Scrabble for Cheaters! UPDATED

I am signed up to play in a Scrabble battle of epic proportions this weekend (April 6), against actor Peter Dinklage, Judge John Hodgman, comedian Michael Showalter, playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman, musician A.C. Newman, and comedian David Rees! (But we know who the real celebrity is, now don’t we?!)

826NYC will host its 6th Annual Scrabble for Cheaters on April 6th. It’s bad sportsmanship for a good cause. All the funds raised go directly to supporting the organization’s work with thousands of students all over New York City. In addition, I will be able to use the money you donate to my team to cheat my way toward victory.

You KNOW how strong my Scrabble-Fu is …and my teammate is one of the few who’ve ever given me a competitive game: so we are in it to win it. And, in case we can’t, we have a not-so-secret weapon: CHEATING! This is where I need your help. Cheating — inventing words, creating blanks, using proper nouns/ foreign words, et al —  costs money. So far we’ve raised nearly $300 but we’ll need a lot more to get that extra competitive edge. For example, for $50 I can play a Foreign word. For $75, I can play a Proper Noun (maybe your name?). And for $500 I can make up any word I please!

Help me cheat! It’s for the kids! (Actually, it’s for my own ego and competitive spirit…kids are lagniappe).

Donate to my team, here: http://www.826nyc.org/scrabble13/support/#nosafewords (you’ll find No Safe Words near the bottom of the page and you’ll see Troy Orleans listed on the team). You can find out more about the totally vanilla, completely safe for work/family/friends, etc. 826NYC here.

I really hope you can contribute. Every little bit helps! Thank you!

*************

UPDATE:

A heartfelt and humbled THANK YOU to everyone who contributed. Kisses to you all. Team No Safe Words had a great run all the way to the Final Four, thanks to your generous support! Once in the semi-finals, we bowed to last year’s (and ultimately, this year’s) champs. They were monsters. Between their hefty fundraising (more than twice ours) and their science-y strategizing (there’s even a YouTube video) it was like playing against someone using performance enhancing drugs. Nothing honorable about it. But nevertheless, an incredible, heart stopping, exhausting, adrenaline-surging experience after which, I drank. Steadily.  Overwhelming appreciation, high fives, and a hefty shot of Makers Mark to my fantastic teammate. Sugar, I couldn’t have asked for more or better.