[ Featuring Max Crumm, 'The Connector' Original Cast ]
[ETHAN, spoken]
On a Friday night earlier this summer
I entered a bar on a quiet street in West Village
Where a boisterous crowd of NYU students surrounded a small table
Upon which lay a battle-scarred Scrabble board
Seated at the table was Waldo Pine
The village's own Sultan of Scrab
Unshaved, unsober and allegedly undefeated
I sat down across the table from Waldo
Laid down my obligatory twenty-dollar bill
Fished seven wooden tiles out of a greasy bag
And asked him how he did it
[WALDO, laying down tiles]
One, two, three, four, five
"Jarrah"
I like to start with a word
That's probably something you've never heard
Now you're off your game
'Cause I start with "Jarrah"
[WALDO, spoken]
Forty-eight points
You've got thirty seconds
[WALDO]
Ooh! What's this comin' down the chute?
[WALDO & ETHAN]
"Haven"
[WALDO]
Aw, that's cute
See, I'm in your head
So sayonara
[WALDO & ETHAN]
Fifteen by fifteen
[WALDO]
Is the borders of my land
[WALDO & ETHAN]
Fifteen by fifteen
[WALDO]
Is the world I understand
So come on in, take a look around
Relax, kick off your shoes—
But there's one seven-letter word
That you are never gonna use!
[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
Could be my middle name if my middle name weren't Dan
[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
You say, "You can't do that"
But I do that because I can
[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
Set up the target, put on the blindfold, I won't miss
[WALDO & ETHAN]
Now you might have seen another boy do it before
But he didn't do it like this
[WALDO lays down seven tiles on the board.]
[WALDO, spoken]
"Assayed"
That's a bingo, all seven letters, fifty point bonus
Plus I turned "haven" into "shaven"
Don't make it so easy for me, little bro
[WALDO]
Some folks, this would be too loud
But I do better inside a crowd
'Cause I like that noise and the validation
Look at you, you're trying to think
Your vocabulary pushed to the brink
But you can't avoid the humiliation
[WALDO & ETHAN]
Bingo by bingo
[WALDO]
I lay you frat boys low
[WALDO & ETHAN]
I know the lingo
[WALDO]
You Princeton pricks don't know
They said there's a boy in a piano bar
Playin' Scrabble and getting how rich?
Maybe you heard I'm a little nerd
Well, this is what a nerd looks like now, bitch!
[CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
I'm a fighter! Touch my mitre! Kiss my ring!
[CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
Use your dictionary, it's not gonna change a thing
[CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
Meaning "victory"
That's my "ave atque vale"-dictory
It's not a trick to me
Words just stick to me
You look sick to me
Come on, children, sing
[CROWD]
Woah
[WALDO]
All the answers are floating
[CROWD]
Woah
[WALDO]
In a grid above the grid
[CROWD]
Woah
[WALDO]
You can't take them like candy
[CROWD]
Woah
[WALDO]
You just breathe them in like clouds
[WALDO & ETHAN]
I was reading the Bible
And I thought, "How lonely we are"
I thought how lonely we are
I thought how lonely we are
[ETHAN, spoken]
In my family, I had always been the killer Scrabble player
But after ten minutes
Waldo was ahead of me by well over three hundred points
[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
It's what I dress in in Manhattan or Macao
[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
Hope you enjoyed the lesson
I'll take that twenty now
[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!
[WALDO]
Not to ramble like Joseph Campbell
But follow my bliss
[WALDO & ETHAN]
You might have seen another boy do it before
[WALDO, ETHAN & CROWD]
But he didn't do it
Didn't do it
Didn't do it
No, he didn't do it like this!
[ETHAN, spoken]
Two weeks later, I brought some friends down to the Village
But when we got to the bar, the door had been padlocked
And there was a real estate sign hanging in the window
As we walked away, my eye caught something in a pile of leaves
To my surprise, it was a single wooden tile
And when I flipped it over, like a private inscrutable message:
The letter H
Four points
[WALDO]
Incidentally, "Jarrah" is a tree
[CROWD]
Ah