Playing for a Tie

Playing for a Tie…   —by Jinny Batterson

Most of the formal games I play are board games. Competitive athletics were pretty much out of the question for this lifelong klutz. Growing up, my brothers, sister and I got lots of gift games at Christmas to carry us through the cold weather months—classics like Monopoly, Clue, Stratego, plus other “big hits” of the time that haven’t aged as well. Once we got a little older, we were given word games like Scrabble. As my vocabulary grew, I got to be a pretty good Scrabble player in my first language, English. In high school, I played a few casual games in French, but English tile values for letters like “q” and “z” were inappropriate and we never got a French-based set, so the Scrabble fad in French club quickly died out. 

In my twenties, I started playing two-person Scrabble games with my husband, the super-competitor. It rarely mattered if I got better letters. He was much better at word placement, racking up double words and triple letters all over the place. Eventually, he’d beaten me so consistently that I decided I didn’t want to play him any more. Much later, we arranged a truce of sorts—we would still play each other, just not keep score. 

Several years ago, a mutual friend introduced us to the word game Quiddler, which can be played more quickly than Scrabble and requires less space, using playing card sized letters rather than tiles and a board. Hubby still beats me the majority of the time, but not by the lopsided proportions he used to tally up in Scrabble. I occasionally have a long enough winning streak so I’m willing to keep trying. We’ve adapted the original rules slightly: we play eight rounds per game, starting with a hand of four cards each, adding one card with each successive hand. The close games are more fun than the really lopsided ones—a hand with no vowels or no consonants, especially in a later round, can put you behind so far it’s almost impossible to catch up. 

Winning is fun, losing less so, but the contests I cherish most are the rarest—about once in a hundred games, we wind up with a tie score. Jim doesn’t get as much satisfaction as I do from the ties, but he humors me. 

On a whim, I decided to see if I could get an internet read on what popular physical sports allow tie games. I found the resulting gem via Wikipedia: 

“Ties or draws are possible in some, but not all, sports and games. Such an outcome, sometimes referred to as deadlock, can (also) occur in politics, business, and wherever there are different factions regarding an issue.”

“Tie” and “draw” appeal to me a great deal more than “deadlock,” which sounds unduly negative. All of us will eventually wind up dead. All of us at some point experienced birth.  While we’re in between, we’ll likely experience some wonderfully positive times (weddings, children’s births, signature achievements, reunions with long-absent friends). Other times may make us wish temporarily for death: serious illnesses or accidents, natural disasters, financial reversals, tragedies for loved ones, divorces.  

In these fraught times, when so much of our media environment can seem intent on making our circumstances feel even more fraught, I want to put in a plug for ties. If we live in the northern hemisphere, we’re approaching the winter solstice, the time of year when daylight is minimal and dark is “winning.” Starting on December 22, though, our 24-hour day/dark cycle will tend again toward balance, toward a “tie” at the equinox. Nature provides two such ties per year. 

Ties have a different connotation than deadlocks; ties can be enjoyable, special.  Let’s learn or relearn how to savor them.