then sit I in to take my turn
Egads! How did this kid here learn?
Round one completed, so the game,
Your skills shown up to be quite lame.Ouch.
The alert reader will note the first letters of each line spell out “I am the perquackmaster, yo.”
Style
Sadly, though, age and treachery won out over youth and intelligence. But I held my own spelling interesting words. Between the two of us, “style points” were awarded for archaic, aplomb, axioms, eclipse, imbues, poseur, pundit, urethra.
perquackey.matthewtodd.org
Finally, when the time runs out, you always wonder what you missed, so I’ve written a Perquackey word looker-upper.
It’s a little slow, but I’m working on it. (On a geek note, the best change so far has been splitting a string into letters with unpack 'c*' instead of split //—that way, I’m comparing letters as integers rather than strings of length 1.)
For those who enjoy your website, here was my response last month to your creative acrostic poem above:
You’ve penned one of the best poems ever found
From e.e.cummings to Ezra Pound.
Kudos for rhyming “beast” and “deceased;”
The inner lyricist in you now released.
But “Kathy” and “daftly” the ear doth accost,
Never such attempt would be made by Frost.
These comments, though, are well beside the point;
It’s much too soon the champ to anoint.
My previous question you attempted to evade
But like the dik-dik, a false step betrayed.
Colorful images and alliteration you indeed include,
But you failed to explain your former use of “snood.”
Your fancy verbal footwork failed in its quest
To distract me from my goal (although it still impressed).
Diverting my attention from the issue I’m pursuing
Is a method now and later sure to prove your undoing.
Your hands thrown in the air, your countenance nonplussed,
I’ll stand crowned in glory while you lay in the Perdust.
I’d like to compose a new poem now to honor your description of the game, your fine explanation of smack, and the fond memories of those extraordinarily style-rich words. But your hubris at attributing your small handful of wins to youth and intelligence, while simultaneously asserting that my many victories were due to advanced years and (gasp!) treachery–well, I am left without words. Which is something I certainly couldn’t say when we were playing Perquackey. Snap.
It appears you have perfection in a mother-in-law. Oh that she and i and you could someday play perquacky together!
hey matthew! moshi, tazania? wow! how amazing, did you ever think you would end up there? whenever i hear your name here, i still swear you are going to discover the cure for AIDS or cancer! hey, it could still happen, right? hope you are well.
jamie