Hey, the Pointy T-shirt Boggle Challenge was totally fun! I got 10 entries; more about that in a second.
First I want to tell you that a few things came up when I was tallying the scores:
1. My house rules have always been that you get a point for every letter in a word no one else gets, minus one. So "jerk" would be worth three points, "yap" would be two, and so on. But the rules I linked to (or to which I linked; eat it, inflexible grammarians) said that 3 letters=1 point, 4=1, 5=2, 6=3, 7=5, and 8 or more=11. So I went by the linked rules.
2. People sent in a lot of archaic spellings, like "bunn" for "bun." The rules said a "standard English dictionary," which is vague, but I took that to mean "words I could find either at m-w.com or in my Random House Webster's College Dictionary that I got for my high school graduation and love very much even though it foolishly included all these trendy 90s words that no one ever uses anymore, like 'Pac-Man defense' and 'tin parachute,' which is forgivable only because it also contains the definition and etymology for the word 'twat.' (n. vulgar the vulva. [1650-60; perh. orig. dial. var. of thwat, thwot, continuing OE thwat, akin to ON thveit cut, slit, forest clearing)." Anyway, I didn't count archaic or unusual spellings or totally obscure words that weren't in either of those dictionaries. Apologies to OED and Scrabble dictionary users. I also crossed out prefixes, suffixes, abbreviations, and acronyms.
3. Nobody got the super excellent long word! I am so bummed!
Anyway, none of that nitpicky stuff matters because Dan smoked everyone's ass. It wasn't even close. But don't be bitter; he's a good person and deserves good things.
Dan's winning words:
arouse (3)
pious (2)
oud (1)
udo (1)
boud (1)
boul (1)
alb (1)
albs (1)
That makes eleven points for Dan! He also included helpful definitions with a few of the lesser-known words, which I appreciated, but not so much that I feel like typing them up right this second.
Runners-up: Shanna, with 5 points (nul, dobra, sunn, lar); Choo, one point (abs); and Angela, one point (poi). Lynell and Badpenny both had slub, which is such a great, goofy-sounding word. I thought it was totally silly and made up, but it's not. It's slub!
Thanks also to McGillbert, Receptionista, Kristy, and Vickie. I'll be making Dan his shirt tomorrow (hey, Dan, what size T-shirt do you prefer?), and the consolation prizes will be sent out as soon as I get around to making them.
So now it's really late and I worked 14 and a half hours today and got some bad news and the electricians fried our dryer and messed up my room (it was already so messy you'd think I couldn't tell, but I can, dammit, I can), so aside from the contest fun I've pretty much had it up to here with today. I'm going to drink a little beer and go to bed. Good night!