To be fair, the couple never spent time with mental pursuits, preferring instead to watch mindless reality shows, desensitizing sitcoms, and boring game shows. Because of this cerebral lethargy, they were unable to use the letters "Q", "Z", or "X" in their Saturday night Scrabble game.

It's not that the Calhouns are illiterate or uneducated. It's just that they had spent so many years glued to the television set, that other functions of their brain (such as the ability to form words) had gone dormant from lack of use. If a medical name could be attached to such a condition, perhaps it could be called mental atrophy, intellectual impairment, or something that would include the word "pudding," which in itself would be worth at least 10 points in Scrabble.

"I almost had a five letter word," said Bert, who was unable to build on Jenny's C-A-T, M-O-M, or S-A-G. "Honestly, I just had too many different vowels and consonants."

Bert ended up drawing a blank, with his brain and with his Scrabble tiles. It didn't help that the blanks don't count for anything--made worse by the fact that he put his blank tile on a triple-letter-score square, which gave him a total of 2 for his word "R-A-T."

In the end, the Scrabble board looked like something a child would put together, only many suggest that even the child would have been able to create longer words.

Bert and Jenny have considered using a dictionary for their next Scrabble match. Yes, they are aware that it is "against the rules," but they believe that it would be better for themselves--and for the good of the game--if they were able to just once reach the outside squares and use the elusive triple-word-score square.

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