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Thrawn’s spelling was atrocious. Eli had made excuses for it for as long as he could. But now that he was no longer an ensign, no longer just Thrawn’s aide, he no longer had time to correct Thrawn’s datawork before release.
“How is your Basic spelling this bad?” Eli asked one night, exasperated. They were both up late in Thrawn’s quarters on the
Chimaera.
He had just reviewed one of Thrawn’s Sensitive Materials requisition requests.
Thrawn blinked, his expression unmoved. “My native tongue uses pictographic symbols for its written script. The trade languages I know do not have standardized spelling; too many species only learn to speak them before venturing onto foreign worlds. The writing they do produce offers many variations in lexicon.
“Besides, I would not struggle so if Basic’s phonetic system were consistent. Tell me: where do you hear the ‘h’ sound in Chimaera?”
Eli groaned in frustration. How had he let it get this far? How had Royal Imperial tolerated this? They would have had to read Thrawn’s coursework to grade it, and Eli sure hadn’t reviewed all of that . “I can’t believe you’re a commodore who can’t spell.”
“The informality of my training in the language reflects itself here alone. Why do you think I still employ you as a translator?” Thrawn inclined his head towards Eli. “It is your efforts alone that keep our enemies from making a scene over this matter. For that, I thank you.”
Eli rubbed his palms over his face. “I don’t want your gratitude. I want you to spell better.”
It was then that an idea struck him. A stupid yet brilliant idea. “I know a way you can study.”
Thrawn blinked once again. A sign of confusion from him. “Do you want me to practice on flimsi?”
“...Yes, also that. But Lieutenant Pyrondi! She has this word game she likes to play off-shift. It’s where you use up to seven Aurabesh tiles at a time on a board to spell words for points. She’s super competitive; she would love to brag about beating her commander at Scrabble!”
The Chiss leaned forward, eyes burning brighter in intensity. “...I see. You seek to use my competitive nature against me. By pushing me into a game where I wield a clear disadvantage, you encourage me to sharpen my skills against a worthy opponent.”
Was that what Eli was doing? Maybe. As long as it worked. “I’ll ask her if she’s willing to play you tomorrow night.”
“No need, Lieutenant Commander. I will challenge her myself.”
Well now I gotta see this.
The issuance of the challenge itself did not live up to Eli’s internal hype. Thrawn simply walked up to Lieutenant Pyrondi at the start of their shift on the bridge and asked, “is it true you enjoy a game of Scrabble, Lieutenant?”
Pyrondi beamed, a small blonde curl escaping the confines of her officer’s cap. “I do, sir. I’ve beaten every crewmember on this vessel who has dared to play me.”
“I have never played a scrabbling game before. Would you be so kind as to be my first opponent tonight?”
Her smile turned into a vicious grin. “Sure thing, Commodore. We can play in the mess. Let all the officers watch.”
Eli blanched. “That’s not-”
“I accept your arrangement, Lieutenant. We shall play over an evening meal.” Thrawn extended his hand, which Pyrondi shook firmly.
“It’s a deal.”
As Eli and Thrawn stepped away, Eli whispered furiously in Thrawn’s direction, “why would you agree to let everyone watch?”
Thrawn replied in a low voice. Not quite a whisper in itself. “To motivate myself to excel. I thought that was your intent, Lieutenant Commander.”
“Not to this degree!” Eli hissed, “if you misspell too many words on the board, your entire bridge crew is going to realize what’s been going on. People will lose respect for you.”
“I am a new commander on their vessel fresh off the heels of a second court martial. I have only respect to gain, Commander Vanto.”
Eli still wanted to argue, but he sensed the conversation was going nowhere. So he shut his mouth, took his place on the bridge, and went about his day shift in silence. He had no more reason to speak to Thrawn until that night.
Was it worth it to warn Pyrondi? No, she might say something to the others. In the few weeks they’d been on the Chimaera , Pyrondi’s reputation as the social butterfly of the ship had been made clear. She organized all sorts of game nights and group holo watchings among the officers. No one had a bad thing to say about her. In this case, her popularity could work against them. Bring a crowd to Thrawn’s humiliation.
Eli cursed under his breath. Why was Thrawn so confident? It made sense to be confident in skills he possessed. No one could doubt Thrawn’s abilities to strategize on the battlefield or innovate with Clone Wars technology. But Scrabble was a Basic spelling game. Thrawn was weak in the spelling arena.
This night was going to be a disaster of Eli’s making. All he could do was wait.
After what seemed like an eternity of a dayshift, it was finally time for Thrawn and Pyrondi to face off in Scrabble. Pyrondi had brought her board with her to the mess hall. It sat on a portable turntable between the two players. Thrawn and Pyrondi’s food and drink sat off to the side of the game untouched.
While Scrabble could include up to four players, no one had elected to join the pair in their game. Everyone wanted to watch. Eli had originally sat next to Thrawn, but Commander Faro urged him to move. “Commodore Thrawn doesn’t get to use an interpreter in this game.”
Eli shifted a few seats down, swallowing his retort. A few minutes later, Pyrondi addressed the very subject Faro had alluded to. “Basic isn’t your first language, is it sir?”
“It is not. Yet do not be concerned, Lieutenant. I have had years to familiarize myself with your written system.” Thrawn held the game’s rulebook in his hands, reading them over as he spoke. “Besides, I once heard of a man who memorized the Scrabble dictionary in Old Rylothian so he could play in that language in a local competition against the Twi’leks. Despite these efforts, the man did not speak a word of Old Rylothian.”
Pyrondi laughed at the tale. “I heard about that. I’m not quite as good as him, but I can give you a run for your credits, sir.”
“As this is my first time playing, I am not foolish enough to wager credits on the outcome. No matter the result, the first step in acquiring new skills is to venture out of one’s comfort zone. A warrior cannot keep his blade sharp if he always sharpens it on the same stone.”
Some officers shared glances between themselves. Eli didn’t doubt they had taken bets on the outcome. He just hoped no one had expected Thrawn to win today.
When Thrawn finished reading the rules, Pyrondi set a wooden tile holder in front of him. “Remember to always refill this after you play. The only time you shouldn’t have seven tiles in front of you is at the end of the game.” She smiled graciously, shaking the bag containing the Aurabesh tiles within.
“Since you’re a newbie to the game, I will let you both draw and play first. One letter of your first word has to touch the pink star,” she laid a finger on the center of the board, “but which direction you play in is up to you.”
Pyrondi handed the bag to Thrawn. He withdrew seven square tiles, counting them as he did. Once he had all seven on his holder, Pyrondi took the bag and pulled her own seven out.
Thrawn studied his letters in silence for a moment. “I do not have to play all seven in the same word, correct?”
“I would be most impressed if you did, sir. Bingos are worth fifty points in this game.”
Thrawn nodded, then laid out his first four tiles. He spelled his first word from the top down, with the last touching the starting point on the board. Ship.
Pyrondi nodded approvingly. She was playing at being a good sport, no doubt for her commander’s sake. “Eighteen points. Solid opening, sir.”
While Thrawn was still collecting his four replacement letters, Pyrondi laid out her opening move. She used the senth in “ship” to pluralize earbud . “Earbuds. That is twenty points.”
Hammerly recorded the scores dutifully from Pyrondi’s side. A fellow transplant from the Thunder Wasp with Thrawn and Eli, Hammerly had integrated into the ship’s social order far faster than either of them had. She and Pyrondi were fast friends.
Thrawn thought for a long moment about his next move. In the end, he decided to use the herf in his “ship” to start the word hex. “And thanks to the triple letter tile on the xesh, that nets me…”
“Twenty-nine points!” Pyrondi crowed. “Good one, sir! I guess it’s time I up my game with you.” She hesitated for a moment, then put down four of her own letters. “If you’re ready to bring out the high point letters, I am too.
“Qek-Usk-Esk-Esk-Forn. Queef. That’s a triple letter and a double word score-”
“Lieutenant, I admittedly am not a native speaker of Basic, but I sincerely doubt that is an actual word.”
Vanto’s face fell. Here it was. The one section of Basic vocabulary he and Thrawn had never discussed together: female anatomy.
Pyrondi saw Vanto’s expression and decided to play into it. “I assure you, Commodore, that most certainly is. Isn’t it, Vanto?” Eli blushed, but Pyrondi did not relent. “I can even conjure it. Queef. Queefed. Queefing-”
Eli momentarily wanted to strangle her. Hammerly nearly fell out of her chair from laughing so hard. “Do you always do this in your games?”
“Well, what does it mean, Commander Vanto? Are you unwell? You’re turning quite the color.”
Thrawn looked to Eli for answers, oblivious to the female officers’ giggling. “Do you know what this word means, Commander Vanto?”
Eli grit his teeth and nodded. “It’s… like farting through the vagina, sir.”
“I see.” Thrawn took the answer in stride. “Chiss women release heated air from there as a sign of arousal. I did not realize human women could perform a similar feat.”
Hammerly burst into another fit of laughter. This time it was Faro’s turn to look embarrassed, though Eli couldn’t figure out why. Once Hammerly had calmed down enough to speak, she announced that Pyrondi’s play had netted her a whopping fifty points.
Damn. Pyrondi really is a Scrabble champion. Eli couldn’t see Thrawn coming back from a move like that. Not one played so early in the game.
“Impressive, Lieutenant. If you would not mind coaching me on a scrabbling matter… I would like to engage in what I have seen the Holonet refer to as a ‘parallel play.’” Thrawn laid out five letters next to the ones Pyrondi had just put down. Thrawn had spelled ideal, but his Isk connected to Pyrondi’s Forn to spell if. “Is this an appropriate way to deploy the strategy?”
“It’s perfect,” Pyrondi praised him. “Good job on catching the triple word score. Just remember that the triple word score only applies to the word it’s connected to, so you get a total of twenty points. Not thirty.”
“I see,” Thrawn said. He did a good job keeping the disappointment out of his voice. Only someone who knew him as well as Eli would have heard it.
The rest of the game progressed in a similar fashion. Thrawn didn’t slouch in his corner, but it was clear Pyrondi knew her way around a Scrabble board. Not only did she pick up plenty of high-scoring tiles, but she knew how to land them on point-increasing tiles for maximum impact. Some of her own parallel plays led to Pyrondi spelling four words in one turn, leaving Eli dizzy.
By the end of the game, Pyrondi had amassed nearly four hundred points. Thrawn sat just shy of two hundred and eighty. At least he had never misspelled any words.
After the points on Thrawn’s last two tiles were deducted off of his score, Thrawn rose to shake Pyrondi’s hand once again. “Thank you for introducing me to this new game. It is a mental challenge to which I am unaccustomed, a method of strategy I have never applied in such a linguistic manner. I leave this table with renewed respect for your mental acuity.”
“Thank you for challenging me, sir.” Pyrondi returned the handshake, an infectious grin on her face. “You did well for your first time.”
Eli couldn’t help but agree. After they helped Pyrondi gather her materials, they finally ate their dinners and left the mess hall. On the way out, Eli thought to ask Thrawn, “how come you were able to spell so well in the game?”
“Simple: I only played words I was confident I had spelled correctly. It limited my options considerably.” Thrawn fixed Eli with a bright red stare. “You were right. The spelling game did motivate me to fix my Basic spelling. I would like you to play Scrabble with me every night so that I may excel in future matches.”
Eli groaned. Nightly Scrabble games? What had he done?!