It's no big secret that one of the first steps to becoming better at
Scrabble (and for that matter, Bananagrams, Quiddler, Upwords, Words
With Friends, and similar games) is to know your two-letter words really
well. Playing a short-to-medium length word parallel to an opponent's
word, forming a whole slew of secondary two-letter words is my favorite
thing to do in life. It racks up loads of points even with low-value
tiles, and tends to not give away high-scoring opportunities to your
opponents. Indeed, according to some guy on the internet, 75% of
Scrabble words played are between two and four letters long, and 50% of
points earned are from those 2-4 letter words. Memorizing all the three-
and four-letter words in the English language is a pretty daunting
task, but memorizing the TWO-letter words is not hard at all-- there
aren't that many-- and once that's done, learning the two-make-three
words (meaning the three-letter words that can be made from existing
two-letter words) would probably be a good next step. That, and learning
the three-letter words with J, Q, X, or Z.
But lets
not get ahead of ourselves. Step one is to learn the official two-letter
words. It's fairly easy to find an official list of two-letter words and just memorize that, but I don't like lists
of words without definitions, so I put together a list of all the valid
two-letter words along with definitions, random comments, digressive
rants, and a few mnemonics for some of the harder-to-remember words.
Enjoy.
AA - Aa (pronounced "ah-ah") is
a type of lava, the rocky, "extra chunky" kind... as opposed to the
smooth, extra creamy type of lava known as "pahoehoe". (Pahoehoe is also
a valid Scrabble word, but I don't imagine it gets played quite as
often as aa). Aa can also be validly pluralized as "aas", though I don't
know how much sense it makes to refer to lava in the plural. It's
acceptable in Scrabble though.
AB - What do you get if you have six-pack abs and subtract five of them? You're left with one ab. No, I'm not making that up.
AD - Ads are the annoying things on TV people used to watch before they all got Tivos and DVRs.
AE -
Scottish for "one", as in, "tha' sassenach's ae bonnie lass". The
Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (OSPD) is kind of inconsistent as far as including
Scottish/Welsh/etc words. Thus, "ae" and "cwm" are arbitrarily
considered valid words, but "ch" and "crwd" arbitrarily aren't. Ch!
Bludy sassenachs!
AG - short for
agriculture. For some reason, the plural of this word, "ags", is
acceptable. Actually a pretty good rule of thumb is that you can almost
always pluralize a noun in Scrabble, even if it would make little or no
logical sense to do so in any conceivable actual sentence. (NOTE: Words With Friends doesn't recognize "ags".)
AH -
as in, "ah, finally you played a word". It turns out that "ahs" is also
valid (think "oohs and ahs"), as is "aah" and "aha"... BUT "ahh" is
invalid; if you have two H's, don't try to play "ahh" or "ehh" like a
noob; see if you can play "pahoehoe" and post a picture of it on
Facebook Instagram or whatever the kids use these days.
AI - Ai, pronounced like
"AH-ee", is what they used to call the three-toed sloth before they
decided it was too confusing, but the words "ai" and "ais" are still
acceptable for Scrabble purposes.
AL -
The al is a type of tree that grows in India. It is more commonly
spelled "aal", which is also a valid Scrabble word. Both spellings can
be pluralized with -s.
AM - as in, "I am not going to explain this word".
AN - as in, "an easy word that I'm also not going to explain".
AR -
the spelled-out name of the letter "R". No, I'm not joking. All English
letters have quasi-official spelled-out names that you can use in Scrabble,
though some are more useful than others. The most interesting letter
names are probably ar, el, es, ef, em, en, ex, cee, zee, and zed (the
British say "zed" instead of "zee" for the letter Z-- which reminds me,
in case you didn't know, British spellings of words are mostly allowed
in Scrabble and WWF, e.g. "centre" or "odour").
AS -
as in, "as in, 'as in, «as in,...»'". If I had infinite styles of quote
marks I could make this definition infinitely recursive.
AT - as in, "where you at, foo'?"
AW - as in, "aw, shucks". Note that the common variant spelling "aww" is NOT acceptable.
AX -
like a hatchet, but bigger. Obviously, "axe" is also acceptable. Fun
fact: if you have an X and at least one of any vowel (not counting Y),
you can get rid of your X easily: ax, ex, ox, xi, xu... all valid words.
Playing an X in such a way that it spells two two-letter words, e.g.
"ax" one way and "xi" the other way, will score the eight-point X
twice-- an essential move to have in your Scrabble arsenal. So now
you'll be happy to see that X in your tray instead of annoyed. You're
welcome. ;)
AY - acceptable variant spelling of "aye", or could be the letter A (see AR above). And since it "can" be the letter A, the plural, "ays", is an acceptable word too.
BA -
No, not the sound a sheep makes. That's spelled "baa" (which is also a
valid word). The ba is an aspect of the soul in ancient Egyptian
mythology. Can be plural, "bas". (See also: KA for more about Egyptian
mythology).
BE - as in, "why you be
trippin'?" Incidentally, "bes" is a valid Scrabble word, but not because
it's plural of "be". Bes is an alternate spelling of the Hebrew letter
bet/beth. (see FE below for more about Hebrew letters). (Note: I have discovered that "bes" is not a valid WWF word,
though it is a valid Scrabble word.).
BI -
short for bisexual. If you play "bi" against your 78 year-old
grandmother, you will probably have to explain what it's short for-- and
possibly you may then have to explain what the long version means also,
and then explain how, when, and why you learned such a word. If you are
not comfortable doing this, just remember those immortal words
attributed to Vince Lombardi: "winning isn't everything; it's the only
thing." And then watch in horror as she back-hooks your "bi" with the
plural form "bis" and says "in yo face, young whippersnapper".
BO -
acceptable variant spelling of "beau", a fancypants word for boyfriend.
Both words are pronounced the same way and both are valid Scrabble
words. Bo can be pluralized as "bos", and beau can be pluralized as
either "beaus" or "beaux" if you are REALLY pretentious.
BY -
think of this as an alternate spelling of "bye", as in, "there are only
seven teams in the tournament, so one will get a by." If you think of
it that way, you'll remember that the plural form "bys" is also
acceptable.
DA - [new for OWL 2014] because saying "dad" is too much work. Whether you are allowed to play this word will depend on what you are playing, and specifically what dictionary you're using. "Da" is a new addition to the official Scrabble word list (as of OWL 2014 and OSPD5, OSPD5, of course, referring to the
Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary 5th edition). If you are using, say, the OSPD 4th edition, "da" will not be there. Interestingly, Words With Friends also recognizes "da"as valid, but the plural situation is more complicated: "das" is
not valid in WWF, but
is valid in Scrabble's OWL 2014 and OSPD5.
DE - meaning "from", like
the French word. I can't explain why some French loan-words like "de"
and "qua" and "beaux" and "amour" and "cirque" made it into the Scrabble dictionary
while other at-least-as-equally well-known French loan-words like "moi"
and "cheri" didn't. I guess "moi" and "cheri" just don't have that
je ne sais quoi. (Note: "Moi" is now recognized in OWL 2014 / OSPD5,
but still no amour for moi in WWF. "Moi" is now recognized in WWF as well!
Sacre bleu!)
DO -
as in, "do I have to explain this one?". Also we have "do" as in,
"do-re-mi", the musical scale song from "The Sound of Music". All the
do-re-mi music note names are valid Scrabble words: do, re, mi, fa, so,
la, and ti/si, and all can be pluralized, since you might have to sing
several "dos" in a row (especially if you sing bass). Note that the
do-re-mi semitones like "ri" and "le", etc, are NOT considered valid,
however.
ED - as in, "special ed".
EF - the letter F (see AR above for explanation).
EH - The E on my car's fuel gauge stands for "Eh, there's still a little bit left."
EL - an elevated train, like they have in Chicago. Also, the letter L.
EM - the letter M.
EN - the letter N.
ER - British for "uh". No doubt much popularized by Harry Potter, who said it a lot in the books.
ES - the letter S. Can also be spelled "ess".
ET -
variant of "ate", as in, "I reckon I done et up a whole mess o' grits,
y'all".
EW- [new for OSPD 6] an interjection of disgust, as in "ew, gross". Interestingly, OSPD 5 did not include "ew" but
did recognize "eew" and "eeew". WWF still does not recognize either of those variant spellings (but has recognized "ew" for a fairly long time now).
EX - the letter X, or could be short for ex-spouse, etc.
FA - a long-long way to run. (See "DO" above for notes about the do-re-mi musical notes).
FE -
a Hebrew letter which also can be spelled "feh". It may surprise you to
know that all the Hebrew letters are valid, and many have multiple
official variant spellings and can help you get rid of annoying tiles
like Q, K, P, or V, which makes them worth knowing. Some other
particularly useful Hebrew letter names are alef/aleph, beth/bet/bes,
tav, vav/vau/vaw/waw, pe/peh, and qoph. And as if that weren't enough,
all these can be pluralized.
GI - [new for OWL 2014] a
karate or judo uniform. This is a Japanese loanword, pronounced with a
hard G and long E sound, i.e. like "ghee" (a word that means "clarified
butter"). No plural for it in WWF, but Scrabble will allow "gis" (OWL 2014 / OSPD5).
GO - in
addition to the verb-- which I would hope everyone knows already-- there
is also the ancient Japanese game of "go", which-- being a noun-- can
be pluralized as "gos". (Note: GOS is not allowed in Words
With Friends.)
HA - as in, "ha! I bet you didn't know 'gos' was a real word."
HE -
the male personal pronoun, as in, "he didn't know that 'he' and 'she'
can also be considered nouns in the sense of 'that's not a «he»; that's a
«she»,' and thus can be pluralized as 'hes' and 'shes', respectively".
HI - as in, "hi there".
HM -
as in, "Hm, I don't have any vowels on my tray so I guess I can't play a
word this turn... OH WAIT". Also valid is "hmm", which is a
surprisingly useful word in Bananagrams (more so than in Scrabble). But
"hmmm" and "hmms" are NOT valid-- have to draw the line somewhere I
guess.
HO - as in, "westward ho!"
Unlike most interjections, you can back-hook this one with an S (i.e.,
"hos"). But that's because ho is also a noun, as in...
ahem... "bros
before hos". I wish you luck explaining "hos" to your 78 year-old
grandma. Go for it! Vince Lombardi! (Note:
"Hos" is not
valid in Words With Friends. Sorry, bros. Bros, rejoice: WWF now has "hos"!)
ID -
The id, together with the ego and superego, comprise the psyche,
according to Freud. All three parts of the psyche are valid words, as
are their plural forms: ids, egos, and superegos.
IF -
as in, "if you learn all the official two-letter words, you will
improve your Scrabble game greatly". Also: "ifs", as in, "no ifs, ands,
or buts" is valid. "Ands" and "buts" are valid words too, by the way.
IN -
as in, "In the beginning...". And note that in this case "ins" is
acceptable too since "in" can in fact be a noun, as in "I know the ins
and outs of Scrabble".
IS - as in, "who dat is?" Note: "dat" is not considered a valid word for some reason.
IT - as in, "I hope you know what it means".
JO -
Scottish for sweetheart. "Jo" is probably the most useful J-word to
know in Scrabble, and furthermore, jo can also be spelled "joe", which
just happens to be the second most useful J-word. Note that "jos" is
invalid; the correct plural for both is "joes".
KA - another aspect of the soul according to Egyptian mythology. The ka is said (by
dictionary.com)
to survive after death, so I guess that means the ba doesn't survive
death? Man, I need to brush up on my ancient Egyptian mythology-- there
might be more useful Scrabble words to discover. Right now all I got is
"ba(s)", "ka(s)", and "ankh(s)".
KI -
variant spelling of qi. (See QI below and prepare to have your mind
BLOWN). "Kis" is the plural. (Note: while "kis" is valid in
Scrabble, it is NOT valid in Words With Friends. You may have already noticed by now, WWF is pretty bad about
not including inflected forms of newer words in their word lists. So, for
WWF, ki = yes; kis = no.)
LA - a note to follow "so". (See DO above).
LI -
a unit of length used in China, about a third of a mile. "Lis" is
valid, even though the Chinese languages don't have plural inflections
like English.
LO - as in, "and lo, I
am with you alway". (Note that "los" is NOT valid). Incidentally,
"alway", the old-timey King James variant of "always", is a valid
Scrabble word too. Other fun King James words to try to use include such
classics as betimes, aright, howbeit and of course thou/thee/thy/thine.
While I'm on the subject, at least one KJV-style finite verb,
"doeth/doest", is valid but most, e.g. "goeth/goest", "availeth", etc,
are not considered valid.
MA - short for "mother", like Ma Beagle from
DuckTales.
ME - a name I call myself. Note that "mes" is NOT valid. There's only one me.
MI -
a name I call myself (when singing the do-re-mi song). Note that "mis"
IS valid. Also see "DO" above for notes about the do-re-mi notes.
MM -
as in, "mm, tasty". "Mmm" is also valid. (Note: MMM is NOT
valid in Words With Friends. Two ems for you, and no more!) But don't
get too crazy-- "mmmm" (with four or more ems) is not valid, even in
Scrabble. That would just be ridiculous.
MO - short for moment, as in, "I'll be there in a mo". "Mos" is valid also.
MU -
the Greek letter. Just as the spelled-out names of English and Hebrew
letters are considered valid (see AR and FE above), so too are the
spelled-out Greek letters. By far the most useful of these are mu, nu,
pi, xi, tau, eta, and zeta. But if you can drop "omicron" or "lambda" on your opponent, go
for it. Feel free to pluralize any of them.
MY - belonging to me. No plural form.
NA - meaning "no". Interestingly, "yesses" and "nos" are valid, but "nas" is not.
NE - acceptable variant spelling of "nee", the word used before a married woman's maiden name.
NO - opposite of "yes". "Nos" is allowed... are allowed... whatever.
NU - the Greek letter (see MU above for more about that).
OD -
"Od" is an antiquated scientific term, like "phlogistons" or
"choleric", today known only to certain eccentric word-mavens. If you're
curious, in times past, od was thought to be a force pervading the
universe that manifested in both magnetism and hypnotism, and presumably
other ways. It is pronounced the same way as "odd". And although it
doesn't make sense to speak of more than one od, since there isn't even
one in existence, let alone more than one, "ods" is a valid word also.
OE -
The Scrabble dictionary says this is a whirlwind of the Faroe Islands. I
cannot determine if that means that there is a particular type of
whirlwind that only happens there called an "oe", or if it's some weird
loan-word thing (note that they don't speak English in the Faroe
Islands, but Faroese and Danish). Most non-Scrabble dictionaries do not
offer a definition for "oe". I assume it's pronounced "oy" (just guessing-- it's hard to find info on this word). The plural
form, "oes" is valid.
OF - as in, "you should know the meaning of 'of'". No plural form allowed.
OH - as in, "oh, is it my turn?" Also it is the spelled-out name of the letter O (see AR above), so "ohs" is allowed.
OI - British for "hey", as in, "Oi! What's all this then!?"
OM - "Om" is probably the most well-known mantra used by transcendental meditators. Pronounce it with a long O.
ON -
Sure, you know this as a preposition meaning "physically supported by"
and an adverb that is the opposite of "off", but did you know that "on"
can be a noun too? A cricket field is divided into an on side and an off
side, referred to as the on and the off. And since it's a noun, it can
be plural: "ons" and "offs".
OP - short for operation, as in "black ops" or "spec ops". And if you are wondering, "spec" is valid also.
OR -
Hopefully you know what the conjunction "or" means, but perhaps you
didn't know that it can be a noun also. The noun "or" is a heraldry term
meaning the color gold, and thus can be plural: "doesn't that coat of
arms have pretty ors and argents?" Many other technical heraldry terms
are valid, e.g. blazon, gules, crosslet, dexter, guardant... but some
are not, e.g. chequy, langued.
OS -
Now this one is interesting. There are no less than THREE different
words spelled "os", with a total of FOUR different plural forms between
them! "Os" meaning "a bone" (pronounce with short O), is pluralized as
"ossa". "Os" meaning "an orifice of the body" (also pronounced with
short O) is pluralized as "ora" (friggin' Latin plurals, man). And "os"
(with LONG O and soft S pronunciation) meaning "a long esker" (an esker
meaning "a serpentine ridge of gravelly and sandy drift", thank you
dictionary.com)
is pluralized as "osar" since it is a Swedish loan-word. Alternatively,
you can pluralize all three as "oses", which is also a valid word.
OW - as in, "ow, that last word made my brain hurt".
OX -
a bull that's been, er, "fixed". Incidentally, both the old-school plural "oxen" and the hip, modern
"oxes" are acceptable.
OY - a variant spelling of "oi".
PA - short for father, as in "ma and pa".
PE - a Hebrew letter, also spelled "peh". See FE above for notes about Hebrew letters. Actually, pe and fe are the same letter, strangely enough.
PO - [new for OWL 2014] slang for a chamber-pot. Don't ask me where the Scrabble people got this one; perhaps it's best we not delve into such matters. I assume it's pronounced like the word "pot", just leaving off the T (perhaps with a glottal stop in place of the T?).
Note also that "po" is not considered valid in Words With Friends. As of April 2019, Words With Friends now recognizes "po" and its plural "pos".
PI -
a Greek letter (see MU above). Fun fact: pi, pe, and our letter P all
ultimately derived from the same Phonecian letter, and all still
represent the same sound.
QI - a term
from traditional Chinese medicine/philosophy/martial arts meaning
(basically) "spiritual energy" or "breath". It's also
spelled "ki", "khi", or "chi"; probably the "chi" spelling is seen more
commonly, but the qi(s) and ki(s) spellings will be most useful to you
as Scrabble words. Fun fact: when "qi" was made an official word in the
fourth edition of the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (OSPD4), the
Scrabble world was thrown into mass chaos with rioting in the streets
and people calling for the point-value of the Q-tile to be changed. This
is because the existence of "qi" completely changes the dynamics of how
you play the Q-tile. I would say for myself, I probably play "qi" at
least two-thirds of the time I get a Q in my tray (two ways if possible
for huge points, or QI one way and QAT or QUA the other way for even
huger points).
RE - a golden drop of sun (see DO above).
SH -
interjection meaning "be quiet". It's another possibility (along with
the aforementioned "hm" and "mm") when you have no vowels in your tray.
"Shh" is also valid. While I'm thinking about it, there are also a few
other vowel-less words: nth, brr(r), zzz, crwth, cwm. Technically the W
functions as a vowel in those last two, but let's not get pedantic. (Note: GRR has now been added to Scrabble as of OWL 2014 and OSPD5, but GRRR [with three ars] is still not valid even though BRRR is. Neither GRR nor GRRR are valid in Words With Friends. Grr! So angry!)
SI -
the original spelling of the do-re-mi note "ti". See DO above. They
changed "si" to "ti" so the notes could all begin with different letters.
SO -
a needle pulling thread, i.e. another do-re-mi note. See DO. Also it's a
conjunction of course, but if you think of it as the do-re-mi note,
you'll more easily remember that it can be plural: sos.
TA -
The Scrabble dictionary says "an expression of gratitude". I have no
idea in what crazy slang or regional dialect they say thank you as "ta".
Weirdly, "tas" is also valid even though interjections normally are not
allowed to be plural (except when they also happen to be Hebrew letters
or whatever, as is the case with "hehs"). Regular dictionaries note
that "ta(s)" can be a semitone note on the do-re-mi scale or the third
letter of the Arabic writing system, but other do-re-mi semitones and
Arabic letters are NOT considered valid Scrabble words. I will have to
do more research on this one.
TE - [new for OWL 2014] a drink with jam and bread, i.e. an alternate spelling of "ti". Not recognized in older Scrabble dictionaries
or Words With Friends. As of April 2019, WWF recognizes "te" also. Note that "tes" is allowed in Scrabble but still not in WWF; as noted above, plural inflections of new words are frequently overlooked in Words With Friends.
TI - a drink with jam and bread (see DO for explanation).
TO - the preposition, like "toward". No noun or verb form so you can't pluralize it.
UH - as in, "uh, is that really a real word?"
UM - as in, "um, I think so." Note that "umm" is valid too. But no plural.
UN - means "one", as in, "I reckon that's a big un right yonder". "Uns" (as in "big uns") is acceptable too.
UP - the direction opposite down. It's also a verb: as in, "he ups the ante", AND a noun, as in "the ups and downs of life", so feel free to slap an es onto the end of up.
US - the objective first-person plural pronoun.
UT -
the original "DO" on the do-re-mi scale. Before there was "Do: a deer, a
female deer / Re: a golden drop of sun", etc, there was "
Ut queant laxis /
resonare fibris /
Mira gestorum /
famuli tuorum /
Solve polluti /
labii reatum /
Sancte
Iohannes",
which I think you'll agree is almost as good a mnemonic song for
remembering the major scale as the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. The
note "ut" (pronounced "oot") was changed to "do" so that the notes would
all start with a consonant and end with a vowel.
WE - the subjective first-person plural pronoun.
WO - acceptable variant spelling of "woe". "Wos" is also acceptable.
XI - another Greek letter, my favorite. See MU above.
XU -
a former unit of currency in Vietnam, pronounced like "sue". Besides the xu,
Vietnam also had the hao (pronounced "how") and the dong (ten xu to the
hao and ten hao to the dong... but today only the dong remains). Fun fact: virtually ALL units of currency,
both modern (e.g. dollar, yen) and obsolete (e.g. denarius, doit), are
valid Scrabble words. In addition to xu, other useful currencies are the
hao, dong, euro, yen, sen (which is a fraction of a yen), rin (fraction of a sen), yuan (Chinese currency), jeon (South Korean currency), doit (a now-obsolete
currency in I think the Netherlands), sheqel (can also be spelled with a
K), zaire (yes, the zaire was once the currency of the country
Zaire), and denarii (which is among the top 1000 bingos by letter commonality). Some currencies can be pluralized with an S, though xu and hao cannot. (Denarii is already plural. Its singular is denarius, which is valid also, but not commonly played since it is an eight-letter long word.)
YA - variant of "yeah". Note that "yas" is not valid since there's no noun or verb form of the word "ya". (Note: new for OWL 2014, YAS is valid, probably meaning the "humorous" mispronunciation of "yes". However, it is still invalid in WWF, and if you are using OSPD4 or older.)
YE - as in, "ye who are spiritual, restore such a one" (...such a one as plays "bi" against their grandmother, that is).
YO - as in, "yo, the entry for XU totally blew my mind".
ZA -
Supposedly, "za" is slang for "pizza". I can't find any documentation
for this aside from the Scrabble dictionary though, so I'm not even sure
how it's supposed to be pronounced (I prefer "zuh"). But whatever,
"za(s)" will serve you in good stead as a Scrabble word, much like QI.
***
SPECIAL WORDS WITH FRIENDS ADDENDUM:
There are an additional
three four seven make that
eight two-letter words in WWF that are
considered valid in that game, but not (currently) recognized in Scrabble.
These words are
DI, FI, JA, JE, IO, EE, OO, and
OU.
I do not know what
FI or
DI are
supposed to mean-- possibly they could refer to do-re-mi semitones, but
other semitones like "ri" are still not valid in WWF. Probably they had
some other meanings in mind for di and fi, but I do not know for sure.
If I had to guess, I might venture that "fi" is back-formed from "re-fi"
(short for "refinance") or "hifi" (high fidelity, referring to audio
devices) or, less likely, "wifi" (wireless internet), but I have never actually heard
or seen the word "fi" used by itself to mean "finance" or "fidelity" or whatever (and "fis" is not allowed by WWF, so it
may not even be a noun, though WWF is very inconsistent when it comes to remembering to add plurals of new words, so the lack of "fis" may not mean anything). As for "di", I have no idea what they were thinking.
"Dis" IS allowed; however, it's probably short for "disrespect", e.g.
don't dis my two-letter word list.
I discovered that
JA, JE, IO, EE, OO, and
OU are playable WWF words in late April 2019. I suppose JA is from German (where "ja" means "yes"), but is "ja" really used commonly enough in English to be considered an English word? It would seem so, according to some. I assume OO is a variant spelling of OOH. The others I am not sure about. As of the current time, these words only work on the desktop/Facebook version; the mobile app version of WWF does not yet accept them, though I expect that will be fixed before too long.)
***
SPECIAL OWL 2014 ADDENDUM: Four additional two-letter words became official for Scrabble with the release of OWL 2014 and OSPD5. These are
DA,
GI,
PO, and
TE. Entries have been added for them above. But be aware, if you are playing Scrabble using an OSPD4 (or older), those words are likely to be challenged!
Of these four, DA and GI are also recognized in WWF, but PO and TE are currently not. WWF now recognizes all of these words.
At some point, I need to add the two-letter words that are new for OSPD6 that aren't yet in WWF, which I believe consist only if IE and OK (I don't yet have a copy of OSPD6).
***
(Note: the preceding was originally posted by me in slightly different form as a Facebook Note, back when those were a thing, in the distant primordial past of April 2012.)
