Today’s theme is 2-letter words with emphasis on Scrabble word game. Six words, not very verbose! The words of the day are Jo, Ka, Ki, Qi, Xi, Za!
Without further ado let’s start with dictionary meaning of the words. In alphabetic order below are the words and their meaning.
Jo: sweetheart, dear. Often used in addressing a person
Ka: (in ancient Egypt) the supposed spiritual part of an individual human being or God, which survived (with the soul) after death and could reside in a statue of the person.
Ki: A term indicating intrinsic energy; usually associated with martial art – karate, judo, aikido, etc – practitioners who consider ki important to performing at the highest level.
Qi: the circulating life force whose existence and properties are the basis of much Chinese philosophy and medicine.
Xi: the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In astronomy the fourteenth star in a specified constellation
Za: short for pizza
No post is complete without a story though 
In recent times I have been playing Scrabble on my tablet with virtual opponents. Why virtual opponents? They are always ready to play and there is no risk of offending them inadvertently unlike humans who can get emotional at times and react strongly, justified or not. There is no risk of pissing off virtual opponents 
The advantage of using above words is that it’s easier to use high scoring Scrabble letters like J, K, Q, X, Z (due to relatively lesser # of words in the dictionary with those letters) for words on the board as they just need a supporting vowel already on the board. Also, there is less dependency on other supporting letters that may be needed generally. For example, every word other than “Qi” that I know with letter “q” needs the letter “u”. A strategically placed high score letter like Q and Z can also yield high-yielding dividends if they are placed on double or triple word or letter squares! However, it can also be a double-edged sword. Let me explain. When I first started playing, I noticed that the virtual opponents were not using the above 2-letter words much and I was getting away with high scoring words easily. After I played the virtual characters more often, I noticed lessons of previously played games were absorbed and used against me 
While working hard to create high scoring position for difficult letters the virtual opponent would swoop in to play words to block my high scoring opportunity. So, a square with letter ‘a’ on it and a triple-word square available above or to the left would turn into a high scoring “Za” for the virtual opponent leaving me shaking my head in frustration. Hard to imagine a slice of pizza leaving a bad taste but that’s how it feels when that happens 
Even in that there is a life lesson learned. In real life there are times when one does all the hard work only to find someone else take the credit. As in life, so in game! There are opportunities to learn life lessons anywhere, anytime, any occasion! 
TheRajBlog 