Word Freak : Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (9780547524313)

by Fatsis, Stefan

  There are two tiles left in the bag, but before I can extricate them Danny stuns me with FaVE at 1L through his V for 42 points and a 380–362 lead; VAT was a setup designed to counter a possible bingo by me. I shout “Hold!”—I can’t remember whether it’s FAVE or FAB that’s unacceptable; I know one of them is no good. My two tiles are LW, and instantly I know I’m dead.

  If FaVE is good, there is nowhere for me to make up enough points to win; the most I can score is 5 points, with LaW at M12, to go out, absorbing 10 points from Danny’s rack, and losing by 3, 380377. If I had drawn an O to go with the W, I could have played OW at 14E (forming AWL) for 27 points and victory. The clock ticks. With no other apparent way to win, I challenge FaVE. It’s good. (FAB* isn’t.) Danny wins, 396–376.

  We exhale simultaneously.

  “Wow!” Danny says with hyperbolic teen excitement. “That was amazing!”

  “What an incredible endgame,” I say, still staring at the board.

  “You made a brilliant play,” he says, meaning my 4-point play of BO.

  “I don’t know about brilliant,” I reply. “Anyway, you made an even better one.”

  It is my most satisfying Scrabble sequence yet. I did everything right: I considered how I could still win (by bingoing); I calculated the odds of a particular occurrence (4 to 1 for drawing a D or blank); I figured out the best way to make that happen—dumping the B—while simultaneously opening another spot to bingo; I willed a D out of the bag (that’s what Edley would say); I played the bingo; and I challenged his play when I wasn’t 100 percent sure. And I did it all under severe time pressure.

  Danny and I reconstruct the sequence to check for blunders, but we can’t find any. His 20-point VAT was the great move; he could have played FaVE right away, but that would have emptied the bag and I would have bingoed out with MATADORS. Danny needed to leave at least one tile in the bag; he left two.

  A crowd gathers, as it does whenever it’s clear a compelling endgame has transpired. I’m exhilarated—by the attention, and by Danny’s effusive praise for the calculated fish that led to MATADORS, but more by the just-completed game itself. As the sequence unfolded over the board, nothing else mattered. The score didn’t matter. Winning and losing didn’t matter. My rating didn’t matter. Playing Division 1 in Providence didn’t matter. All that mattered was exploiting the new synaptic connections in my brain, understanding the puzzle and solving it—in short, thinking like a pro. And I did all of those things. I displayed calm, smarts, and sophistication. I did what true board-game experts do: assess the environment, see all of the possibilities, calculate the probability, and maximize the chance of winning. The tiles didn’t fall my way, but that didn’t matter either.

  It’s an epiphanic moment. I got it. I finally got it. I played the total game.

  22. 1697

  MY BRAVURA PERFORMANCE is quickly upstaged by Ron Tiekert. Later in the tournament, playing Bob Felt, Ron holds a rack of EENRSU?. Through an existing A, B, and G, he plays all of his tiles, making the blank an I.

  A real crowd gathers.

  “AUBERGiNES! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” Matt Laufer exclaims. “That’s it. The ultimate has been reached.”

  People are clutching their heads, mouths are agape, eyes are bugging out. The buzz spreads through the expert division and players rush over. Ron played AUBERGiNES! Through three disconnected letters!

  “That’s better than STOREWIDE,” Matt Graham says, citing one of his personal bests. “That’s better than NEPHRITIC,” he says, citing another.

  “Through the A, the B, and the G!” Jan Dixon blares. “That’s incredible!”

  Ron stands over the board, bent slightly at the waist, the same position as when he walks; Ron’s center of gravity seems to be in his eyeglasses. He is dressed in shorts, a short-sleeved dress shirt, and white sneakers. Thin, black dress socks stretch over his calves. He is massaging his gums with one of his ever-present dental picks. He pushes his eyeglasses back up on his nose and explains how it happened.

  “I had seen it as something possible, something that was in the bag,” Ron says. Which is even more incredible, because that means he had determined, based on the unplayed tiles, that AUBERGiNES was a possibility. And then the tiles fell into place.

  “I saw it,” Ron demurs. “What can I tell you?”

  I won’t make 1700 and I know it as soon as Albany ends. My “brilliant” sequence against Danny doesn’t stop me from losing seven of the last ten games to finish with an 8–12 record. Danny does the math, but he doesn’t need to. I’m cooked.

  Yet there’s no disappointment. Somehow, that one game, that carefully orchestrated sequence of moves, is enough to compensate for the lost opportunity, and it’s oddly comforting. At least until my official rating arrives a few days later: 1691, a 6-point drop. And then I hear voices. How did I miss KOS to win in Game 14? How did I lose by just 7 points in Game 20? My mind drifts back. Choking against Felt in Game 1 in New York ... those four easy wins at Milford that slipped away ... the missed out play against Mike Baron in his backyard ... hell, playing YER* at Danbury long ago when YE would have meant a 12–3 record and a road to a sure victory... any one game that could have gone the other way.

  The Albany tournament, because of its length, is rated in two chunks of ten games each. After my 5–5 first half, the cross-table that arrives from NSA headquarters informs, my rating climbed to 1713. But midtournament ratings don’t count for tournament qualifying. So I broke 1700, but I didn’t. A tree fell in the forest, but no one heard it.

  Everyone likes to complain about the ratings system. Some elite players moan that ratings at the top have deflated by 50 to 100 points in the last decade because there are more good players and because of a mathematical bias against the higher-rated. Simply put, the percentage of games experts must win against lower-rated opponents in order simply to sustain their ratings is greater than the percentage of games they do actually win. At the other end, lower-rated players complain that it’s too hard to gain ratings points; with so many similarly skilled players, moving up can be a long, hard slog.

  Both are right, and the mathematicians agree the system needs tweaking (someone even wrote a doctoral dissertation on Scrabble ratings). In a broader sense, though, it works uncannily well. I bellyached as my rating flatlined. I’m underrated! I whined. I should be winning more than I am! It’s not fair that I have to play the blue-hairs when I know I’m better! But I wasn’t! My results—and my rating—said so. It wasn’t until I began understanding how to win, when the teachings of Joe Edley took root, that my rating rose. Winning became a byproduct of good play, and my rating went up. I won when I deserved to, and lost when I didn’t, and my rating was an accurate barometer of my skill level.

  So when I fail to crack 1700, I conclude, it’s because I don’t deserve to crack 1700. Not in some cosmic, deterministic sense, but in a rigidly mathematical one. In Albany, seven of my eight victories were against players rated below or near me (1615–1734), while all twelve of my losses were against substantially higher-rated opponents (1746–1892). I won when I was expected to and lost when I was expected to and barely budged in the end.

  Still, I’m faced with a dilemma. The angel on my left shoulder says I should accept the Albany results as a true gauge of my ability and play in Division 2. The devil on my right says I should still ask for that exemption to play in Division 1. Mike Baron wants me to play up to cap my Horatio Alger story. He even dashes off a sample letter to send to John Williams requesting the exemption.

  “You have nothing to lose by asking, si?” Mike writes me.

  “Except my pride,” I reply.

  I decide to play in Division 2. While I have come far, I haven’t come far enough. I didn’t make it, fair and square. No bogus exemption for me. I won’t be squaring off against G.I. Joel or Tiekert or Edley or Cappelletto, the Rocky theme echoing in my head as I topple former champions like dominoes en route to the greatest underdog win in sports history. But
I won’t be playing any blue-hairs, either.

  I’m sitting on the sofa in my living room. I lift my eyes from the word list I happen to be studying and think about what I’ve accomplished. The previous six months have involved the most rigorous and disciplined course of study I’ve ever undertaken, college included. My Scrabble infatuation deepened with every new word learned, every game played, win or lose, every life-or-death blip in my rating. My appreciation for language and game strategy increased exponentially. And every time I reached a goal, I set another, higher one, and achieved all but the last.

  Then I remember one more goal, Joe Edley’s challenge from months earlier: Win Division 2. On to Providence.

  In the month before the Nationals, I study at least an hour every day. I review the threes and fours. I study all of the fives that I don’t know. On the subway, in the john, on the exercise bike at the gym, on the roof of my building. I plow through sevens (five thousand of them) and eights (twenty-five hundred) in order of probability, using my lime green and orange highlighters to mark off unfamiliar words. Mike Baron has posted to CGP the top hundred seven-letter stems, the eight-letter words they form by adding a letter to the stem, and an anamonic for each, and I even manage to commit many of those to memory: DETRAIN: CHOO-CHOO STOPS, I GET OUT; TOILERS: COULDN’T FLIP BUS; NUTSIER: BLAME IQ DIP ON TV; SIGNORE: ITALIAN WED BY CREEPS. Word lists cover my desk and coffee table and dining room table. Bingos starting with ANTI. Bingos ending in IZE. Q bingos. J, Q, X, and Z fives and sixes. Pages of sevens and eights. Score sheets from recent games waiting to be analyzed and reanalyzed. “Man, you serious,” Marlon says when he visits. “Look at all this shit.”

  And I play. In the club, in the park, at Matt’s apartment, where I drop five in a row in one session, forking over $25. I drive an hour to my friend Dominic Grillo’s apartment in New Jersey. Another twenty-something expert, a biostatistician named Scott Appel, shows up. We play, and play, and play, until I’m exhausted and announce my departure, saying, “What time is it? Around eleven?” “Um, it’s 1:00 A.M.,” Dominic says, laughing. As I leave, they start another game.

  More than twenty people show up in Washington Square Park one weekend afternoon—a record, the parkies say. G.I. Joel schedules extra club sessions to help people prepare for Providence; on a rainy Sunday, using a full set of tiles, Joel and a few others plow through all 1,501 words contained in Baron’s stem list. I’m finding good stuff: ABDELOU through an N (UNDOABLE). The only bingo in CEEINR? that begins with a vowel (EIRENiC). AGIONST through an L (SOLATING). A triple-triple through a G with AEILLST in hand (LEGALIST). I play ZEROTH and OVERFAST against Bob Felt and UNIQUEsT through a Q against Danny Goldman and aNTEFIXA through an X against Dominic. And when I miss plays, I try not to worry. The mental game, I tell myself, is as important as the actual moves made. Be Joe Edley. (Edley, by the way, doesn’t study in the two weeks before the Nationals, focusing instead on rest and meditation. He is spending a week with his wife and daughter at the upstate retreat Chautauqua. Edley teaches a daily Scrabble class and then relaxes.)

  I share my progress with Eric Chaikin out in Los Angeles. Eric was a word man long before I was—creating puzzles, poring through Webster’s Third, studying linguistics at Brown—but mysteriously can’t win consistently at Scrabble. Despite knowing hundreds more words than I do, Eric’s rating is 1675, so we’re both in Division 2 in Providence. Lately, though, he reports, he has made a breakthrough.

  “I could tell from your recent reports that you’ve definitely gotten over the proverbial hump,” Eric tells me in an e-mail. “Happily, I think I can finally say I’ve faced the demons and done the same.” The previous week, Eric reports, he played twenty-one games—“against good people”—and won fourteen. He averaged 421 points per game, including scores of 561,558,507, and 501. He tallied forty-six bingos, including such obscure words as DIECIOUS, HEXADIC, and DEMESNES. He played oOTHECAE, TOkAMAkS, and WISEACRe. Eric’s e-mail ends: “LET’S ROCK AT THE BIG DANCE!”

  Strapped for money, Matt Graham considers playing in Division 2, where he figures he would be a mortal lock to take the $5,000 first prize. Matt’s rating has slipped to 1877, so he has the choice of playing in the 1700–1900 group or where he belongs, in Division 1. But while ratings ebb and flow for many top players, no self-respecting high expert would play “down” with the likes of me and other low experts. But Matt needs the money. And he likes the intrigue. He genuinely believes that by spreading a rumor that he’s playing Division 2, the top experts will issue a collective sigh of relief—and then he’ll psyche everyone out by changing his mind at the last minute. People do talk about Matt’s “decision.” Not because they are relieved but because it’s so absurd. As Marlon points out, “When you do stuff like that there’s no way in the world you win.”

  Matt also believes he can win Division 1. He hasn’t worked since his latest stint at the Conan O’Brien show ended two months ago, so all he’s had to focus on is Scrabble. He pulled out flash cards he made to prepare for the 1996 Nationals. “I’ve probably added a thousand bingos,” he tells me. Division 2? Please.

  But in Albany, Matt is jittery. He seems to be taking more pills than ever. His hands shake noticeably. In the park one Sunday, Matt is playing a two-on-one money game, he and Richie Lund versus mild-mannered Ron Tiekert. In severe time trouble late in the game, Matt plays with both hands, laying down the tiles with one hand and simultaneously hitting the clock with the other, violating the spirit of the rules. It doesn’t really matter, because Ron wins and Matt goes over by a second anyway, but Ron mentions that Matt was “holding and hitting.” It’s a sportsmanship issue, and Ron, acknowledged as the game’s most ethical player, can’t tolerate rules bending.

  “Fuck you!” Matt screams, rising from the park bench. “Fuck you! I resent that!”

  I watch in horror. Matt’s cursing Ron! Gentleman Ron! Even worse, Ron apologizes for implying that Matt and his quivering hands were bending the rules. Of course, Ron knows Matt was bending the rules. But he also sees the rage and the red face and the shaking hands and figures the issue isn’t worth pressing.

  A couple of weeks later, Matt appears calm and centered. He says he has been getting up at 7:30 every morning to condition his body for the early starts in Providence. He has been working out at a gym a few blocks away (Matt sneaks in with a friend). He’s excited, in what seems a healthy way. While studying, he tells me before a session at his apartment, he’s been listening to a CD called Tune Your Brain with Mozart. The “alpha-wave” selections (including “Divertimento in B-flat Major, Fourth Movement, Adagio”) supposedly help one concentrate and improve retention. Beta-wave cuts (“Sonata for Piano and Violin in B-flat Major, Third Movement, Allegretto”) are designed for quick thinking and working at peak energy.

  Then, just before we play, Matt dips his finger in a jar of Vicks and smears some under his nose. “Aside from all the fucking drugs I use," he says, “menthol helps your ability to recall.” And he tells me he’s thinking about renting a portable oxygen tank for the tournament; more oxygen in the bloodstream improves brain function, he says. “I’d look pretty kooky sitting there in the morning having coffee with the tubes in my nose,” he says. “But effective is effective, right?”

  As the tournament approaches, I begin to doubt Matt’s potential. Sure, his anagramming skills are great, and his board vision is amazing. But he’s just not emotionally centered enough to win. If it’s just about the money—and for Matt, it actually might be—then I think he should drop down to Division 2. Because I don’t think he can win Division 1.

  After a session in the park in which he wins more than $200—playing $50 games against his regular opponent, a bread deliveryman named Dave Lipschutz who is no better a player than I am but who loves to gamble—Matt contemplates an offer. Dave says he’ll pay Matt $400 in exchange for a quarter of any winnings in Providence. Matt ponders the proposition. If he really believes he’s going to win, a quarter of $25,000 is a lot more th
an $400. Matt turns it down.

  Marlon, meanwhile, has been holed up in his room in Baltimore. “I’m living like that goofball,” he says, meaning Matt. Marlon has stopped smoking cigarettes, and is watching his weight so as not to balloon with the nicotine deprivation. He has been writing his book, studying four to seven hours a day, and playing an occasional game with his mother, Hattie. (When I visited Marlon at home a few months earlier, Hattie insisted that we play. I won twice. “She embarrassing me!” Marlon bellowed. “He gonna sit up and beat my mother half to death! You ain’t my mommy anymore!”)

  “I done went crazy studying extensions,” he reports. “Every extension imaginable.” Two-, three-, and four-letter front and back extensions to seven- and eight-letter words. He learned DONKEYWORK and TRAILERABLE and SAWTIMBER and NILPOTENT. He found DESPITEOUS, which he notes serves as an extension for both DESPITE and PITEOUS. “I don’t want no surprises,” he says. “That’s why I’ve been doing everything.”

  Marlon comes to New York before the Nationals and stays over the night before we leave for Providence. We play a final ceremonial game in the morning. Marlon wins by a point. We drive to pick up Matt and the visiting Jim Geary, who after winning the summer Reno tournament enters the Nationals rated above 2000, second to Brian Cappelletto. Matt isn’t there when we arrive. After a few minutes, he strolls up the block carrying, among other things, a portable oxygen tank, which he has just bought for $130. “I figure it paid for itself yesterday in the park,” he says.

  Matt has typically, compulsively overpacked. A two-foot-long leather bag contains nothing but pills. He brings all of his clean laundry, still bagged. A white-noise machine. A basketball. His stuffed animals.