Tell a story using exactly the 100 tiles of a Scrabble set (the two blanks may stand for any letters).

language/english/sentences/scrabble.tiles New

New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.

Problem

Tell a story using exactly the 100 tiles of a Scrabble set (the two
blanks may stand for any letters).

[ Editor: problem statement reconstructed from Doug Hoylman's report
of a Games magazine contest. ]

Show solution

I had a request to send out the limerick which won Games's contest to
tell a story using the 100 Scrabble tiles.  This is by David Cohen of
Atlanta, and uses the blanks as an E and an S.

A clown jumps above a trapeze,
Arcs over one-eighty degrees
     Out into mid-air,
     Quite unaware
Of his exiting billfold and keys.

Another nice entry was this hardboiled yarn by Andrew Chaikin of San
Francisco (blanks are U and V):

Boulevard Diner, eleven-forty.
I down a hot cup of java.
It's too quiet.
As a gun barrel whacks my noggin,
I realize Dixie set me up.

-- Doug Hoylman ("Sanit") <dhoylman@prodigy.net>  (NPL mailing list,
   June 2000)