St. Louis Cards is baseball, not to start a 'baseball is sports?' controversy. why do you ask?

Today's AWAD is wild card. Dipsy-doodle was questionable, wild card is not.

Come to think of it, I don't ever remember hearing any prescriptivists (or humanistic grammarians, either) railing about its sports use. The computer search use is an obvious extension of the card playing use but the sports use is not.

to me, it's not much of a stretch to go from "no fixed value" (sense 1) to "unranked" (sense 2). admittedly, sense 1 is not sports related, but it's a typical transferal from one discipline to another. (and I use the term discipline loosely.)

I agree, Faldage, that "cards as sports" is a stretch. Then you might have to include boardgames (i.e. Scrabble®, Hogwash® ;) and other games of chance (craps, roulette, etc.). why is ® printing so large all of a sudden?

But the newest connotation for wild card that can validate it's sports inclusion is the wildcard team, the wildcard playoffs (why do I want to make it one word here? is this correct or no? are both forms a matter of choice?). The wildcard team being the one with the weakest record that just sneaks into the playoff picture.

Of course, the class clown could be a wild card, too!

Well, I guess, upon rereading the declaration of theme in the AWAD emails he *did say games and sports and he didn't actually® come out and say the words *originated there.

St. Louis Cards is baseball
Arizona Cards is football.
(not to mention the Stanford Card (not Cards)

Further "sports" related term: trumped his ace.

>wildcard team

check this out; the AHD gives 'wild card' as the variant form
http://www.bartleby.com/61/38/W0153800.html

wild card as variant form?

And one need look no further than the Home Page of OneLook! http://OneLook.com (parenthetically in the red) That's the "Faster Finder" for ya!

But you can play wildcard in Scrabble, right? Wild on card or card on wild, right?

Wonder whether there's a bwildcard or twildcard or swildcard? Or is there just a wildcard?

So many possibilities, so little time to look 'em up this morning,
DD

>But you can play wildcard in Scrabble, right?

well, not according to the '78 edition of OSPD -- I don't have the new 3rd ed.

hey! here's a cool site. it searches the 2nd and 3rd editions of the OSPD and reports on your search word; e.g.,

"wildcard" Results:
OSPD Second Edition: No

OSPD Third Edition: No

http://www.logophilia.com/scrabble/

but why do you care, Scrabble being a stupid game and all?

but why do you care, Scrabble being a stupid game and all?...

I don't know why I do care about the stupid game. though I do and it's a Great Secret.It's a leitmotif in my stupid brain, I suppose.

But I think the stupidest thing of all is the OSPD. It should at least show wild card and wildcard. It's as though they're trying to constipate the spelling creativity of word lovers.

Best regards,
Either Dub Dub or DubDub in the OWWPD

Has anyone here ever scored above 400 in a game of Scrabble[bragging-e]?

Can't recall scores, Consuelo. It's been a long time and I've been so excited contemplating playing it again in Michigan--though I don't like the required dictionary.

Which dictionary did you use when you scored over 400 points, by the way?

WW

We used the Official Scrabble Dictionary. It was a case of Premium Worditis and places to put them. Not only that, I think I drew all the high count tiles. A once in a lifetime score of 436. Kind of like a hole in one, I'd say. One part skill to three parts luck.

>One part skill to three parts luck.

so if the tile gods are running against you, you score 109?

Haven't done that badly since I can't remember when. Sorry, tsuwm, I guess the Scrabble gods like me.