Oh, and last night Shannon and I played a game called Crosswords, which is part of the Letter Head game collection. It's hard to explain, but Letter Head is a box containing cards with letters (and point values) on them, and a booklet that describes a variety of games you can play using those cards.

Well, as I said, we played Crosswords, which is kind of similar to Scrabble in some ways, except that each player builds their own 5x5 grid. So each time you pick up a card, you choose where to put it on your grid, and then you fill in the blanks and try to end up with words in the rows and columns at the end.

I kicked Shannon's ass most thoroughly, both times we played. In fact, in our second round, my score was more than double his. I told Shannon that I think it pays to be obsessive when playing this game ... so I had a considerable advantage.

Word games rock. I'm always happy to find a new one I like. Especially one (like Boggle or Crosswords) that doesn't involve any antagonistic element. I like competition but not antagonism. So I prefer games in which everyone is doing their best, but not trying to screw each other over.