Things are simpler than they appear. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you want to beat your family at Scrabble. You have two choices. You can read every book you can find, build an enormous vocabulary and look up the definitions of words you don’t know to defeat all opponents. Or you can remember the following five words: “xi”, “xu”, “za”, “qi”, and “qat”. “Ka” and “ki” are not so bad, either. And every now and then “aa”, “ae”, and “ai” can prove incredibly useful. These are all legal words in the last edition of the official Scrabble dictionary.

What do they mean? I have no idea. You don’t need to know. Somehow, “za” is slang for “pizza”. I’ve never heard of that before. Apparently it’s used on the West Coast but I’ve never heard anyone from there say “za”. I’m told people from Trenton, New Jersey, use the phrase “tomato pies” instead of “pizza” but I grew up 20 minutes from Trenton and never heard anyone use that phrase, either. Some things are mysteries and are best ignored.