1 Minnesota Jones: Be careful. The floor here is treacherous. {stepping amongst loose tiles on the floor}
2 Minnesota Jones: These little square tiles are slippery, loose-fitting, and uneven. It's easy to lose your footing.
3 Monty: They're all engraved with little letters. I see a lot of Js, Xs, Qs, and Zs. Some other consonants, almost no vowels.
4 Minnesota Jones: Yes. It's hardscrabble terrain.

Hardscrabble.

Scrabble.

The background here is a photo I took in the actual Vatican Museums.

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2017-05-31 Rerun commentary: That's the background behind the griffon^[1]. There wasn't a giant Lego griffon in the Vatican Museum. Though that would have been pretty cool.

Having played a lot of the Scrabble-clone app Words With Friends in recent years with some friends who are really good at the game, I've come to appreciate the "difficult" letters a lot more. They are the key to getting nice high scores if you can manoeuvre them onto bonus squares to double or triple their point values. So now I'm often in a situation wishing something like, "Oh, if only I had a Z."

[1] It's a valid alternative spelling, and the one I naturally use when writing the word, so I don't feel particularly inclined to change it. Although apparently it's also a breed of dog.