My mother and I used to play a game called Anagrams where you made words out of letters printed on small, tidy squares of thick cardboard. Every once in a while, one would drop on the floor, and Dingo, our dog, would chew it. We didn't mind so much if it was a J or a Q because those were hard letters to use, but it was bad if an E or an S got chewed. Still, we just let them dry out and used them anyway, rumpled though they were with tooth marks.