A Hard Scrabble Existence

Some history and some new words

“One should use common words to say uncommon things.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

If you’re a word nerd, odds are, you enjoy playing games like Wordle or Scrabble.

And naturally, you’ve already picked up on the play on words in the title of today’s Off the Clock entry — hardscrabble is an adjective: providing or yielding meagerly in return for much effort; demanding or unrewarding.

And as someone who has played and enjoys the board game Scrabble, I thought it might be fun to at a quick peek under the tiles.