satan loves that scrabble

so pb told me once that when he was younger, he was always afraid of accidentally selling his soul to the devil. and I found this surprisingly interesting--for all my fear of the afterworld and whatever just deserts I will meted upon arrival, I never was worried about the trickery of the prince of darkness. why? well, as a reigning spelling bee & math champ, I could only assume that I would be able to outmanuever lucifer and any of his logically/lexicographically challenged minions when it came to pawing at my soul. after all, consider the evidence, as documented by modern cinema:

The Ninth Gate
how lame is it that the whole plot hinges on the fact that the satanic illustrations are marked with the initials "LCF" to stand for LuCiFer. why? this book was created by the devil himself, and he decided to mark the pictures by signing the first letter of the syllables of one of his name, and in english? eh? BZB seems much more evil, something about that Z.

Rosemary's Baby
I guess it only makes sense that the man who brought you the above piece of lexical brilliance originated his thinking with a game of scrabble untangling the clues to figure out that creepy next-door-neighbor ROMAN CASTAVET was actually son of noted satanic wizard, STEVEN MARCATO. once more, we ask, why? satan is that tied to these, again, english versions of his name? he couldn't just come up with a new name for one of his most powerful followers? if he'd just been renamed Stanley or something, they wouldn't've had to go through all that trouble of kidnapping Ro in the street or killing Hutch or feeding her all that chalky-undertasting tannis root. actually, if the devil had just filed his nails, the entire plot would've gone off without a hitch. which leads me to believe that satan's stupider than he'd like us to believe

Exorcist III
the premise here is that the Gemini Killer is possessed by the devil. I mean, that's the whole point of the exorcisms, right? so, why can't the devil spell-check? the double-Ls are supposed to be a mark of the GK, but seriously, wouldn't we all take evil more seriously if he weren't a poor speller?

The Omens (I, II and III)
it's like the devil keeps playing this poorly-conceived game of hide-and-seek. like, he doesn't want anyone to know it's him, and yet he'll mark himself all over (head, back, hands) with the 666. look, once you let us see that "mark of the beast", the jig is up. we all know who you are and from whence you came. der.

Angel Heart
again, so the devil takes his place on earth, and after a stroll through the Big Book of Names, he came up with Louis Cyphre? does he go by "Lou"? why is satan such a chump?

To the Devil a Daughter
okay, so the devil wants the soul of a young girl to be his representative on earth, and the only way he could figure out how to do so was to get her father's signature on a contract. because she's not yet 18. so all this time, she could've given that soul away at will, but minority laws are upheld in the under/afterworld? and it has to be a physical document that the father signs, in regular ink. does he get a copy? was it notarized? I hope satan's got good representation...

The Devil's Advocate
...and yet The Devil's Advocate teaches us that indeed, Lucifer is picking his attorneys out of the yellow pages, just like the rest of us. Seriously, if Kevin Lomax is John Milton (har har)'s son, why wait so long to test his evil-ness? Why not harness and tap into his well of devilry from at least law school and spare himself all that work?