Mr. Burkehammer leaned back in his comfortable chair, reading the Sunday newspaper, smoking his pipe. It had a headline about the Korean war. The sun shone through the window, and outside the wind was blowing snow down diagonally. Laws was practicing Handel on the upright, verrrry slowly, and repeating the same four measures, with about the same mistakes, over and over. Mother was through the narrow door to the kitchen, fixing something elaborate. Amy and Ada played scrabble. The air was dry, and scuffling on the carpet filled them with static electricity. Presbyterians, they were still dressed in their church clothes.
"BINGO" spelled Amy horizontally.
"NUN," spelled Ada vertically off of Amy's N.
"That's not how you spell none," complained Amy.
"Yes it is."
"Dad!"
Mr. Burkehammer glanced around his newspaper at the board. "A nun is a giant extinct black and white bird from Jamaica," he said.
"No it isn't! You made that up!" said Amy.
"Look it up," said Mr. Burkehammer from behind his newspaper.
The giant dictionary sat on the floor between the girls. It was well used, and had over a thousand pages. Amy regarded it with apprehension.
"It's not none less than one," said Ada, guessing what the problem was, "it's a woman who works for the church and wears black and white robes."
"Oh OK it's a word," Amy decided, looking at her letters. She extended NUN into SNUNNING.
"That's not a word," said Ada.
"Is too! It's when it's snowing and it's sunny at the same time. Like right now."
"Dad!" said Ada.
"Look it up," said Mr. Burkehammer.
Ada looked at the dictionary sidewise, considering. Then she jutted out her jaw and started flipping through the pages. "Pod .. Two .. Support ... Spherometer ... Smoky ... Sneezewort ... Sodalite ... Snuff ... Snuggle ... Snye! There's no snun or snunning! It's not a word!"
"Dad! Snunning is a word, isn't it?" pleaded Amy.
"Is it in the dictionary?"
"It isn't," Ada informed him.
"Maybe we need a bigger dictionary!" said Amy.
"That way lies madness," said Mr. Burkehammer. "You could use that excuse for anything. To make the game playable, you have to limit yourselves to the words in the dictionary you've got."
"Hah! It's not a word!" said Ada.
"Mmmm, I bet it is, really" grumbled Amy. She considered asking for them to get a bigger dictionary, but thought better of it. She rearranged her letters, looking for another word.
Laws messed up again, stared at his music, then tried again.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "What do they call it when it snows while the sun's out?"