"Quiz, you can't just keep playing single-syllable words like that."

"Yeah? That was it says in the rulebook smart guy?"

"Well you can't if you want to win. How's that score of eighty-two treating you?"

"It'd be treating me a lot better if you'd hop the hell off my balls."

Rain landed rhythmically on a tin roof on a slow Tuesday afternoon, and criminal genius Edward Nigma, Esq. was now deeply embroiled in a game of scrabble with three extremely muscular women, all sitting cross-legged around the board with nary a chair or a table in sight. He was winning of course, already racked up to an even score of three-hundred while his closest challenger had just barely broken one-fifty. All three of the girls groaned like children as he built "quarrel" off of the 'u' in "qualm" he'd laid down earlier.

Sure, everyone knew that the boss had an immaculate vocabulary, but who had so much luck as to get that many Qs in one round? This most recent play was his fifth.

Echo gave him an incredulous look, thumbing one of the Es in her selection of letters. Edward matched her glare with a bright, almost cartoonishly full-of-it grin.

"What's the matter Echo? Are we planning to play another single-syllable preposition? Such a shame."

Her eyes narrowed but an infinitesimal fraction. Actually, she had a particular seven letter word in mind, but fortunately for her employer's ego, she was missing the 'A' and the 'C'.

Another round came and went, Quiz playing 'shack,' followed by Eddie's gratuitously strategic placement of the word 'zydeco,' claiming yet another triple word bonus, and then Query's comparatively pathetic 'apple,' jutting from zydeco's 'E.' When Echo's turn rolled around again, she was caught in a dilemma; not that she was at a literal loss for words, but more along the lines of whether it was worth it to play what she had in mind, though half-formed and cloddish the message would be.

One glance up at her boss, God love him, and his smarmy little self-satisfied face settled the matter. Even though she was technically playing a completely innocent morpheme, she knew that the Riddler would understand her meaning and, in all likelihood, throw a hissy fit for it. Especially because she was probably right.

He might even go so far as to dock her pay, but good lord would it be worth it.

She matched his smile through one more steely competitive glance, and with a few slow, purposeful clacks, Echo spaced the word fragments 'he' and 'ter' around the 'A' in Query's 'apple.' She was still missing that 'C.'