Outsmarted, outspelled, thrashed, sacked and beaten

Dear New England Patriots,

At the close of a near-perfect season, there are few words that could bring a bit of comfort to a devastating end. Last night was not merely the loss of a game, but the loss of a title, a record, and, well, your reputation.

I offer my condolences in the form of empathy, for I know, all too well, the harsh reality of hard losses. Yes, I am speaking of the first time I lost a game of Scrabble.

Though it pains me to bring it up, I feel that you could use it as a bit of comfort during this hard time. You play football, I get it. It’s a little side hobby on Sunday afternoons.

But I’m a writer; if I don’t have words, I have nothing.

Tom, you can imagine my horror when I saw my first inferior score. It was like I’d been punched—or sacked—right in the stomach. You’ll still go home to Giselle, or find another Victoria’s Secret model to drown your sorrows in, but after my loss, I had no one. No one wants a girl who can’t put a few random letters together in the form of a semi-intelligible word.

I went home that night, my mind cluttered and dizzy with k’s and t’s, vowels meddling with consonants and spinning webs of chaos in my head.

So there was a sack here, an interception there. I challenged a word and lost an entire turn. Twice. How was I to know that “ais” is a three-toed sloth of South America?

A last-minute touchdown to win the game? Try "zipper" on a triple-word-score with only four tiles left to play.

Yes, you let some people down, lost some fans a bit of money. But you’ll get through it. Just as, months later, I blew the dust off my old board and reopened the velvet pouch, by next season you’ll have new resolve, and this loss will be but a dot on the radar of past disappointments.

Here’s to a brighter future for us both. Here’s to V-I-C-T-O-R-Y (double-word score, 30 points).