Hangman: Take Two

Jude hadn't been planning to get in another match so soon, but he wasn't going to turn one down either. Alexis was nice, the match would be friendly, and Galen seemed to be... well, maybe not helping Alexis out, but definitely encouraging him. Alexis had always struck Jude as being a bit sad or closed off. He hadn't gotten to really sit down or talk to him or anything, but he'd always seemed on the verge of cracking.

But he seemed more calm with Galen lurking nearby, and by the time they'd made it to the bench where Summer waited, Jude was in good spirits. Summer was a fairly plain, mousy girl, who looked equal parts nervous and sad. She gave only a slight nod to Alexis, but seemed to offer Galen a bit of a smile, apparently aware he was a Regalia, even if Jude wasn't quite sure how. Maybe she'd met him before.

"Alright, so, the rules go like this. One of us picks a word, and then you draw out lines, one for each letter, like this." He drew out six lines to demonstrate. "Then, you'd guess a letter. If that letter is in the word, I mark everywhere that letter appears, and then you guess again. If it's not in the word, I draw a part of the hangman and you go again. You lose if the hangman is fully drawn, which is after you have ten misses. At any point you can guess the word, but you only get..." Jude paused to consider a moment. "Two chances to guess the word. We'll say the hangman is ten parts, so ten incorrect guesses."

He drew the hangman out, just to demonstrate.

"Winner is whoever had less of the hangman drawn when they managed to guess the word, or whoever had most of the word filled in when they failed. Do you want to guess, or pick a word first?"

"Oh right," Jude said. "English only, no names or proper nouns. Things you could find in the dictionary."

He wasn't going to be one of those people and come up with a ridiculous word or anything like that.

He paused a moment to think, and then drew six quick lines on the paper.

"Take a guess."

Jude felt kind of bad. Okay, definitely bad. He'd beaten Malara, and now he'd almost definitely beaten Alexis, and he felt... okay, a bit guilty.

Well, technically he hadn't won yet.

"If I can't guess your word, we can just play again until someone gets it, basically," Jude said. "I kind of picked a tricky word."

Then he leaned forward slightly, waiting to see what Alexis would pick.

Jude had a perfect memory. If he'd read a word, he knew it. But that didn't mean he was a supercomputer. He couldn't calculate actually the ideal letter to pick was E, but Giltenn could, and Jude had to mentally swat Giltenn away a few times to keep them from correcting.

"Okay," Jude said. "It's not bunker or hunker. So, uh... Junker? Or... Lunker?" Did Lunker even count? It was kind of informal.

Jude had sort of noticed. More like... suspected. But he hadn't seen for sure, and he sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up. Not when Alexis was so... well, he was a little bit beaten down.

He definitely needed to stop picking such hard words.

"I picked Joking, for the record," Jude said, taking Alexis's hand and giving it a firm shake of his own. "The J and the K are kind of hard to get, honestly. It's a bit of a mean word." So really, it wasn't his fault per say. It was just that Jude had picked a hard word, right?

He was definitely trying to make it less of a loss.

"You did well," Summer said, speaking up for the first time. She scooted over a bit, leaning over to check over the page. "Even if he won, it's nice to see someone willing to keep going. You were gracious, even in defeat."