They had to do something to pass the time.

They were snowed in – not just snowed in, but stuck, without a single plane, train, or automobile leaving the city for the foreseeable future.

The news reports were calling it the storm of the century, or they had before the power got a little too spotty to spend any on tv and the wifi got so miserable nobody could get a signal except when they sat in one specific spot in the middle of the dorms.

They’d started with board games.

That, of course, had led to arguing about board games.

That had almost led to a fist fight, but Maddy had gotten in the middle and handed Jody her glove.

Jody had, of course, hit Pat across the face with it.

Which had led Maddy to facepalm, because well, yes, that had been the idea, but it wasn’t meant to leave a welt.

“I challenge you to…. dictionaries at fifteen paces!”

“Well,” Maddy muttered, “it was Scrabble.”

And to be fair, it was something to do and it would probably be entertaining.

Alex paced out 15 paces; Kennedy brought some bright pink masking tape (Maddy didn’t ask) and marked out the lines.  Jody and Pat went to their rooms to get dictionaries.

Meanwhile, Ame, Alex, Kennedy, Maddy (of course) and everyone else argued about how that was a challenge and what you did.

“All right,” Maddy declared, when both participants were standing at their marks.  “The rules are thus.  One of us gives you a word.  We’ll take turns.  First one to reply with one of the following – a word including that word, for example, homestead for home, a longer synonym of that word, or a word starting with the same first letters but longer – that person gets the first point.  If the other person can reply with another word that is then the same thing for the longer word, then they get two points.  We go on until we’re bored, until there’s a clear winner, or until the power comes on.”

In retrospect, it probably would’ve been best to add or until it devolves into a fist fight again, because it was only four rounds later that Jody shouted “Cheater!  That’s a thesaurus!” and all hell broke loose.

Dictionaries also made impressive weapons, as it turns out.