Word Nerd: Dispatches From the Games, Grammar, and Geek Underground

by John D. Williams Jr

  Two early plays I recall were seven-letter moves, both plurals. One was GUNITES. I’d seen the word around here and there and thought it was some sort of material used in the construction of swimming pools. That turned out to be true, but it also turned out that the word wasn’t playable because it was a trademark and therefore capitalized; since then it’s become acceptable. Another was FUNGOES, which I knew from baseball (a type of hit or a special bat used in practice). This word was good, and even better, Joe challenged it! I still lost.

  So our practice games were enormously helpful, and I did in fact slowly progress. The games got incrementally closer. My strategy and board vision improved. And I was learning the words.

  Everyone has his or her own way to memorize. Like Joe, I created my own flash cards. Remember, this was before all the numerous and refined studying techniques now available online or via customized software.

  My methodology was a highly personal and random blend of mnemonics and word association. Here are some examples:

  ■ I could never remember early on which was acceptable, PIA or MIA, so I did an index card that said PIA GOOD, MIA is Missing In Action. Hey, don’t judge me; it worked.

  ■ Another card was to learn the “back hooks” for the word OX—single letters that could be added to make a playable word. This one read: OY!! OX TAKES AN O & Y (OXO, OXY) Again, this worked for me.

  ■ Other times, I’d just stack them visually:

    TIKI

    TIPI

    TITI

  In all, I probably created two hundred flash cards. Often, during a game, I was able to visualize myself actually writing the card out, which was enormously helpful.

  Eventually, I decided to test the state of my fledgling tournament game. What better place than the belly of the beast—the notorious New York City SCRABBLE Club.

  There were numerous stories about the club in regard to both the level of play and the atmosphere. The skill level was high, with numerous top-ranked experts. They regularly included Joel Sherman, Joe Edley, Ron Tiekert, Robert Felt, Ed Halper, Rita Norr, Rose Kreiswirth, Richie Lund, Lynne Cushman, and Paul Avrin. The atmosphere, depending on the night, ranged from hospitable to hostile. Hey, this was New York.

  I had no illusions about this foray for my tune-up experience before my first tournament. I was achingly self-conscious about both my reception and my performance at the board. I knew many New York SCRABBLE players were contemptuous of the National SCRABBLE Association and authority in general, and this added unwanted pressure.

  I played three games that night. I was completely destroyed in one by a low-rated intermediate player. I held my own in a close match with another player of the same caliber. However, the third game was something special.

  Cruelly, I’d been matched up with one of the top players in the city. I’m not sure how this happened, but it did. It was clear from the onset that he was not taking me—or our game—seriously. Who could blame him? This first clue was that he didn’t even bother to track tiles. (Tournament players have a preprinted sheet of the 100 game tiles and can check them off as they’re played, so as the game progresses they have a better sense of what letters are available.) The second clue was that he played the complete game upside down, not even bothering to turn the board to himself for a better look.

  The good tiles were spilt fairly equally between us, and it ended up being a close game, with one bingo each. As the bag became emptier, I realized that the Q had not been played. I then scanned the board and realized that three of the four U’s had been expended in earlier plays. Since my opponent was not tracking tiles, it occurred to me that he hadn’t seen this situation developing.

  As we reached the final turns, I had drawn the final U and he had drawn the Q. All of a sudden, he started to pay serious attention. But it was too late. The board had been shut down for a Q-play for him. I ended up winning the game by a couple of points because he had to “eat the Q” for a costly 20 points at the end. It’s only fair to point out that this game took place well before QAT became acceptable, let alone QI. But I’ll take it.

  Buoyed by my practice games at the New York City club, I was ready for my first tournament, the Long Island Championship. It was held in Port Jefferson, New York, on St. Patrick’s weekend in 1991. There were about fifty players in three divisions for a ten-game event. I was in the Novice Division.

  As in many aspects of my life, my goal was not necessarily to excel but simply to not embarrass myself. Had I been able to enter this event in disguise with an alternative identity, that would have been fine with me.

  I attended an opening reception and talked mostly about SCRABBLE and words. Of course, everyone knew who I was. Many wished me luck and welcomed me to the fold. Others peppered me with questions and complaints about the NSA—missing newsletters, high dues, low prize money, and the like. It helped give me perspective on Joe Edley’s tournament experiences in the two-plus decades he was serving as NSA’s director of clubs and tournaments.

  Some people complained that Joe had some sort of advantage working at the NSA and being a competitive player at the same time. Chief among these was Bronx lawyer Ed Halper, a top player and club director. Every year when he renewed his NSA membership he’d write “FIRE EDLEY” on the check. But think about it. Not only was everyone gunning for Edley, but at every tournament his concentration would be broken between rounds with garden-variety questions about the SCRABBLE organization. No wonder Joe retreated into frequent tai chi trances!

  In reality, without Joe Edley there is no way the National SCRABBLE Association could have achieved everything it did. Joe handled an enormous workload with ease and grace and helped the NSA forge its belief in the sanctity of the game. Among Joe’s contributions:

  ■ Edited and wrote much of the SCRABBLE News

  ■ Scheduled two hundred SCRABBLE tournaments a year

  ■ Administered and scored the NSA Club Director’s Tests

  ■ Handled player disputes

  ■ Oversaw day-to-day participation in the OSPD

  ■ Fielded numerous phone calls and correspondence

  ■ Helped organize and direct National, World, and School SCRABBLE events

  ■ Maintained the official NSA Ratings System

  ■ Contributed heavily to the creation of NSA membership materials

  ■ Created numerous puzzles and word quizzes

  ■ Helped strategize NSA growth

  ■ Interacted with SCRABBLE manufacturers on product development, testing, and marketing

  ■ Gave numerous lectures and made other appearances

  The SCRABBLE tournament scene and I personally owe Joe Edley an enormous amount of gratitude for his contributions to the game.

  Now, back to my first official SCRABBLE tournament. It was around 8:00 p.m. on a Friday when I sat down across from my first opponent, a guy in his forties whom I’d never met. We wished each other luck, shook hands, and drew tiles to see who went first. He did, as he chose a tile closer to A. Inside, I sighed a bit. I’d learned that whoever goes first in a SCRABBLE match statistically has a 55 percent chance of winning.

  Decades later, I couldn’t tell you what my first rack was. But I remember my opponent’s first play. He laid down COWY. Surprisingly, in both the course of my everyday life and in my studying obscure words for the game, I’d never seen that word. Ever. Not in a book. Not on the word lists I’d studied.

  Complicating this was the fact that I’d promised myself that in this tournament, I was going to challenge any word I did not know. Yet here, in the very first play of my tournament career, I was second-guessing myself. My opponent had played COWY with such nonchalance and confidence, it had me rattled. I asked myself which was worse: being duped by a phony in the first play of my first tournament or challenging a word that might have been routine even in the Novice Division.

  Ultimately, I decided not to challenge. And it was a good thing. COWY was indeed acceptable. COWY means “suggestive of a co
w.” Happily, I went on to win that game. Twenty years later, however, I’ve still never heard or seen the word used even once outside of SCRABBLE.

  The whole issue of playing phonies is both nuanced and controversial. Living room players—an arguably dismissive term tournament players use—generally disapprove of playing phony words. That quite possibly is the genesis of the needing-to-know-the-definition house rule many people believe to be official. It’s not.

  I played two more games that first night and ended up 3–0! That performance was beyond my expectations, and it propelled me into a blend of confidence and looseness I’d rarely experienced in any competition. Over the years, I’d heard athletes and SCRABBLE experts like talk about being “in the zone.” I was definitely there. It was almost as if I were channeling someone else’s ability and someone else’s luck. I cannot remember many specifics of that evening, but it’s a safe bet I was getting my share of valuable tiles. How else could I have done that?

  I’d attended the tournament with my friend Rob Buchanan, a veteran journalist. A very good casual player himself, Rob had entered the competition thinking there might be a story there. He lived across the street from me, and we played many practice matches together. However, he hadn’t really studied any word lists, so he was at a disadvantage even in the Novice Division.

  The evening had not treated Rob as well. I recall he was 0–3 and not happy about it. A trip to the hotel bar seemed in order. After a couple of drinks, Rob and I decided to do what most tournament players do after a long day of competition: play more SCRABBLE. So we headed back to my room to break out the board.

  At the bar, Rob and I had engaged in some spirited trash-talking. In reality, our SCRABBLE abilities were pretty close. So Rob chided me about being lucky, having inferior opponents to his, that sort of thing. Thus by the time we started play, our after-hours match had taken on the good-natured intensity of a showdown.

  We poured an unnecessary third drink as we opened the board. A potential wager was discussed, then dismissed. Bragging rights would do. We drew to go first. In keeping with the evening’s vibe, I selected an A.

  Then I drew my seven tiles, arranged them on my rack, and stared in disbelief. There before me was the word ANCHOVY.

  Talk about being in the zone. I stared at the word for another couple of seconds. Then I laid it down on the board. “Anchovy,” I announced with poorly disguised glee, “94 points.”

  Rob stared silently at the board. He then turned his gaze to me as he stood and pushed his chair back. “Fuck you,” he said, grinning and shaking his head. Rob went on to finish 5–5, a respectable performance for anyone’s first tournament. We are still friends and neighbors, but we don’t play SCRABBLE together anymore.

  For the most part, the tournament continued the way it had started. I finally lost an afternoon game to a delightful woman named Stacia Camp, who showed me afterward how I could have—should have—won our match. By the end of the day, my record was 6–1 with three games left to play on Sunday morning. I was leading my division.

  At this point in the weekend, my performance was starting to attract some attention from everyone, experts included. Players in all divisions were very gracious and supportive. Some suggested I was really an Intermediate Division competitor “playing down” and was a Novice only because it was my first tournament. All I know is that I was damn relieved to have at least shown I knew the game. My instructor, Joe Edley, competing in the Expert Division, was thrilled.

  The rest of the tournament was pretty much a blur. I remember finding—and nervously playing—the word IRONIST against a skeptical opponent. It was good. I won another. IRONIST, by the way, means “one who uses irony.” Keep an eye out for it on future racks. The common letters make it appear quite often.

  I was 8–1 going into the last round, matched against a young woman who was, I believe, 8–1 as well. She was very good and had played in several tournaments. With a victory, I’d win the whole thing. A loss on my part would tie us, and whoever had the bigger point spread in all the games would be the champion.

  I remember the game was back and forth with several lead changes. Then we got to the very end. She was ahead by perhaps 40 points with about a dozen tiles left in the bag. I drew well on the next opportunity and ended up with the bingo ENTAILS.

  Unfortunately, I scoured the board three times and realized there was no place to play it. SCRABBLE players know this is perhaps the most frustrating situation in the game—a bingo with no place to lay it down. Panicking, I frantically moved the tiles around on my rack looking for another word in this favorable group of tiles.

  I’m sure any expert player watching would have immediately seen the other words: ELASTIN, NAILSET, SALIENT, SLAINTE, TENAILS. With the exception of SALIENT, I didn’t yet know any of those words. The only one I could come up with was SALTINE.

  So I sat and stared at my rack. I was pretty sure that SALTINE was a proper noun, a trademarked cracker name owned by Nabisco or the like. Yet a small part of me reasoned that it could be a generic word for a type of cracker.

  The pressure was mounting as I rechecked the clock, rechecked the score, and scanned the placid face of my opponent. Finally, I accepted the fact that I had no choice. In a display of shaky confidence I laid down the word SALTINE.

  Now it was her turn to think it over. She wrote the word down on a piece of paper and studied it. Then she looked back and forth at the board as if something might have changed. She had no choice either. If she did not challenge, I would win. Her best chance—a very good one—was that SALTINE was a phony.

  It is not. According to the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary, SALTINE is defined as, duh, “a salted cracker.” I won the challenge. I won the game. I won my tournament division with a 9–1 record. I was stunned, euphoric, in disbelief. Oh yeah, I also won $100, which I returned to the prize pool.

  Little did I know it would be the highlight of my SCRABBLE tournament career. I should have listened to Mike Baron, who told me the day after the victory, “Consider retiring right now. You could go in the record books with one of the most impressive tournament debuts in history and lifetime winning percentage.”

  Instead, I made what was probably one of the stupidest moves in SCRABBLE tournament history. It occurred exactly one year later, again at the Long Island SCRABBLE Championship. By virtue of my previous win, I now had a tournament rating of 1554. The NSA rating system was originally based on a variation of the one used in chess. Simply put, it essentially calculates how well you do against other rated players.

  The ratings fall into three groups: Novice is 600–1199, Intermediate is 1200–1599, and Expert is 1600+. But as we grew, NSA rules allowed a player to “play up” a division in most tournaments. So in my cluelessness and arrogance, I thought, hey, I’m just 46 points from an official Expert rating. Why not play with the best? How cool, I thought. In just my second SCRABBLE tournament, I was already good enough to compete against the very top players.

  This is a cautionary tale, so pay attention. For I was to learn a painful lesson: the difference between almost having an Expert rating and being an expert player.

  When I arrived at the tournament, most of the experts treated me with at best a sense of bemusement. They already knew what I did not: I didn’t belong in the same room with them. As a rule, experts also don’t like lesser competitors “playing up.” That’s because should an expert by chance lose a game to the weaker opponent, the expert’s rating will take a beating. If a 1366 player beats a 1941 player, his or her rating will rise appreciably, and the opposite will happen to the expert.

  Well, it became clear they had nothing to worry about with me. I was in for a reality check of the highest order. Going into the final afternoon, my record was 0–10—almost the complete opposite of the previous year. Worse, I imagined myself being perceived by the other players as either a laughingstock or a pathetic figure. The only saving grace is that I come from the hit-over-the-head-with-a-shovel school of le
arning stuff. I was in familiar territory. I simply sucked it up and went on. Fortunately, I drew good tiles in the last two games and won them both for a 2–10 record, finishing dead last in the Expert Division.

  Though technically still eligible, I knew I’d never play in the Expert Division again. My rating had dropped to 1493, which theoretically made me a “high Intermediate.” I say theoretically because my bumpy, ragged tournament experiences were far from over.

  I was starting to learn a couple of key lessons about the tournament game and environment. For openers, it’s important to remember that every time you sit down across from someone, chances are that person is as good as or better than you. That dynamic seldom exists when you compete at home, against friends. For the most part, I’d been a better player than most of the people I’d played. They were very smart people, excellent living room players who played SCRABBLE for, God forbid, fun.

  I also learned that playing only periodically in official SCRABBLE tournaments was not the way to do it. There is a “rust factor” that can easily cost you a game or two. It could be the chess clock ticking off your twenty-five minutes, an intimidating opponent, playing six games in a day, sleeping in a strange bed, whatever. So I didn’t do myself any favors by playing only one or two tournaments a year; I did a favor for the rest of the competition.

  Probably the most resonant lesson from the experience is this: if you don’t study, you are not going to get any better. Period. With the exception of my first tournament, I never took studying words very seriously. The reality is you can play twenty-five games a day, and have great strategic skills and board vision—but if you don’t know the words, you’ll likely be saddled with the same rating forever.

  In retrospect, I’d take that deal right now. As I write this, my rating is 1293, and my last full tournament was in August of 2007. Offering solace, Joe Edley assured me, “Your skills have not diminished. You’re probably as good as or better than when you were rated 1554.” What’s changed, Joe explained, is that the ratings system has been altered slightly and that there are so many better players now in all divisions. My lifetime tournament record is 35–68, a winning percentage of .340. However, in my defense, my scores averaged a respectable 367 points a game. Mercifully, the statistic of the average score against me was unavailable.