The following afternoon the Senior Common Room found Mr Blottisham unusually pleased with himself.
This was generally regarded as an early warning sign.
"I have made a philosophical discovery," he announced.
Professor Quillibrace looked up from his book with the expression of a man who had heard this sentence before.
"Have you?"
"Yes."
Miss Stray smiled.
"What sort of discovery?"
"It concerns Scrabble."
"I see."
"I now understand that it is exactly like football."
Professor Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"No."
"It is."
"No."
"It really is."
"No."
Mr Blottisham folded his arms.
"You haven't even heard the argument."
"I am merely attempting to reduce the amount of work required to reject it."
"I was playing online last night," Blottisham continued, "and I realised I was deliberately not playing my highest-scoring word."
Miss Stray looked interested.
"Why?"
"Because it left me with dreadful letters."
Professor Quillibrace slowly replaced his spectacles.
"Continue."
"I could have scored forty-one points."
"And?"
"I played a twenty-six-point word instead."
"You voluntarily scored fewer points?"
"Yes."
"Extraordinary."
"It left me with A, E, N, R and S."
Quillibrace nodded.
"A balanced rack."
"Exactly."
"You were preserving future opportunities."
"I was."
There was a pause.
"I dislike it when Mr Blottisham accidentally behaves like a strategist."
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
"So the twenty-six-point move was actually the better move?"
"Precisely," said Quillibrace.
"The value of a move cannot always be measured by its immediate reward."
Blottisham looked delighted.
"That's what I said."
"You implied it."
"I implied it very enthusiastically."
Miss Stray reached for the biscuit tin.
"So every move changes two things."
"Indeed."
"What exists now..."
"...and what becomes possible next."
"So the letters are not simply letters."
"No."
"They are future words."
"Better."
"They are probabilities."
"Better still."
"They are possibilities waiting to become actual."
Professor Quillibrace looked faintly impressed.
"I shall overlook the poetic phrasing because, on this occasion, it is also correct."
Mr Blottisham looked puzzled.
"But why does this feel so different from ordinary board games?"
"Because," said Quillibrace, "most people think they are manipulating objects."
"But they aren't?"
"They are manipulating possibility spaces."
Blottisham frowned.
"I don't know what that means."
"No."
"Can you explain it without saying 'possibility space'?"
Quillibrace sighed.
"I shall try."
He picked up the sugar bowl.
"Suppose this is your rack."
"I have never received so much sugar in Scrabble."
"It is an illustration."
He arranged several sugar packets beside it.
"These represent future letters."
Miss Stray smiled.
"I suspect this demonstration is already drifting beyond the available evidence."
"Quite."
Quillibrace ignored her.
"When you play a word, you do not simply remove letters."
"You change what combinations become likely."
"Exactly."
"You alter the statistical shape of your future."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"So the game isn't really about words."
"No."
"It's about tomorrow."
Quillibrace stopped moving the sugar packets.
"That..."
he admitted,
"...is unexpectedly well put."
Miss Stray looked from one to the other.
"This sounds rather familiar."
"It should," said Quillibrace.
"It is exactly what we were discussing about football."
"The pass."
"The pass."
"The through ball."
"The through ball."
"The backwards pass."
"The misunderstood backwards pass."
Blottisham nodded vigorously.
"So my twenty-six-point word was the lexical equivalent of passing sideways."
"An astonishing sentence."
"But true?"
"Entirely."
Blottisham leaned back triumphantly.
"I knew football and spelling had something in common."
"You did not."
"I sensed it."
"You wandered into it."
"I arrived."
"You collided with it."
Miss Stray laughed.
"So perhaps chess, football and Scrabble all share the same hidden structure."
"They do," said Quillibrace.
"In each case, the novice asks,
'What is my best move now?'
The expert asks,
'What sort of future does this move create?'"
There was a thoughtful silence.
Finally Blottisham spoke.
"I wonder whether life is like that."
Professor Quillibrace looked over the rim of his teacup.
"I have been hoping someone would eventually ask."
"So life isn't about making the best decisions?"
"I doubt it."
"What then?"
"Perhaps it is about preserving the richest possibilities."
Miss Stray nodded slowly.
"Not trying to predict the future..."
"...but trying not to imprison it."
Blottisham stared into the fire.
"That sounds rather important."
"It probably is."
"Do universities teach this?"
Quillibrace laughed quietly.
"My dear Blottisham..."
he said,
"...universities spend a remarkable amount of time doing the opposite."
For several moments nobody spoke.
Then Blottisham brightened.
"I've got it!"
Quillibrace closed his eyes.
"What?"
"We should create a Centre for Applied Possibility Management."
"No."
"We could investigate future opportunities."
"No."
"We'd have strategic possibility officers."
"No."
"We could publish annual possibility reports."
"No."
"We'd rank departments according to their latent possibility index."
Professor Quillibrace rose slowly from his chair.
"I find," he observed, "that whenever Mr Blottisham discovers a genuinely profound idea, he immediately proposes turning it into an administrative unit."
Miss Stray smiled.
"Perhaps that, too, is a possibility."
Quillibrace sighed.
"Unfortunately."
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