Outwitted At Every Turn

Playing games on paper with Daniel is different.  This evening, he drew a tic-tac-toe board with 49 squares.  [He seems to have recognized his innovation, and he asked me to draw another one for him prior to our game.]  He picks challenging words like "the" and "me" for hangman.  He picked "D_n_el", on one round, and this mysterious word turned out to be "Daniel".  The next word, toward the end of the game, had a pattern of "_an," and after all my wrong guesses and utter defeat, I found out that the word was "Ian."  Next came "m_m," which somehow turned out to be "Mom."

Daniel beat me in the vast majority of the games that we played in the card tonight (and at the gas station; he had me write my "O'" onto the tic-tac-toe board, passing it through his window, as I pumped the gas).

But at the end of it all, he made an unusual accusation:

"Daddy, I think that you're actually trying to be dumb."

But sometimes, things are just too hard to guess.

(May 17, 2012)