Brett Constantine: Report from the 2007 Scrabble Players Championship

Editor’s note: Brett is a member of the 6am Gamers in southern New Hampshire and one of the first people I met after moving to Concord, NH. He has worked as a teacher, juggles on street corners, and recently completed a solo bike trip from Massachusetts to North Carolina before heading to Dayton, Ohio to play competitive Scrabble. With his permission, I’ve assembled his tournament reports into this article, which he then amended with additional anecdotes.

A note on Scrabble terminology: Players use ALL CAPS when referring to a word played on the gameboard, with blanks represented by a lower-case letter in the word. Blanks on a rack are shown as a question mark. Illegal words are followed by a *; you’ll see a lot of those in the following article...

I began the 2007 Scrabble Players Championship with three straight wins on Saturday, August 4th, and felt great. Unfortunately, I followed those up with four straight losses. Oh well.

Sunday, August 5
I got more sleep and went back at it on Sunday for seven more games. Again I started well, with two wins this time to bring my record to 5-4—then the losing streak hit again, and I lost another four straight leading into the final game of the day. After losing the two games following lunch, I had felt like I wasn’t playing the best Scrabble that I could. Fishing for tiles, a mistake on a three, etc., all combined to give me losses, and after the second loss in the afternoon—my fourth loss in a row—I wanted to cry or throw something or both.

I held it together, deciding that I really wanted to win and whomever drew me next would face my wrath. After a few turns, I wondered whether all that positive energy would be for naught, but I never gave up, even when my play handed her a big X play, and she made words like OUTWRITE. Finally, I got a bingo and actually started believing again. Then I held FGINOT?. The board wasn’t very open, and I decided that FINGOTS* was probably good and definitely worth a try. When it came to my turn, I laid it down without hesitation for 88 or something, also making DEF and MAXI in the process. She didn’t even hold it! Yeehaw! I caught a break because when we looked it up later, it turned out to be no good. After that play, I took the lead and held it, winning by 48 points. I can’t wait to beat someone better than she is. I’m 6-8 after two days, but I know I can do better.

One game after I was ready to throw things around, I’m very happy with Scrabble again. I played two games after hours because I just can’t get enough right now. I am so glad that I won the last game of the day to end on a upswing.

Monday, August 6
I once again played well in the morning. For the third straight day, I won my first game, which was a squeaker over Joyce Stock: 331-321. She didn’t have a play over 30 points, but steadily added 20-something point plays. I had one bingo, GAROTTED, for 63 points and two other big plays down the stretch, FLINCh for 49 points and BOX for 46 points. Even with the 18 points she scored from going out (9 points on my rack multiplied by 2), she couldn’t catch me.

In game two I played Carol Jones, and again I held my opponent to low scoring plays. Her highest was 35 for QuOIN. I had one bingo (sTEALER for 77) and played well to take this one, too: 377-349.

Game three was such a relief. I finally drew the bag on someone. I wouldn’t want to always simply be lucky, and of course I still have to know my words to score well, but after such a rough start in the tournament, it was very nice to have a game where everything fell my way. I bested Fernando Percy 448-343. He had one bingo and it was a nice one: KINDARS for 81. I had two: ArENITE and ELASTIN. At this point I was back over .500, at 9-8!

In the last game before lunch, I played a really nice man in Wendell Smith. We both thoroughly enjoyed our game together. We had fun exchanging phonies to start: I tried FAH* and he tried DOPLARs*, but after that we kept each other to real words. Thanks to his bingo-bango duo of dREAMER (69) and SCOURGeD (86) from the S, he went on to win 386-340, but I did pretty well considering I had no bingos. So going into lunch, I was even at 9-9.

After lunch, I was a bit afraid that I’d fall back into the pattern of mostly losing. In six games after lunch to this point, I was 1-5. (Ouch!) Playing against Debbie Scholz, we played for small points (though I did try UNSIDED* which was no good) until I exploded with WORSENs for 92 as it hit two double word scores. Later in the game I took the commanding lead with ARIsTAE for 72. I played a little sloppily, but won 418-331.

In Round 20, I fell short despite two bingos (ARENiTE for 69 and WAITERS for 85). Barbara Major beat me with two bingos of her own, 407-303. Still, I was even at 10-10.

The last game of the day was against Adam Czernikowski, a man about my age who lives close enough to bike to the Dayton Convention Center where the tournament is being held this year, and it was a really good game. I don’t recall making any big mistakes in this game, except at the end. Adam simply outscored me right from the start, playing bingos in two of his first three turns. Despite not playing a word longer than five letters during the game, I managed to keep only about 70 points behind Adam for most of the game.

At the end of the game, however, came my clearest mistake of the tournament. With plenty of time remaining on my clock, no tiles left in the bag, and seven tiles on my rack (GGIINS and a blank), I was desperately looking for a bingo to finish and maybe win the game. Since the board was so crowded with words, my only real place to fit these seven tiles was below an A on the board to form an eight-letter word. I had about seven minutes to think about it and wrack my brain for a winning play. I wasn’t sure what letter the blank should become to give me a usable word and wondered whether I should just try a word even if I was pretty sure it was a phony, but worried that my spread—the cumulative count of how much I score compared with all of my opponents—would suffer when Adam challenged the phony off the board. Still, to win I would have to try something…

“What about AGISTING?” I thought to myself. “What the heck is that word, agisting? What does it mean? Where would I know that from?” These questions bombarded me, and I figured that I was making it up, so I just played something else, not even trying a bingo and effectively conceding the game.

Of course, after the game was over and we were talking about it, Adam looked up what words were possible with my tiles and an A. There were only two: imagings and (of course) agisting. If I had played agisting, I would have won by five points! I had to get up and walk away from the table because I was so upset at myself for not trying agisting. It took me a long while to fully get over that. Luckily it was the last game of the day and I got to work out my frustrations physically in a game of indoor ultimate Frisbee elsewhere in the convention center. Oh well: 10-11 after three days.

Tuesday, August 7
For three days in a row I had won my first two games, and day four continued that pattern with rounds 22 and 23. Janice Konkol fell to me 366-327, thanks in part to my early bingo, WAVERED. Ronald F. Millard, a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran, and I had a good game, one of the few where both my opponent and I scored over 400. I opened with ANTIRED (someone against communists); five turns later he answered with REGULAR. Two turns after that I used a blank to make BOrATES. It took him two exchanges and several more turns, but Ronald played his second bingo as well: aSTRIDE for 75 points, taking the lead by 4. I played one phony in my end game because I wanted to see whether he would challenge it, and I figured it was worth a shot for 65 points, but you can’t add an S to QUA. He challenged “quas*” off the board, and I wondered whether I had just made a mistake that would cost me the game. Instead, he handed me a place to play for 35 points, and I was able to go out first, thanks to the fourth S. I won, 454-437, bringing my record to 12-11.

Despite my two bingos in round 24 (MINISTER from the M, and STRAFING from the S), Linda Bianca’s three bingos helped her to a win, 434-361. Sadly, I missed the chance to challenge one of them off as her first one was phony. Instead, I challenged DELATION, which is good. Oh well, I was 12-12 going into the final game before lunch.

Against Barbara Besadny in round 25, I felt I played well and had quite good luck drawing tiles that were useful at the right times from the bag. I played FROSTED for 80 points to take a lead in the middle of the game. It was holding up, but only just, when I fished for the right tiles and found FEsTERS using a blank and sealing the deal. Final score: 420-326.

Round 26 was an interesting game. I played Jane Tacker, who is a wonderful older lady, probably in her eighties, but still quick and smart. There were several octogenarians at the tournament, and this one was a tough win for me. It took a phony bingo from me (retiler*) and several mistakes on her part (two phonies in her last several turns) for me to pull out a four point win, 386-382. Whew! Four points!

In round 27, Beth Palmer played LATCHeRS* against me, and though I held the play and thought about challenging, I decided not to. I should have. Just as my bingo in the previous game was no good, so too was this one. The very next turn she played SEEaBLE, and she went on to win 404-334. I did have one bingo: ANISOLE. This loss brought my record to 14-13.

Some people had been complaining about procedural errors and noisiness from my next opponent in round 28, but I found nothing amiss with John McClain. He was courteous, if not perfect with the procedure. Anyway, I played two bingos early (ENTRAIN and RACIEST), then closed the board down, making it hard to make any good plays at all. I really outplayed this opponent and won going away, 425-278.

Wednesday, August 8
Erica Moore and I played our hearts and minds out in round 29. We had no problems with each other, no procedural issues, and lots of good Scrabble. I played HITTERs for 70 points, and not counting the two times I exchanged tiles and the one time I played a phony word (you can’t pluralize UM), I scored fewer than 20 points only three times. I did let her get away with a phony bingo (rakings* is not good), but she made a mistake leaving a bingo lane open for my play of GREENEST through an E. I played my end game after that quite well, finding a better play than I originally saw, hooking the T in BURST to OR to make ORT and score 27 points instead of the other play I saw for 20. Because she challenged, I won 402-352, but it felt a heck of a lot closer than that! The win brought me to 16-13 with two games to go.

The penultimate game for me in round 30 was against another nice elder lady, Neva Slater, who has been playing since almost the year I was born. She was playing well, but I played better and got lucky again with the tiles, winning with no trouble 472-374. I probably should have won by more, but I didn’t block a bingo lane to a triple word score, and she played MUSTERED for 80 points late in the game. I played SHOULDER, ISATINE, and failers* (a phony) on my way to victory.

The only other anecdote for the game against Neva came from the board next to us where a mother and son were playing against each other. They had eight challenges in that game and a lot of funny chatter. I overheard this remark from Noah: “That’s not Monty Python, Mom, that’s I Love Lucy!” Noah won that game for the younger generation and finished with a better record than his mother in the tournament.

It seems fitting that my opponent in round 31 for the final game was the same young man I played in Game 1: Noah Lieberman. Yep, the same young man from the above anecdote. In our first game, he had me scared, but played at least two phony words that I easily challenged off, and this game was very similar. He opened with a bingo (AROUSED), but wasted two of his next three turns playing phony seven-letter words. I challenged them off and managed to work through poor racks. Later, with all the S’s and one blank already played, I managed to draw the second blank (before he drew the K) to stick an S on ROC and score big for BANDIEs (85 points). It was a close game until then, but I pulled away to win my fourth straight to close out with a respectable 18 wins and 13 losses.

From the point on the second day when I was 5-8, I went on to win 13 and lose only 5 more, which is a great comeback. I finished in 17th place in my division of about 80 players and won a list of all the words that end in INGS. That’s nothing compared to the top prize at the tournament ($12,000), but I had a lot of fun, and I loved socializing with friends that I see only at Scrabble tournaments. Ohio is the farthest I’ve ever traveled for a tournament, and maybe I’ll never do it again. Maybe I’ll start getting even better and be playing in the next division up next year. Who knows? In any case, Scrabble is a great way to challenge yourself to strategize and remember words better than someone else. I played some of my best Scrabble at this tournament, and I am very happy I went.

I hope you all enjoyed this. Either way, take care and have lots of fun!

Visit the 2007 Scrabble Players Championship website for final standings, game replays, commentary, and photos.

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