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success - max crumm & ben levi ross lyrics

[ethan, spoken]
on a friday night earlier this summer
i entered a bar on a quiet street in west village
where a boisterous crowd of nyu students surrounded a small table
upon which lay a battle*scarred scrabble board
seated at the table was waldo pine
the village’s own sultan of scrab
unshaved, unsober and allegedly undefeated
i sat down across the table from waldo
laid down my obligatory twenty*dollar bill
fished seven wooden tiles out of a greasy bag
and asked him how he did it

[waldo, laying down tiles]
one, two, three, four, five
“jarrah”
i like to start with a word
that’s probably something you’ve never heard
now you’re off your game
’cause i start with “jarrah”

[waldo, spoken]
forty*eight points
you’ve got thirty seconds

[waldo]
ooh! what’s this comin’ down the chute?
[waldo & ethan]
“haven”

[waldo]
aw, that’s cute
see, i’m in your head
so sayonara

[waldo & ethan]
fifteen by fifteen

[waldo]
is the borders of my land

[waldo & ethan]
fifteen by fifteen

[waldo]
is the world i understand
so come on in, take a look around
relax, kick off your shoes—
but there’s one seven*letter word
that you are never gonna use!

[waldo & crowd]
success!
[waldo]
could be my middle name if my middle name weren’t dan

[waldo & crowd]
success!

[waldo]
you say, “you can’t do that”
but i do that because i can

[waldo & crowd]
success!

[waldo]
set up the target, put on the blindfold, i won’t miss

[waldo & ethan]
now you might have seen another boy do it before
but he didn’t do it like this

[waldo lays down seven tiles on the board.]

[waldo, spoken]
“assayed”
that’s a bingo, all seven letters, fifty point bonus
plus i turned “haven” into “shaven”
don’t make it so easy for me, little bro
[waldo]
some folks, this would be too loud
but i do better inside a crowd
’cause i like that noise and the validation
look at you, you’re trying to think
your vocabulary pushed to the brink
but you can’t avoid the humiliation

[waldo & ethan]
bingo by bingo

[waldo]
i lay you frat boys low

[waldo & ethan]
i know the lingo

[waldo]
you princeton pr*cks don’t know
they said there’s a boy in a piano bar
playin’ scrabble and getting how rich?
maybe you heard i’m a little nerd
well, this is what a nerd looks like now, b*tch!

[crowd]
success!

[waldo]
i’m a fighter! touch my mitre! kiss my ring!

[crowd]
success!

[waldo]
use your dictionary, it’s not gonna change a thing

[crowd]
success!

[waldo]
meaning “victory”
that’s my “ave atque vale”*dictory
it’s not a trick to me
words just stick to me
you look sick to me
come on, children, sing

[crowd]
woah

[waldo]
all the answers are floating

[crowd]
woah

[waldo]
in a grid above the grid

[crowd]
woah

[waldo]
you can’t take them like candy

[crowd]
woah

[waldo]
you just breathe them in like clouds

[waldo & ethan]
i was reading the bible
and i thought, “how lonely we are”
i thought how lonely we are
i thought how lonely we are

[ethan, spoken]
in my family, i had always been the k!ller scrabble player
but after ten minutes
waldo was ahead of me by well over three hundred points

[waldo & crowd]
success!

[waldo]
it’s what i dress in in manhattan or macao

[waldo & crowd]
success!

[waldo]
hope you enjoyed the lesson
i’ll take that twenty now

[waldo & crowd]
success!

[waldo]
not to ramble like joseph campbell
but follow my bliss

[waldo & ethan]
you might have seen another boy do it before

[waldo, ethan & crowd]
but he didn’t do it
didn’t do it
didn’t do it
no, he didn’t do it like this!

[ethan, spoken]
two weeks later, i brought some friends down to the village
but when we got to the bar, the door had been padlocked
and there was a real estate sign hanging in the window
as we walked away, my eye caught something in a pile of leaves
to my surprise, it was a single wooden tile
and when i flipped it over, like a private inscrutable message:
the letter h
four points

[waldo]
incidentally, “jarrah” is a tree

[crowd]
ah

- max crumm ben levi ross lyrics

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