Challenge your mother

When I first mentioned TongueTied to a friend in New York, he was excited by the coincidence: he'd just been back to his alma mater in St. Louis, Missouri, in part to see a great-aunt he'd been close to in college; on this visit, they returned to their old pastime of Scrabble, and Fay (now 92) won as usual – though only by a jot.

Fay hasn't joined TongueTied but other mothers and maternal figures are playing with their children, and their stories are one reason we're trying to make this game a sustainable project (more on that below). In this blog post, Ali – a different Ali than the one you met last week – talks about using the game to keep in touch with her mom when they're more than a thousand miles apart:

Recently, I forgot it was my turn. When I finally made my move, I got a note from her in the chat that read, "Yay! Back at it. I've missed connecting with you through TongueTied." She then played the word "daycare" for 26 points and won the game.

We also hear from parents playing with their kids just a short commute away at college, or across the kitchen table. It's a different way of saying "I'm thinking about you" – one that avoids demanding of reticent teenagers, "How was your day?" It's also a way of recognizing the language a person grew up in, or the one they are starting to learn.

This is why, alongside a certain approaching holiday, the word MOTHER and all its variants across languages felt like an obvious first TongueTied Word of the Week, a new feature wherein, for seven days (or sometimes a bit longer), we award bonus points if you play a particular word or set of words. In this case, the set is large, from MAMAN and MÈRE in French to MUM and MOMMY in British and American English through to MAMÃE and the regional variant MAINHA in Portuguese. Here's the full list; let me know if you think something's missing. The words will only be valid if they're in the languages you're playing, so don't expect to have MUTTI (De) accepted in a Spanish-Italian game.

And in the spirit of tying the digital world to the physical one, we're offering flowers to the player who earns the bonus most often between now and May 17. Once a winner is determined, we'll ask where to send the bouquet (or potted plant): to you, your mom, or any Fay in your life.