James Berman describes how four incarcerated men cope with prison life through scrabble in prison, trading humor, intellectual competition, and friendship — one word at a time.

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Four ruthless pragmatists are anchored around a Scrabble board, making plans to change the world. Each author is damaged in our own touchy way, doling out letters across a board like off-balance prophets whiling away the day. The game compresses the hours as the days squeeze us. These are gentlemanly games in a space of churlish mayhem, no betting, rarely even a brag. The plans to change the world are our own—for when the time comes. Mostly, there is calm animation among us; the game is the excuse to congregate in a civil space to simply breathe and find our own way of coping with prison life.

Aaron is the academic, a loner, yet affable. He is approachable like a feral cat is approachable. UPSIZE. 15 points.

The rain cloud at the table is genteelly and openly Eeyore. It’s always gray in Walter’s world, comically so. This is the guy who would find a treasure of gold bars and take issue with having to lift them. “Oh, jeez, how am I going to carry these?” Walter plays for points. He laments missing scoring opportunities, sometimes lingering for days. CUPSIZE. 17 points.

“No, no, no! Not a word! Check the book!”

Walter is the oldest of our gang of four. The weight that he carries spills out from the wrinkle lines of his devastated spirit. Any word that comes close to flashing back to pre-prison life gets a discourse on “that’s how you spell my daughter’s school if you move the E and the…” and “that’s my ex-wife’s dog’s name.” He grips that shadow life that came before his nine-year sentence. It’s hard to hold on so dearly, for so long, to the melancholy of a life that doesn’t exist any more. JINNI. 28 points, with a triple letter score.

Aaron’s demeanor is unswayed by being in prison. I’m sure this is his authentic self. His long, more salt, less pepper beard is telling. More wizard cum sage than anything, he’s the antithetical inmate. There are curtains around his eyes, keeping narratives and tragedies for himself. He isn’t shy. No, he has much to say but just not anybody to say it to. His quiet fills in when the blather subsides. He is a remarkable peddler of mad-up words, providing some quasi-scientific meaning that’s almost always convincing.

Littleton is the youngest of us. He is also the next to leave this place, in short order at that. His enthusiasm for Scrabble is second only to winning. By far the most empathetic about landing seven-letter words, even when they’re loose-fitting fabrications of, you know, actual words. He’s a jovial, jiggling ball of puissant humor, fueled by the nearness of his release. After confinement for a stretch of seven years, he drums his ample belly when he talks of his first meal, his first movie, his first clothing trip upon “maxing out.” I think “euphoria” is appropriate. Littleton whittles and cobbles words, raked from the stew of his sci-fi, anime, and fantasy books. He is Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons in every way. TOPANGA. 10 points, plus 50 for a seven-letter word!

“No! That’s not a word!” A challenge means losing a turn for the challenger, should the word actually exist in the official Scrabble dictionary, or a zero for the con trying to pull off a fictitious construct like “topanga.” Littleton is adept at getting zeroes.

“That is not a word,” I repeat, with a half laugh, after checking the 7th Edition Bible.

“Well, I was waiting for you to put down a letter so I could, you know, make a real word,” he says, as the stoics stumble over our laughter.

We aren’t some heartbroken pathos lamenting lost time, but the curious behavior of four men and the ritual of a board game. It’s that or watch daytime television.

“What the hell is TEEL?” asks Aaron on my two-way word construct butting against the L in FLOW.

“Is that a challenge, sir?”

He sighs in resign, not risking struck points.

TEEL and FLOW. 22 points with a triple-point letter, thank you very much.

Mostly, our game play is the canvas for wandering conversations. Today, it’s 80s alternative rock. Yesterday, it was how to muffle the echo and aroma of farts so as not to disturb your cellmate.

“I sit on a folded blanket, but it still escapes,” confesses Littleton. Walter rolls his eyes.

“Where do you think it goes?” asks our Eeyore.

“I don’t know. I just thought it stayed in there.”

See, we aren’t a cheerless bunch. More like coffee-fueled oracles contemplating the torment of prison-issued bologna sandwiches and the resulting noxious overflow resulting from consuming the aforementioned.

DUNGS. 7 points.

“What?” I ask Aaron.

“You know. Like many types of dung. There’s a whole branch of science that studies dung,” he says. “Challenge?” Always the scientist.

“Isn’t that, like, the pre-tense or post-tense of dung?” asks Littleton.

“What the hell is post-tense?” I bark. “No. No challenge,” I surrender.

“Ha! Dungs: To fertilize with dung. It’s a verb,” Walter reads from The Book.

“I hope you feel dirty!” I tell Aaron.

Sometimes the talk gets more virulent. We don’t talk politics, but we do talk about post-incarceration fall-out. We lament on what life will look like on the other side of this. We dig into the limitations of probation, housing, job searches. We also chew on the particular absurdity of whichever oddity is afoot. Last week, it was the regular and extended absence of our counselor, who is supposed to help with advocacy and rehabilitative programs. Earlier this week, it was the burgeoning prices of must-haves from our commissary. Sometimes trivial matters eke into the banter—the repetition of Training Day on our in-house movie channel or the sudden appearance of mysterious stains on the wall by the telephone. We observe and report. Walter mostly complains.

QUENELLE. 34 points. Double word score. Ah, my culinary background to the rescue!

Littleton doesn’t gloat with his nearing departure. If nothing else, we are civil to a fault—except for the fart talk. Aaron has a bit less than a year to go. I’m closer to two. Walter is sitting for several more years. His lamenting isn’t wholly unjustified.

Littleton is animated and (too?) enthusiastic about our board game ritual. But it’s endearing. He’s one of the guys. He’ll leave. Inevitably, a new nerd will join the circle.

Our camaraderie also spills into the non-game parts of the day.

“Hey, Walt, how was work?” I ask.

“Fine. I just hate working with the Gorgon. Hey! That’s like a 25-point word. Know what a Gorgon is?”

“No, but I know that the guy who said it is a NERD, and that’s only a five-point word.”

I often get ribbed for being less than present at our tourneys. A particular word may resurrect a memory. POINT takes me back home to the massive fountain at Point State Park, in the elbow of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers forming the Ohio, right in the middle of Pittsburgh. LATTE takes me back to when my younger daughter and I went to Italy; I ordered a latte and got a warm glass of milk, mistaking the American version for what the Italians would interpret. It was easier to laugh back then.

Even the setting for our game stirs nostalgia. I think of the old guys stationed around their chess boards in Bryant Park, right behind the New York Public Library. Apostles, deep in contemplative reverie, I had long wondered how these guys found themselves tarrying in the park. I would sit at a distance from them, sideways observing as I ate a waffle from a park vendor. My silent indulgence, calculating their spot in life.

As I sit with my own gang of miscreants, I see how we, too, have been flung together to dispense with time. Is it an exclusive legion of old guys crowding our table, or the Bryant Park tables? I know that the guys in the park intimidated me. Steeled eyes, analog movement, serious about their game. We’re serious about ours, too. We look for the fruit beneath the bitter peel.

It’s philosophy. It’s also coping. How much grunting from Nashville doing his repetitive squats do I need to endure? How many times do I need to be subject to maniacal laughter about the latest technique to skip work? Or the banging on tables to applaud the latest prized theft from the jail’s kitchen? This place is more an asylum than anything else. So we paddle to saner shores, one word at a time.

Our game is academic. Frankly speaking, prison isn’t really an environment of prose and intellectual fortitude. So we get to take our thinking out for the occasional walk. It isn’t showy. There’s a vulnerability in coming up with clever words when sitting with the smartest kids in the class. This is our basketball court, our weight-lifting room, our PlayStation.

Aaron waters down his game. His lexicon eclipses probably everybody else’s in the building. Our grumpy Walter’s propensity for bringing his past into our game outplays Littleton’s strategizing of using made-up words. I read a lot and try to hold my own, but mostly try not to embarrass myself with sophomoric play. I wonder if the Bryant Park guys contend with the same intellectual payload. Finding out is on my to-do list once I leave this place.

My saving grace is imagining myself watching those elder statesmen of chess as they perform. I will study those guys and look for the big brain of the pack, the faker, the curmudgeon. And I’ll look for me and know him when I see him.

PENANCE. 8 points.