The birdle is the wordle

Oh Wordle, how I miss your cousin, Jotto, how I'll miss YOU when the NY Times makes me PAY to tax my brain in order to play you. 

I can't tell you how many games of Jotto I used to play to pass the time. 

 Once, in 1978, my friend  Barbara and I had to "Pass the Time" as  were auditioning for the new CBS game show, "Pass the Buck."

 I was invited to try out, being an ex-game show contestant("the $10,000 Pyramid") since it was  produced by the same team,  and she was my plus-one, who got a call back BEFORE I did, and yes, I handled that like the  pro that I am, the non-jealous pro  who just sold you some swamp land in Florida, which is redundant.

The game, "Pass the Buck",  was like "Outburst" and the idea was to name as many items that fit the category before your opponents could.  Our category was "holidays" and Barbara smartly remembered to include all the Jewish holidays, leaving  the  rest of us  stumped and therefore eliminated.

I remember passing the time with Barbara before our scheduled audition by playing "Jotto" and the reason I remember this is because the first word I randomly chose for her to guess was "misty"--and we'd soon find out, much to our shock, that  the person conducting our test was named... Misty.   

I remember this because of my neurosis, and Misty called me a few days after she called my tagalong, but neither of us made it to the air because the show never did.

I'll tell you first that someone made a version of Jotto and dedicated the game to me in the early 90's, and then I'll tell you a random story about Barbara that most of you have heard before, but because of my compulsion to try to tie things together that don't necessarily belong together, I'll share it again.

I was trying to maintain some decency during Evan's bris.  I should have been on a tropical island, relaxing, eight days after that C-section, which happened 30-some hours after laboring, but I had to feed a crowd  bagels and lox as my newborn  son took part in a ritual that made me cry.

Barbara knew I had a C-section, but carefully whispered a question  about my well-being, since there were so many people surrounding us, waiting for some vegetable  cream cheese.

The incision pain was still intense, so I answered her question as honestly as I could:

"I'm OK..my cut hurts 'though"

Her jaw drops, her eyes widen, as she offers:  "That's from the episiotomy..it'll go away"

I said, "I didn't have that..I had a C-section" to which she replies, with obvious relief, "Oooooh!  Your CUT hurts!"

I was too timid to talk about NORMAL things in my crowded kitchen..did she really think I'd use the most offensive obscenity of all time?

OK..no more v-jay-jay talk..  Yesterday's blog was  about the lost tampon, today's is..is..SUPPOSED to be about wordle..

I 'll try to keep this clean.

I make anagrams all day long, with every sign I see, and then I complain that I can't follow simple directions to a new board game because of my ""undiagnosed dyslexia" that I most likely brought upon myself.

If I DID do that, caused my brain to scramble so much   that dyslexia came about ,  it was totally worth it, because otherwise, I couldn't take my full name, Karen Randi Levson Amster, and SEE.. "kind voles ran near a stream".. now could I?

I have no idea if voles are kind or even if they run, but I bet some of you are googling now to see if you can find photographic evidence of them.

And wouldn't it be a hoot if "voles" is tomorrow's Wordle,  and ninety-nine percent of us guess "loves?"