National Scrabble Championships

[randyhersom]

I'll be playing in the National Scrabble Championships August 1-5 in New Orleans. For those interested, results can be followed at www.scrabbleassociation.com.

The finals will be shown on ESPN at a later date. 857 players are signed up so far, but only the 177 or so in the top division will be eligible for the finals and the $25,000 first prize. I'm currently 13th highest rated of those in the top division.

[catesta]

Congrats, Randy!

Best of luck to you.

[PHILLYQ]

Good Luck! I regularly play against my computer(and regularly get my behind kicked!). It's a great game, but hard for some to understand the attraction. i have a friend that I visit, and when I go to his house we play 7 or 8 games of Scrabble, and folks whe hear of it think we're strange.

Have you read 'Word Freak' by Stefon Fatsis? It's an insider's look at Scrabble tournaments and some of the players.

BINGO on a triple-word score, and may you get the q,z,x,j!

[Peter Johnson]

Good luck Randy! That's a hell of an accomplishment to be 13th, and I hope you take it all the way to the top!

[Spontooneous]

May all your tiles be good ones, Randy. Go get 'em!

[maren]

Good luck, Randy!!! Xylem!!!

[randyhersom]

Yep PHILLYQ I've read and enjoyed it. I'm mentioned in the chapter on the Providence 2000 national championships.

P.S. You can keep the Q. It's bad news.

Thanks to you all.

Edited July 23, 2004 by randyhersom

[Man with the Golden Arm]

While trying to google something cute i found this:

SCRABBLE  IN NURSERY RHYME

by John Holgate

Word Ways, 1990

There was an old woman who hid in her shoe

Some esses for gaining a point (sometimes, two).

She sneaked them in one at a time

And no one detected the crime--

But when she played SASSAFRAS, SISSY and SMILES,

Her opponent demanded a recount of tiles.

Little Jack Horner stared at the corner;

He hoped that his letters might fly.

But he had no success (his rack was a mess);

No bingo could he find to try.

So he lit up a fag, pulled two blanks from the bag,

And said, "What a winner am I!"

Mary had an anagram

Which used up every tile.

"What a clever girl I am!"

Said she with knowing smile.

Opponent moaned "My luck's absurd;

You'll beat me by a mile!"

But when she came to play her word,

Damn! He'd blocked the triple file.

Hickory dickory dock

The mouse looked at his clock.

With seconds to spare,

And a win in the air,

He played DICKORY,

Was challenged,

And lost.

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To play a game of Scrabble.

But Jack fell down

And broke his crown--

Jill won the game by forfeit.

Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffet,

Playing a game with a quist.

Along came a spider and sat down beside her,

And whispered the moves that she'd missed.

To a cockroach and beetle who knew very leetle

Of Scrabble or words on a list.

Miss Muffet said "Stuff it!"

And jumped off her tuffet.

"Please do not kibitz--

It's really the pits."

And, wielding her rack,

She killed them (whack, whack!)

All squashed into bits.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How did your tourney go?

"First I met Joe, who played like a pro

And blocked every spot on the board.

Then I got Stu, who, palming the Q,

Kept using rude words I deplored.

Lost to Jim, Mike and Frank without sighting a blank,

Going down by a hundred or two.

My confidence soared when I beat Lindy Lou;

Against her I scored fifty-four for KAZOO.

But then I struck Max, and had horrible racks,

Like V-V-Y-K-P-P-Q.

So I threw in the lot, and picked up more rot,

Like A-E-I-E-I-U.

In my very last game, it was more of the same,

And I lost by three hundred and two.

I cursed Alfred Butts (I hated his guts!)

For marketing Scrabble at all.

I played like a klutz and slowly went nuts;

My opponents were having a ball!"

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard

To play Scrabble games on her own,

Left hand vs. right, she played through the night.

Neglecting her dog and his bone.

Her average score? Seven hundred and four.

Her highest? A thousand or more.

Three ninety two was her score for QUIXHONY.

(No one was present to challenge this phony.)

She played FOOZLE, MUNIFIED,

AGARICS, USUFRUCT, PADRONE--

"Where's the fun in this?" she cried,

"If I can't hear opponents moan?"

"Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

"I've been to London to visit the Queen.

Mum was there, and Hubby, too;

We played Scrabble in the loo.

Though not the swankest place to be,

It calmed their fears of kitty pee.

I started right off with a bingo, REGINAS

(A fitting beginning for such an occasion!).

Under the I-N-A-S Liz played NASION;

Then Phil came down off her end with VAGINAS!

This caused Her Highness to rebuke

The word choice of the randy Duke.

'Non-standard plurals are banned around here;

Queen's English is what we adhere to, my dear.'

Then her Mum played an eight-letter word, RIGATONI.

Her son-in-law snorted 'That looks like a phony!'

And Liz said, 'Oh, pshaw! What a lot of boloney!

It sounds like a foreign-born import to me.'

I checked it at once in my O.S.P.D.

And located the word.

The Queen, though, demurred.

'Americanisms might be quite the fashion,

Yet I must confess that I have a mad passion

For the Celtic eccentricity

Of Chambers English Diction'ry.'

She then took down a lexicon

Ensconced above the royal john.

'This is a tome which I often peruse

On many a boring Britannica cruise.

Why, touring the Falklands in war's aftermath,

I'd pore through my Chambers while taking a bath.'

TheDuke then chipped in with a quip of his own,

'She even reads Chambers when she's on the throne.'

'Thereanent I do decree

That we must use the C.E.D.

O.S.P.D.? Why, pish and tush,

This book deserves a royal flush!"

My paperback went down the drain,

Never to emerge again.

'Let the game now proceed.'

And her husband agreed.

The Queen Mum though it was most absurd

Her daughter had ruled against her word.

My turn now came; I laid down KAT.

The Prince exclaimed 'I'll challenge that.

He's unacquainted with this game.

Just look! He cannot spell his name.'

(But'twas in Chambers, all the same.)

The Prince, thus forced to eat his hat,

Agreed I was no pussy cat.

His Highness said, 'In words I'm weak.

I'd rather play this game in Greek.'

The game then went on without further ado

Except when the Queen found an X in her shoe

And the Duke played a blank by inverting his Q,

But I finally won by one hundred and two.

They haven't invited me back to the Palace,

But do not ascribe this to soreness or malice.

The reason? While leaving the Buckingham yard,

I lifted my hind leg and pissed on a Guard.

Us mogs are a rabble,

An unlettered lot,

But when we play Scrabble,

We're pretty damn hot."

congrats to you Randy!!!

[JSngry]

You go get'em now, ya' hyeah?

[Late]

At least QAT, QAID, and QANAT (and the standard QUA) can bail you out of a Q bind. Then there's always the desperado SUQ play.

My favorite (when possible) is to go out on a bingo. I had the lucky pleasure yesterday of playing BUSTIER to eke out a come-from-behind win.

Good luck Randy! Great game.

Edited July 23, 2004 by Late

[Bright Moments]

Strange News - AP

3-Letter Word Sparks Scrabble Scramble

Thu Aug 5,11:05 PM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo!

NEW ORLEANS - It wasn't a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship Thursday.

AP Photo

In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word "lez," which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament.

Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian.

"There are words you just can't show on television," Scrabble Association Executive Director John Williams said.

Wright, a 30-year-old concert pianist from Los Angeles, played the word and then drew two replacement tiles so quickly that the referee didn't notice at first. When he did, he said the slang term had to go.

ESPN officials told Williams the word could stay, but the issue was that Wright had already selected new tiles.

"He violated the rules. But there were also people who were upset that the word was played," Williams said.

Eric Chaiken, a tournament participant and director of "Word Wars," a documentary about the Scrabble championship, said the definition of "offensive" was open to interpretation.

"The ultimate absurdity is that you can't play the word 'redskins' on ESPN," he said.

Williams spoke with Wright and his opponent, David Gibson, then called an emergency meeting of the Scrabble Advisory Board. The board unanimously agreed to remove the word. Wright then returned the two tiles he had selected and played a different word, Williams said.

"We kind of took two steps back," he said.

Wright, using more innocent words like feijoa (an evergreen shrub) and zebu (a domesticated ox), won the best-of-five final round in three games and pocketed a $25,000 prize.

"Meaning has no consideration when I play," Wright said.

[Dave James]

Randy - My brother tells me there's a movie out about Scrabble players and their obsession with the game. It's called Word Wars. Have you seen it? I guess it focuses on four guys who are so deeply immersed in the game that it's really all they do. My brother says it's absolutely fascinating. BTW, how did you do? Hope the tiles were with you.

Up over and out.

[.:.impossible]

Wait, you can play ANY word in the championship? I didn't think you could use slang, archaic words, proper nouns, anagrams, etc. What exactly are the rules Randy?

And let us know how you did!

[Big Wheel]

Looks like he did pretty well! (link)

[Shrdlu]

My late Dad once managed to get a word with the Q in it, hitting both a triple word score and a triple letter score - the Q was on thatta one!! I forget the score, but it was huge.

[Jim R]

My late Dad once managed to get a word with the Q in it, hitting both a triple word score and a triple letter score - the Q was on thatta one!!

I don't think it's possible to hit a triple letter and a triple word on the same play. Maybe he got the "Q" on a double letter while also hitting a triple word space. I've done that many times... well, I'm pretty sure I did it once...

I followed Big Wheel's link to the NSC site, and spent quite a bit of time exploring. Very cool! I like the feature where you can play along with some of the individual games: http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/games/nsc2004/

I used to think I was pretty good, but now I realize that was an illusion (I should play more often against adults ). But seriously, Randy and his competitors are waaaaaaaay outta my league.

Oops, I don't think "waaaaaaaay" is a real word.

[connoisseur series500]

Congrats Randy!

Man, that's some awesome stuff.

I'm into chess tournaments myself, but am no way ranked as high as you comparatively. I'm the highest rated active player in the Toledo area, but I rank nowhere on a national level.

I'm impressed!

[PHILLYQ]

Nice going, Randy! I saw some of the scores you posted, and I AM IMPRESSED! You busted 500 with regularity-if you come over my house, I'm hiding the game and denying all knowledge of ever playing it. Huzzahs(How's that on a triple-word) to you, Randy- you rock the tiles!

[Shrdlu]

Jim, it's a long time since that happened, but maybe the play made more than one word. I don't remember now.

[Jim R]

Another possibility is that he got the Q on a triple letter and hit a double word space with his word also. For that to happen, it would have to be 5-letter word, so that would be at least 68 points. I think I'd probably settle for that.

Ever since I followed that link above, I've been Scrabble™-crazed. I've got a computer version for our Mac, and even on the medium skill levels, the computer is showing me a lot of new words! New to me that is- Randy probably knows most of 'em. B-)