March 16th, 2020: 99¢ for your thoughts -
The 1,000th Wordle Word was not “SCROD.” You probably didn’t try it.
But I did, because as soon as I pulled the word “scrod” out of the dim recesses of my memory, I realized it was five letters long. Such are the times we live in.
As it had five letters, I had to know if Wordle believed in
it. Was SCROD even a thing?
It was! It wasn’t the answer, but the New York Times had
heard of it!
Scrod came up because we are headed to the East Coast in a
bit, and we were trying to think of things we could eat there that we can’t get
in foodie Portland (where one can get almost anything). I recalled that my Grandma Celia – who lived in Brookline,
Massachusetts, and who I met a bare handful of times - had once
confessed she was partial to a nice piece of scrod. Since I had never seen scrod out here, perhaps it was a regional delicacy. Rick said, “What’s
scrod?” I said it was a fish. Rick asked what type of fish, thereby driving me into
the arms of Wikipedia.
And it’s not a fish! I mean, not technically a particular
fish. Technically, it’s a SIZE of fish. Here’s Wikipedia, in one of its prissy “in
principle” moments: “In the wholesale fish business, scrod is the smallest
weight category of the major whitefish. From smallest to largest, the
categories are scrod, market, large, and whale…. Scrod is common in many coastal New England
and Atlantic Canadian fish markets and restaurants, although using the name
'scrod' without the species is in principle mislabeling.”
In other words, one is supposed to say “scrod cod,” or “scrod
haddock,” not just “scrod.” I would love
to go out and order “scrod cod” with a straight face, but since we aren’t headed to New England, that
treat will have to wait.
LARGE and WHALE were also not the 1,000th Wordle Word, and MARKET
has six letters. Nor would one like "a nice piece of large” for lunch. Grandma Celia liked a nice piece of scrod.
Comments
Post a Comment