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

by John D. Williams Jr

  I still toy with the idea of someday playing in a National SCRABBLE Championship. Despite thirty years of involvement with the game, I was never able to do it because of other obligations at these events. It’s the Olympics of SCRABBLE, with the best players in the world in the same room as first-timers. In addition to the competition, it’s also a celebration of the glorious game and those who’ve made it a significant part of their life. Look around the giant ballroom that houses a National SCRABBLE Championship and you’ll see a veritable Noah’s Ark of humanity. The game draws every single type of person imaginable.

  And I have a plan for my return. First I’ll play in a couple of local tournaments leading up to, say, the 2015 NSC. If my past performance is any indication, my rating should continue to systematically plummet. Ideally, I’d enter my first National SCRABBLE Championship with a rating between 1136 and 1171. That would put me squarely in the Novice Division. I think I would do really well there, but could I last the thirty-plus rounds in four days?

  I’ve been asked many times, both casually and in interviews, to reveal a few pointers for improving one’s SCRABBLE play. I’ve assembled ten tips to keep in mind that will accomplish just that, and they are available in the appendix at the end of the book. These are taken from the book Everything SCRABBLE® by me and three-time National SCRABBLE Champion Joe Edley.

  6

  MEDIA TIME

  AMONG THE MANY RESPONSIBILITIES OF MY SCRABBLE job was media relations. Previously, the task was called “public relations,” but apparently that term fell out of favor because it was either too limiting or did not sound important enough. As one of my advertising friends used to tell me, “I can only charge about $1,200 for an idea, but I can get as much as $2,500 for a concept!”

  One of my early goals was to convince Hasbro executives to make the story or event always about SCRABBLE and never about Hasbro. As a result we never had a single Hasbro banner or sign at any SCRABBLE Championship over two decades—heresy in marketing circles! Yet it paid off. Keeping the perception of SCRABBLE as a generic game made it more palatable to the media and corporate partners. When I called to pitch a SCRABBLE story to a newspaper or television show, I was not calling as a Hasbro exec or from a PR agency. I was calling from the independent National SCRABBLE Association. And the event was never the “Hasbro” National SCRABBLE Championship.

  Chief among our media-related tasks was booking a recently crowned SCRABBLE champion on one of the national morning shows: Good Morning America, Today, or CBS This Morning. Fortunately, we’ve been able to arrange numerous appearances over the years on these shows, as well as other outlets such as Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Martha Stewart Show, and CNN, to name just a few.

  A media favorite, one of the most colorful and beloved SCRABBLE Champions ever is “G.I. Joel” Sherman of the Bronx. His nickname was derived from his well-known gastrointestinal (GI, get it?) distress, which manifested itself in many forms. Oh, and he had to expectorate frequently.

  No one in the SCRABBLE world ever thought twice about these quirks, which would have been questionably tolerated in the outside world. Joel is a great guy, a wonderful ambassador for the game. Hell, some would argue that having personality quirks is almost a prerequisite for a top SCRABBLE expert.

  One particular memory resonates. We were backstage at Today, and I was prepping Joel for his appearance. We discussed the talking points we wanted to cover. We reviewed highlights and interesting words played. We outlined ways to prevent him from burping during his four minutes with Katie Couric. Just as Joel was about to go onstage, he turned to me and thrust a Styrofoam cup in my direction.

  “Here,” he said to me, “hold my mucus cup, okay?” I reluctantly grabbed the dubious vessel. A young NBC production assistant looked over to me. “Dude,” he said, grinning, “they don’t pay you enough.”

  I’m happy to say that Joel’s interview with Katie Couric was flawless, funny, informative, and unassuming. He walked off the set and headed my way. I quickly pushed the mucus cup back in his direction.

  The National SCRABBLE Championship was always the most important media outreach the NSA conducted. Started in 1978 by Selchow & Righter, it was held annually or semiannually in major cities all over the country. Over the years, participation ranged from just thirty-two players in 1983 in Chicago (an invitational format) to over eight hundred contestants in New Orleans in 2004.

  The National SCRABBLE Association officially took over organizing and promoting the NSC in 1988. Over the years, this involved putting together a complex blueprint for an event. The process always began with selecting a host city in a major market. There were specific criteria for selection:

  ■ Tourism appeal for the players’ families and contestants themselves in off-hours

  ■ Reasonably easy to get to from anywhere

  ■ A selection of hotels with good rates and many nearby affordable dining options

  ■ A good media town, i.e., strong daily newspaper, AP office, NPR station, local talk radio, network-affiliate television stations

  There were all kinds of logistics as well. We had to hire word judges, a team of computer programmers and data-entry personnel to handle the thousands of rating calculations, division leaders and assistants to handle rulings and player questions, a photographer, an online reporter, and a video team for in-house or Internet telecasts. (Typically, we would get up to six million hits with people watching the play-by-play commentary on our website.) In total, we often assembled a staff of up to thirty-five people to help us run an NSC.

  While the National SCRABBLE Championship was seen by its participants as an annual or semiannual celebration of their culture and the ultimate competitive experience, we, of course, also had to tend to the business end. That meant getting national publicity to raise awareness of both the SCRABBLE brand and the glories of the tournament scene. Given some of the players’ reluctance to be on television or in the media at all—and their resentment of corporate interference with their beloved game—we often had to do a delicate dance to make that happen. It made for some interesting challenges.

  One year, both the sponsor and its New York media relations agency were concerned as we were heading toward the finals because the favorite to win the championship was deemed by them to be “not telegenic.” A wonderful young genius, he was painfully shy and, to their thinking, somewhat unkempt. It had also been established by the player himself that—unlike most people—he couldn’t have cared less whether he was on television or not.

  The stakes were high, as we were already booked for an appearance on Today three days after the finals. This kind of “PR hit” could be considered worth over a million dollars—way more than the entire cost of putting on an event like this.

  About thirty-six hours before the finals, the media exec took me aside. “Is there a way we can manipulate the scoring or pairings to minimize his chances?” he asked in all seriousness.

  Having spent several days with this guy, I was not completely appalled at this request. “I’m afraid not. This isn’t professional wrestling,” I told him. “It doesn’t exactly work that way.”

  Barely deterred, he thought for a second. “How about I send a couple of girls up to his room around midnight.” He winked conspiratorially. “I’m sure we can find money in the budget for that.”

  I could only laugh. “Sorry.”

  “Then how about we media-train him?” he persisted.

  I sighed. “Okay, if the player is cool with it.”

  So we set up a camera in a room, and the media maven spent an hour or two trying to transform this sweet, brilliant, shy SCRABBLE genius into a gregarious, charismatic spokesman. It didn’t work.

  It turned out to be a moot point. Our scheduled appearance was bumped two days later in the wake of a terrible airline disaster.

  Probably the most challenging and complicated television experience was with the 1990 National SCRABBLE Champion, the late Robert Felt. When he won that year’s event in Washin
gton, DC, he was a veteran tournament player who had been favored to win “the big one” for a long time. Robert Felt was also one of the more interesting characters on the tournament scene.

  Felt had a distinct look: a large head to hold his large brain, a doughy physique, a mass of coarse dark hair, and heavy, thick-lensed glasses. But what distinguished him the most was his ability—and tendency—to talk SCRABBLE plays and theory for hours at a time. A typical story of his might start something like this:

  “I remember back in 1984 at a local tournament in Atlantic City. I was playing Tommy Tile, who I had a 17–9 lifetime record against. Midway during the game, with the score 203–186 my favor, I draw a rack of MBTOASW. I see the word WOMBATS and a spot in the lower left quadrant . . .”

  The guy seemed to remember every game, every opponent, every rack, every move of his entire SCRABBLE tournament career. And he would habitually walk up to anyone and just start talking—and not stop. Most people listened patiently for a few minutes, then excused themselves. Some lasted not as long and waited to hand Felt off to an unprepared passerby. Others spotted him coming and took off.

  The most famous Robert Felt anecdote took place in England, where he had gone to test his skills against the Brits. As the story goes, a few of them were in a car as Felt was regaling the passengers with one of these endless narratives. He was in the midst of describing a past play when the car was sideswiped and forced off the road, and it either spun out or actually rolled over.

  But this did not deter Felt. According to the other passengers, he never stopped telling the story, even as his fellow passengers were screaming in fear, as the car screeched to an emergency stop, and as the relieved passengers crawled out of the wreck. As they dusted themselves off, they heard Felt, uninterrupted: “So then, he draws the final S to join the blank I’ve tracked to be on his rack. So I know I’ve got two viable options. One is a piece of esoterica that won’t play. The other is . . .”

  My Robert Felt story is a little different. Let’s start with his wardrobe and overall appearance a few days before the scheduled Good Morning America (GMA) appearance. Felt had arrived for the 1990 National SCRABBLE Championship with one outfit. It was a tattered blue oxford, faded jeans, and a pair of grubby white sneakers. He’d also let his thick hair grow into a formless shrub, accentuating the look with a pair of enormous muttonchop sideburns. It was a distinct look, even among a crowd of SCRABBLE experts, a number of whom couldn’t have cared less about conventional style and grooming.

  Felt went on to win the National SCRABBLE Championship that year, along with a $10,000 check. This was a nice payday for a man who went in and out of computer-related jobs. After the awards ceremony, we’d have approximately three hours before we had to get on a plane to New York, with a 6:30 a.m. call for GMA. As the clock ticked, I knew I’d have to do an emergency makeover.

  To Felt’s credit, he was a good sport as I rushed him to a barber for a trim and shave, then to a men’s clothing store for some pants, a dress shirt, and a sports jacket. He’d use one of my ties and a pair of my shoes for the show.

  That night, we made it to the hotel in New York, exhausted, but excited for the television appearance. Then, around 11:00 p.m., disaster struck.

  To once again familiarize myself with the tournament story, I casually looked over the actual winning board I’d brought along. Our staff routinely took the winning board and superglued all the tiles in place. It served as a great prop for any interview, and there was always something cool about having the winning board itself in the studio.

  But not this time. That’s because in reviewing all the words, I noticed that DARKIE had been played in the bottom right-hand quadrant of the board. The word, of course, was an antiquated ethnic slur. To make matters worse, I’d heard from the producers that the interview was going to be conducted by Spencer Christian, an affable, beloved GMA weatherman, who did occasional feature pieces on the show. Spencer Christian is an African American.

  By now it was nearing midnight, and I had a full-fledged dilemma on my hands. A dilemma, as once described to me, is a situation where you have two choices, neither of them great.

  Fortunately, I’d learned early on to always travel with both an Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary and an extra set of tiles. This discovery came the hard way early in my career—prompted by a reporter’s question about a definition that had me floundering and a photographer’s request for nonexistent tiles for a prop.

  I found an all-night drugstore, bought some glue, and raced back to my room. Over the next hour, I carefully reconfigured part of the board. I began by changing DARKIE to DARKER. As you might expect, that involved changing some surrounding words as well. I finally finished, already dreading the next step in the process: convincing Robert Felt to go along with this. Felt, who I should mention died very young a few years later, was a SCRABBLE perfectionist. And, like a lot of top experts, he was also a purist who to some extent resented the fact that SCRABBLE was owned by a corporation, unlike games such as chess, poker, and backgammon. Many NSA members had an understandable sense of ownership of the game. They devoted their lives to it. Hasbro executives, while appreciative of SCRABBLE’s legacy and genius, have scores of other games and toys to think about.

  So at 6:30 a.m., I presented my case to Felt in the back of the network’s limo. I mentioned that we found ourselves in an unfortunate, unanticipated, and untenable situation, but the impending interview was not the forum to address the always volatile topic of offensive words being allowed in tournament play. I closed by reminding him he’d just earned $10,000 for playing a few days of SCRABBLE, which he’d have done for free.

  Robert Felt could not have been more accommodating. He totally understood the situation and accepted the reconstructed winning board as his own. The interview was wonderful. The newly groomed Felt was fabulous. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, reminding myself again that you can’t always believe everything you see on television.

  The story had an afterlife. I learned in later years that the word had spread among top players to never bring any suits, ties, or dress shirts to a National SCRABBLE Championship because the sponsor and the National SCRABBLE Association would add a free new wardrobe to your winnings!

  7

  THE WORLD JOINS IN

  OVER THE YEARS, MAJOR SCRABBLE CHAMPIONSHIPS fell into one of three categories: the World SCRABBLE Championship, the National SCRABBLE Championship, and the National School SCRABBLE Championship.

  All three events share much in common. Most SCRABBLE championships are held in a huge hotel ballroom or convention center event space. For the most part, all participants pay their own way to these competitions, often thousands of miles away. Every contestant knows far more words than the average English speaker—and more than likely has been learning hundreds more in the months before a big contest. Many enter knowing they have a chance to win their division; others will be thrilled to win half of their games.

  The first World SCRABBLE Championship, a smaller invitational event, took place in a private club in London in 1991. There were probably fewer than 100 people in the room. By contrast, the 2004 National SCRABBLE Championship in New Orleans had nearly 850 players, plus staff, media, and onlookers for a total of nearly 1,000 people every day.

  The WSC had its beginnings in Reno, Nevada—which bills itself as “the Biggest Little City in the World.” Although the event itself was never held in Reno, it was the site of a historic meeting that was the genesis of this amazing tournament.

  We were there the summer of 1988 for the National SCRABBLE Championship at the Sands Hotel. It was a precarious time for the culture of SCRABBLE tournament play. Selchow & Righter had sold SCRABBLE two years earlier to Coleco, a Connecticut-based company most famous for its line of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. It turned out that by the time of the 1988 NSC, Coleco was already experiencing serious financial problems, coupled with its failed attempt to get into the personal computer business, and the company could only con
tribute $5,000 to the event.

  As proven many times over the years, the players were undaunted by the woes, lack of interest, or financial whims of the game’s manufacturer. So in the after-hours of the tournament a small group of us met to discuss our collective dream of a World SCRABBLE Championship.

  On the “management” side of the table, the group consisted of the relatively new executive director of the NSA (me) and an executive at J. W. Spear & Sons, the UK-based owner of the game’s worldwide rights outside of North America. Stodgy and not really a player himself, the Spear executive seemed tolerated at best by his English constituents. It was also clear that he considered me a brash Yank, poised to shake up the competitive SCRABBLE world.

  Among the players from the UK—most there to play in a US event for the first time—were Brian Sugar, Phil Appleby, Allan Simmons, and future World SCRABBLE Champion Mark Nyman. Australia was represented by John Holgate. Among the American players were, if memory serves, Mike Baron and Joe Edley.

  Our agenda was short and simple with just two items. How would we resolve the dictionary differences, and who was going to host the first WSC?

  The dictionary issue was which dictionary or word authority would be used to adjudicate the event: the “American,” the “British,” or some hybrid of both. At that time there were an estimated twenty-five thousand more words in Chambers, then the British word authority, than in the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary used in North America as well as selected countries such as Thailand and Australia. Think about it; the British had had the language far longer than North Americans, so it stood to reason the word source would contain a lot more words. Then, of course, there were the variants such as COLOUR for COLOR and MOULT for MOLT (to cast off an outward covering), many of which were also acceptable in North American SCRABBLE competition. It was eventually agreed that for WSC play a word had to be acceptable in either dictionary to be playable. If a word was successfully challenged, it came off the board and the player lost a turn. In order to be truly competitive for the WSC, players had to learn all or most words from both dictionaries—for North Americans an additional twenty-five thousand—and then unlearn them when they returned to their home country. This was a massive and cumbersome prospect, but the players did it.