Language teaching

Language teaching - Life :)

Match report

September 21, 2018 by 0 Comments

Like any other app or site whose main purpose is to connect with people, Tinder is a bit scary for me. Scary enough that I started scheduling time each day to ensure I’d actually use it. Monday: an hour of Romanian practice, then my lesson at nine, then coffee, then shopping, then Serbian study for an hour, then lunch, then an hour of Tinder before I prepared for my evening’s lessons. Only I didn’t last the whole hour because I got my first ever match which means we both liked each other, and then some chat thingy popped up on my screen. Uh, what happens now? She sent me a message, I replied, and we eventually agreed to meet at a café in the square on Tuesday evening after I’d finished work for the day.

Tuesday ended up being a pretty good day. In the morning I met up for coffee with a young couple who used to have boatloads of lessons with me, but worked over the summer. They’re about to start their final year at university. I met them at the same place I’d be meeting my Tinder match later in the day; that was a deliberate choice on my part. We had a lovely chat, speaking Romanian the whole time. I’m not sure if they’ll find the time to have any more lessons with me. After lunch I was off to Dumbrăvița for a lesson with my eleven-year-old, and when I arrived there all my lesson plans went out the window (that’s OK though; I can use them next week). My young student had a friend over to play Risk, or Risc as it is here, and they wanted to involve me. His friend was only ten, and almost entirely fluent in three languages: Romanian, French and English. I didn’t do a whole lot of teaching, and somehow got paid to play a board game with a couple of kids for two hours. They had some utterly bizarre house rules that I had an interesting time navigating. I won the first of our two games by sheer luck.

When I got home I had another lesson where I did my fortnightly fill-in-the-gaps lyrics game, this time with REM’s Losing My Religion, and then read and discussed an article on the obesity epidemic in the Western world, which I talked about last month on my blog. At eight it was time to meet my match. By five past, I wasn’t overly optimistic. She works in Corporateville, and when I told her how I make my living, her initial reaction seemed to be, what have we got here? As for her, she didn’t look quite the same as in her various selfies taken in exotic locations including Easter Island. But then everything, somehow, changed. We talked, half in English (hers is immaculate), half in Romanian, and we seemed to feel at ease with each other. When I told her that I shun social media and use a manual diary to organise my lessons, she called the hairy man opposite a hippie. I didn’t mind that one bit. We chatted for nearly two hours. We’re meeting again for coffee tomorrow morning.

Fishing - Language teaching - Life :)

Yes I understand, and no I don’t

September 16, 2018 by 0 Comments

It’s a lovely evening in Timișoara. At 8pm it’s a balmy 24 degrees. Looking at the forecast, the daily highs are a string of 29s, stretching out as far as I can see. The Bega boats are finally back in business after a delay of almost two years caused my Romanian bureaucracy.

After I caught that tiny fish last month, my next session wasn’t so good. The handle fell off the reel and into the river. Luckily it settled on a ledge in the water, so I could “fish” it out fairly easily, but the screw holding it in place was gone. That same morning I saw the repulsive sight of a dead dog floating down the river. When I told Dad about the reel, he put three screws in the post for me in the hope that one of them would fit, and it did, so I’m now back in business. I’m yet to have any success though. Most times I go down to the Bega, the banks are lined with fishermen, often with maximum roddage. But occasionally it’s completely deserted and I have no idea why. It’s like there must have been a public service broadcast on Radio Timișoara, loud and clear: “There are no, repeat, NO, fish in the Bega today. Seriously, don’t even bother.” One of these occasions was last Friday. Not another living soul. A woman came up to me and asked, “Was there, or will there be, anything in the Bega?” Sorry? Maybe I misunderstood the Romanian. She then repeated her question, which I understood but didn’t understand at the same time. It seemed so cryptic. I still don’t know what she meant. Today I got a much more sensible “Did you catch anything?”

Thursday was Firemen’s Day in Romania: Ziua Pompierilor. There was a big parade of firefighters and fire engines past the cathedral and my apartment block.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, or Ziua Crucii. A crowd of thousands, many carrying candles, congregated outside the cathedral last night and gradually made their way inside to the sound of someone drumming on a wooden cross. The bells continued into the late evening (not just the usual quarter-hourly bells) and I could hear a sermon being sung at about five o’clock this morning. The feast has extended into today, with people snaking around the cathedral. I remember all this from last year, and I still don’t quite know what it’s all about.

Ziua Crucii video: click here

On Friday I had a good session with my new 17-year-old female student. This took place in Dumbrăvița, on Strada Pluto of all places. I posted some flyers on that street last week, for its name as much as anything. (I lived in a damp basement flat on a street called Pluto Place on Auckland’s North Shore in 2007-08, hence Plutoman.) After a chat, I gave her what I hope was a helpful explanation of the difference between the past simple and the present perfect, and then we studied a news article about a marathon swimmer. I was then prepared to give her little brother a lesson, but his mother said he was too tired. (I saw him, and he looked full of beans to me.) My next lessons with them are scheduled for next Saturday.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Little people

September 14, 2018 by 0 Comments

Earlier this evening I paid my doctor the usual monthly visit to get my prescription. He commented on my new look: a beard and a load more hair in general than I used to have. He said I looked more manly. In truth I’ve always wanted to look like this, and it’s pretty bloody awesome that I now can.

Matei comments on my facial changes every time I see him. We had quite a busy lesson this afternoon. I finally beat him in the Formula One game, after four losses in a row. Tomorrow I’ve got four lessons planned, three of which are with kids, including the new sister-and-brother combination. My only lesson with an adult is on Skype. I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for teaching children when I came to Romania, and when I started getting calls from parents my initial reaction was, yeah OK, if I have to. But in general I’ve found my lessons with kids to be extremely rewarding. At times I’ve had to pinch myself: not that long ago I was staring at (or more accurately, straight through) spreadsheets relating to ghastly insurance “products”, and now my job involves playing racing-car board games with ten-year-olds. Vroom-vroom, baby.

This morning I spoke to Mum and Dad. We chewed the fat once more over the events of the women’s US Open final, which had moved well outside the sphere of just sport. My parents and I were puzzled at how many people, especially in America, sided with Serena. The only people any of us felt sorry for were Carlos Ramos, who earned only in the hundreds of dollars for the “privilege” of umpiring that match, and Naomi Osaka, whose spectacular victory was overshadowed. For that matter, Novak Djokovic’s win – his 14th grand slam, which came less easily than the final score suggests – was spoiled a bit too. And then there was that Australian cartoonist’s take on it all. Cartoons work by exaggerating the protagonists’ features. Real racism happens, and it’s abhorrent, but this cartoon isn’t an example of it.

On Monday I went back to the cheap eatery I stumbled upon three weeks ago as I was posting flyers. I noticed the name of the place was Aditex, which I found unappetising: the -tex ending invokes something manufactured in a factory, a textile perhaps. Definitely nothing that should pass between one’s lips. Realising that it was just a word and I shouldn’t be bothered by such things, I sat down. My meatball soup was absolutely fine, but then I got the rest of my meal. My fork was dirty, and I should have sent it back, but I wimped out and tried to minimise my fork-in-mouth action until I finished.

It’s warm for the time of year, with temperatures pushing 30.

Language teaching - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

A cluster of random thoughts

September 9, 2018 by 0 Comments

I didn’t watch the women’s US Open final, but now wish I had, for the sheer drama alone. Serena is an incredible player but she’s also a bully, with a “Don’t you know who I am?!” attitude. She has a history of using her bullying tactics at the US Open in particular, where she knows the crowd will probably side with her (as, shamefully, they did in this match). This time she also made completely irrelevant comments about being a woman and having a daughter. I’m pleased that Naomi Osaka played great tennis and got over the line, even if Serena and an obnoxious crowd robbed her of that special moment of winning her first grand slam. Osaka even felt the need to apologise for winning. I suppose I shouldn’t feel too sorry for Osaka – she took home US$3.8 million, which is a crazy amount just for being rather good at whacking furry yellow objects over a net with a bat.

This year’s US Open has seen its fair share of upsets and retirements; the searing heat has been a major factor in the latter. The biggest shock on the men’s side was Federer’s loss to John Millman. I remember Millman from my first day at Flushing Meadows three years ago. I was queuing with my cousin and his fiancée, and Millman (who I didn’t recognise, but I saw his name tag) was at the next-door kiosk, trying to sort out something quite important for his match that was due to start in half an hour. I thought at the time he was clearly one of the have-nots of tennis. With his win over Federer he’ll make the world’s top 50, and he earns nearly half a million for reaching the quarter-finals, so he’s starting to do quite nicely from the game.

On a different day, Federer would have beaten Millman in straight sets, but on this occasion he wasn’t at his best on the big points. On the same day as this match, I watched the Red Sox beat the Braves by the totally flattering score of 8-2, a game in which they were outplayed for long periods, with the result in serious doubt until the eighth inning. After these two results in different sports, I thought about the importance of clustering and sequencing, in sport (and in life too). There are different concepts from timing, which obviously has a profound impact on results as well – a double fault or a walk can range in importance from meaningless to game-changing depending on when it occurs. Sequencing, or the order in which events happen, is also very important, as is clustering. As a rule, you’re better off if good things happen to you one after the other, but you spread your bad things out a bit. That’s very true in life too – we can often handle one issue at a time, but a pile-up of problems can send us into a tailspin. On the other side, achieving a major success (say, a deal with a large record label) relies on a series of positive events happening one after the other. Baseball analysts have tried to figure out what determines effective timing, clustering and sequencing, and the answer (in that sport at least) is very clear: luck.

Politics is one area where clustering is of paramount importance, especially in first-past-the-post systems. The clustering of Democrats in urban areas was a big (and understated) reason for Trump’s win in 2016. Clinton ran up the score in those large cities, making her vote inefficiently distributed. It also affects the other branches of government. Because their opponents are neatly clustered in areas of high density, and because they’re arseholes, the Republicans are able to gerrymander effectively, and that’s why the Dems will need a hefty popular-vote win if they want to take the House in November. Clustering isn’t always bad for political parties, however. If you’re a big party trying to form a government, it harms you, but it’s to your advantage if you’re a small party trying to get some representation in parliament. An interesting case (and a terrible advert for FPTP) was the 2015 UK election, where 3.9 million people voted UKIP but they won just a single seat because they weren’t a dominant force in any geographic area. In the same election, the SNP managed to achieve the best of both worlds, by being entirely “clustered” in Scotland but very unclustered within Scotland. Their 1.5 million votes (half of all votes in Scotland) gave them a whopping 56 of 59 Scottish seats.

I spoke to my parents yesterday. The All Blacks v Argentina game was about to start, and they pointed the camera at the haka. It sounded like a great game. Mum and Dad had just spent a few days in a chilly Moeraki.

Last week I posted about 100 flyers in letterboxes in Dumbrăvița, and I got a reply. Hopefully this week I’ll be starting with a 17-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Insults, intensity and incredible finishes

September 6, 2018 by 0 Comments

This morning I had my back-to-back lessons with the brother and sister in Dumbrăvița. On the way I got a coffee from the little shop with benches outside. On one of the benches was a slightly darker-skinned man in his twenties with his feet on the bench, and on another bench was a man of about sixty who didn’t look particularly healthy. The older man didn’t like the fact that the young guy had his feet on the bench, and told him, “This is Romania! We don’t put dirty shoes on benches. Go back to Turkey, you fucking immigrant!” The young man said only a few words and otherwise ignored him; he was soon in the middle of a voice call.

As for the lessons, well this time I started with the boy. He’s hard work, and he really doesn’t want to be there, but it’s only for one hour and he seems to find the motor racing board game at least somewhat engaging. It was a relief though when he was out of the way and I got to see his big sister who’s much less of a handful.

I’ve watched some extraordinary sport – both tennis and baseball – in the last few days. This morning I turned on the TV – it was well past midnight in New York, but you never know – and lo and behold, Nadal and Thiem were still out there. They were out there for a good deal longer too, Nadal squeezing through in a fifth-set tie-break, a few minutes past 2am local time. There was incredible shotmaking under pressure from both men. I only just managed to see the finale before heading to Dumbrăvița. Then this evening, after a high-intensity grammar workout with two beginner students, I saw that the Red Sox were down 7-1 in Atlanta, heading into the final two innings. In other words they’d all but had it, but hey, this is the 2018 Boston team and you just never know, and over the next 90 minutes I saw the most incredible comeback.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Romania - Tennis

Heading into the home straight

August 31, 2018 by 0 Comments

It’s the last day of August, the final day before we hit those similar-sounding month names that signal the home stretch of the year. As yet, there’s little sign of autumn. Our expected high today is 31 degrees.

Yesterday morning I got a phone call during my lesson. The number was unknown and I couldn’t answer it. I rang him or her back straight after the lesson, but the number was busy. Later I’d need to see my landlady, or to be more accurate my landlord’s intermediary (my actual landlord is based in Israel), to pay my rent in euros and my expenses in lei. Having to trek across town at the end of each month to physically hand over cash in two different currencies doesn’t seem any less ridiculous now than it did nearly two years ago. I walked to Piața Badea Cârțan where I handed over 1390 lei in return for €300 at one of the many exchange offices, picked up some fruit and vegetables and a 2.25-litre bottle of Timișoreana, and then read the final chapters of Station Eleven. I called my landlady to ensure she’d be home, then hopped on the tram (Line 4) just around the corner from the market. It was the hottest part of the day by then, and it was steaming inside that old tram. The only respite I got was when it stopped and the doors opened.

For the first 17 months I met my landlady at her work, the power company which is situated almost next door to the Timișoreana beer factory and conveniently close to Piața Badea Cârțan, but she no longer works. She lives with her husband above a pizza restaurant, almost right outside the penultimate tram stop on the line. Her husband seems to be suffering very badly from depression, perhaps with additional complications, but severe depression is more than enough on its own. The last few times I met my landlady at her office, she broke down in tears. I called her again when I got off the tram, and I could hear a small child in the background. Her husband came downstairs to meet me. I asked him how he was, and immediately regretted it. “Sick,” he said. He took my money, said goodbye, and that was that. I went home on Line 7. When I arrived home I called that unknown number back. After several rings a young woman answered, and said she’d found another teacher in the intervening few hours, almost certainly a non-native speaker.

I had four lessons on Wednesday, two of them back-to-back with the brother and sister in Dumbrăvița, and then two with adults. The lessons with the kids went pretty well; the ones with the adults less so. My 6pm session was with a bloke who is just one day younger than me. His wife used to attend too, but I think she took a dislike to me during a lesson in which we discussed Romanian customer service. She got a job in Vienna soon after that, although she’s since moved back. As for him, he’s had a tough year. His father, who lived in Spain, died in June after a long illness. On Wednesday he was very tired. I wasn’t at my best either, getting myself all confused about the meaning of “repatriation” in a particular context. At 8pm I had a lesson with two beginner-level guys in their early thirties, and I probably made most of the lesson boring, hard and confusing, all at the same time. The final part, where we discussed the habits of British people (football, beer, tea, and so on) possibly just about saved me.

When my aunt and uncle were in Timișoara, I took them to the Museum of the Revolution. The woman at the desk was called Simona, and my aunt said that one of their rhododendrons had the same name. When she was back in New Zealand, my aunt emailed me a picture of the Simona flower, for me to pass on to its namesake at the museum. I don’t think my aunt realised how many Romanian women carry that name, including one of the most famous right now, Simona Halep. Unfortunately for Romanian tennis fans, she fell at the first hurdle at the US Open. It’s been a brutally hot first week in New York.

The Red Sox appear to be back in business; they lost six games out of eight but have now won their last three, including Wednesday night’s game in which they belted a colossal eleven runs in one inning.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The big debate

August 16, 2018 by 0 Comments

Four lessons today, three of them with kids. My favourite moment was probably with the boy who never really wants to be there. We were discussing jobs, and he told me (in Romanian; he rarely speaks English) that he wanted to be either a hairdresser or a cook when he grows up. When I got home I was reading the Guardian and found an article by George Monbiot about obesity, where he notes the distinct lack of fat people in a photograph of a packed Brighton Beach during the heatwave of 1976. He said that excessive eating and lack of exercise are not the main drivers of the epidemic, and surprisingly the average British person consumes fewer calories than they did 40 years ago. Instead he blames the proliferation of sugary, processed foods. Whatever or whoever the culprit is, it’s obvious to me that only some of the blame lies with individuals. OK, so the choices we’re making now are making us fat, and 40 years ago they weren’t. Does that mean we’ve become stupider, lazier and less responsible in that time? I doubt it, and even that were the case, what’s the reason for that?

It’s kind of three steps forward, two steps back, as my teaching volume slowly picks up again. By mid-September I should be back to something like normal.

Since I last posted, the Red Sox have won all five of their matches, including a wild 19-12 game in Baltimore. That score wouldn’t be out of place in rugby. Last weekend also saw an ultimate grand slam, the 30th in the history of the Major Leagues, and something I got all excited about three years ago.

Language teaching - Travel: Romania

How the other half live

August 1, 2018 by 0 Comments

Tomorrow morning at half-six I’m taking the train to Sighișoara. I’ll have to change at Aiud, which I remember being quite a picturesque town as I passed through it on the bus from Bucharest to Cluj in 2016. It seems to be most famous for its large prison. I’ve got 2¾ hours there; it’ll be quite a long day. My train is due to arrive in Sighișoara at close to 6pm. I’m not actually staying in the medieval town, but in the remote village of Daneș about 10 km away. My accommodation will come with a panorama of the mountains, but no internet access. That’s not such a bad thing. Trains from Sighișoara to Daneș exist, and they cost literally pence, but they’re very infrequent so I might end up taking a taxi. I come back on Sunday; I’m due to get in to Timișoara just before midnight. All in all, it should be quite an adventure.

Yesterday I had my lesson with Matei. I got him to read three poems, complete a simple crossword, and answer about 15 “Would you rather…?” questions, which seem pretty popular with kids. Then I introduced him to the Formula 1 game which was clearly a success. We played two games, winning one each. (In the first I spectacularly ran out of fuel on, I think, the fourth lap.) Before all of that he told me about his English camp and his two-week family holiday in Egypt. He described his accommodation as a “seven-star” hotel which seemed to include its own theme park. He told me all about the pyramids and Giza and the Nile and the Red Sea and riding a camel and the searing heat and dirty, stinking Cairo with its population equal to Romania’s. I think of Egypt as being a faraway land, but it’s only three to four hours by plane from here. One of his “Would you rather…?” responses blew me away. Amid all the questions where he had to choose between two superpowers, I asked him if he’d rather be paid 50 lei for every hour of homework he did, or receive no homework at all. No homework, he quickly said. But, but, it’s 50 lei! What do I need that money for? Fifty lei an hour would be a huge amount for most kids in Romania, and even most adults for that matter, and passing up that sort of money at his age would have been unthinkable for me. But he’s right, he doesn’t need the money. I earlier asked the same question of another kid, whose parents are in a similar financial position, and got the same reply.

Next time you might get some more photos.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Saddle sore

July 30, 2018 by 0 Comments

I’ve just got back from my bike trip to Sânmihaiu Român. I’m glad to be back: my arse was starting to really feel it, and I’d slightly underestimated the amount of water I needed on a 30-degree day. Just like me, my bike isn’t quite up to the job. People regularly eased past me in a blaze of lycra. (There wasn’t nearly as much lycra as you’d see in New Zealand though. This is Europe. You’re allowed to ride bikes even if you’re not training for a sodding triathlon. In fact a lot of the blokes who whizzed past me were bare-chested.) At the other end I grabbed an insanely cheap beer, spoke to my parents on FaceTime while at the bar, and read a book in a small park next to the town hall. For some reason my book piqued the interest of two kids.

goat_on_car
There’s something very Romanian about a goat standing on an abandoned car.

This morning I had another attempt at fishing. Still no luck. I’m competing with people who use four rods each, the maximum allowed, and one particular dynamic young fisherman who casts his line, reels it in 30 seconds later, and rides his bike to a different spot nearby to repeat the process. My latest batch of maggots had died in the fridge almost instantly, but I imagine fish will eat dead maggots just like live ones.

I’ve got a new student. She’s coming tomorrow evening. We spoke Romanian on the phone; she described her level as intermediate. People tend to underestimate their level, or are just modest, so I expect her to be quite good. On Tuesday I’ll have my first lesson for a while with Matei. He was telling me on the phone about his new dog, a pug.

My Skype lesson on Friday was interesting. My student was happy with my idea of studying a song. I chose Hotel California for him, and sent him a link to a YouTube video which showed the lyrics. I expected him to casually peruse the lyrics, but no, he memorised them all. Had them down pat. I was blown away. That song has a lot of words, some of which are pretty opaque. “Tiffany twisted”? I used that song with another of my students in one of our fortnightly “song and articles” lessons. That time I removed about 15 words from the lyrics, made a list of the missing words, and asked him to fill in the gaps. On Wednesday I had my usual double bill of lessons with brother and sister. The girl went first, and our 90-minute session passed without a hitch. As usual, however, the hour with her little brother was much more of a struggle. Anything that looks vaguely educational is strictly off the menu, as far as he is concerned. He’s getting bored of Last Card now. I’ll bring in the Formula 1 game next time; it’s certainly been a hit with one of the other boys I teach. In fact I’ll try it out on Matei too.

Scrabble. So yesterday I ended up with four losses, including two Jean Van de Velde-style ones, and finally two wins. To hopefully sort out my time troubles I’ll attempt a bunch of quick-fire, five-minute games on ISC. I’m bound to lose a lot and my rating is likely to plummet, but they should benefit me in the long run. My favourite word yesterday I thought was FILLIP. Six-letter words are relatively uncommon, but this one got rid of some very unpromising tiles and scored well, 32 if I remember rightly.

It’s now raining, and I can hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. It’s just as well I got out on my bike when I did.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Travel plans

July 28, 2018 by 0 Comments

I spoke to my brother this morning. He now has a beard. Yesterday was his 37th birthday. He and his wife have just put their house on the market: they might soon be expanding. The UK has been experiencing a heatwave the likes of which they haven’t seen since 1976.

I’ll have four work-free days in a row soon, so at the end of next week I’ll take the opportunity to do some travelling within Romania. I plan to visit the medieval town of Sighișoara, which is pronounced roughly “siggy-shwara”, just like the place I now call home is “timmy-shwara”. The -șoara suffix is some kind of feminine diminutive, and it comes up in a lot of place names, as well as in words like Domnișoara, which is the equivalent of the English Miss. (Mrs is Doamna.) Because of its prevalence in place names, I got really confused when I saw scorțișoară pancakes for sale. Where’s that, I wondered. The word in fact means cinnamon.
The only trains from Timișoara to Sighișoara take a circuitous route, and they all leave at an ungodly hour. Unfortunately I’ll miss the annual festival, which is taking place right now, so I might end up going somewhere else. But it’s been on my list for some time.

Six games of Scrabble since I last wrote. Three big wins against lower-rated opponents, two of whom resigned before the end, but the others were all close. In one game I found an early low-scoring bingo but my opponent drew both blanks, bingoed with each of them, and kept scoring heavily enough to snuff out my comeback chances. I lost that game by 27. My next game showed that bingos aren’t everything. Both times I bingoed, my opponent had the tiles and the presence of mind to make big scores immediately afterwards. I clung on to win by 22. I was particularly pleased to find BLOOPED in that game. B and P don’t go well together, and it’s easy to give up with a rack like that. I won my final game by just 11 points after going over time by a few seconds and getting stuck with a W. My score of 323 was my second-lowest in a winning effort since joining ISC.

Update: I’ve since had a nightmare game which I had in the bag with both blanks on my rack, only to lose by seven. But for the ten-point time penalty, and possibly the sinus headache I was grappling with, I would have won. Time management is a massive problem for me. Well, it’s not time management as such, it’s just that I can’t see the best plays fast enough, especially towards the end of the game when the board gets blocked. My opponent played all his words in just six minutes. Straight after that horror show I had a lesson with an Italian guy. He didn’t want to do our customary IELTS writing exercise so I half-jokingly suggested we play Scrabble. He agreed. He went first, played SPENT, and on my turn I found SPINDLES through the P. I then had to explain what a spindle was.

Update 2: It’s getting worse. Three more losses on ISC, by 51, 16 and 8.

Update 3: Now two wins! By 27 and 16. Could easily have lost both of them. In the first game I was 133 points down (that’s a lot!) before I remembered from somewhere in the recesses of my mind that CANG was a word. That allowed me to play GLUMmER and gave me just a glimmer. In the second game I led by 109 but was swamped with consonants and swapped tiles three times, and only because my opponent was overrun by consonants at the end was I able to sneak a win.