Word up: Scrabble champs vie for world title

Monday, Dec. 10, 2001 | 8:11 a.m.

For tournament Scrabble players, there is a lot of quirky knowledge to be obtained on the way to the top.

John D. Williams Jr., executive director of the National Scrabble Association, explains that if you take the letters k and a to form the word ka, then every letter in the phrase "Betsy's Feet" can be added to the end to create a three-letter word.

While kab, kae, kat, kas kay and kaf might not be helpful in navigating one's way through the linguistic reality of daily life, they are fair play in the game of Scrabble.

And such mnemonics as "Betsy's Feet" can be helpful to players trying to memorize tens of thousands of obscure words.

As the 2001 World Scrabble Championships opens this week at The Venetian, Scrabble players representing 42 countries will be raking through the alphagrams and anagrams they've filed neatly in their minds as they as they compete for up to $50,000 in cash prizes, with $25,000 going to the first-place winner.

The event, held Friday through Dec. 17, is held every other year and was last held in Australia. It will draw qualified players from as far away as England, Bahrain, Gibraltar, New Zealand, Liberia and Pakistan.

Players compete against one another in timed 25-minute games. The two who score the highest during in the three-day tournament will compete Monday beginning at 9 a.m. in a final best-of-five face-off to be aired on closed-circuit television in the Galileo wing of the hotel's meeting room area (for information call 414-1000).

"These are the best of the best," Williams said. "It's like the Olympics.

"There will be fading champions, young guys on the rise ... Eighty-five percent of the players are coming to the tournament with no chance of winning and they know it. But it's a chance to be in the room with people they've read about."

Yes, read about. Noted Scrabble players in recent years have garnered a share of publicity in national publications as tournament Scrabble continues to make its ascent.

Since Scrabble's first world championship in 1991, the number of participating countries has more than doubled, as has prize money. Tournament players and organizers are hoping the game will someday earn the same attention as chess.

The publication of Wall Street Journal reporter Stephen Fatsis' book "Word Freak" (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001) shot the colorful and championship-caliber players into the Scrabble limelight. The book also shed light on the endearing social world of competitive Scrabble itself -- a world filled with club banter, hierarchy, brainiacs, unemployed Scrabblers, the obsessive-compulsive players and others who traverse the world and their local Scrabble clubs playing competitive Scrabble.

Scrabblemania

It's likely that Alfred Mosher Butts, an unemployed architect who created the game of Scrabble during the Great Depression, could never have dreamed the grip the game would have on both novice and competitive players.

Scrabble boards are in one of three American homes. There are 25,000 tournament players worldwide. The National Scrabble Association in Greenport, N.Y., has a membership of 10,000 players in North America and Canada, and sanctions nearly 200 North American tournaments each year.

Hasbro Inc., which is hosting this year's world championship with the National Scrabble Association, says 15,000 schools have purchased its School Scrabble kit and that 500,000 students are playing Scrabble in schools, which could possibly spawn even more tournament players.

Butts died in 1993, living long enough to see the advent of the first world championship in 1991.

Though Butts created the game to combine the vocabulary skills of crossword puzzles with the element of chance, tournament Scrabble is more about math and analysis than vocabulary.

Through a laborious memorization process, players could know all the seven-letter anagrams (words in which the letters can be scrambled to become another word) and nary a definition of one.

"They have too much to think about so they don't clutter their brains with definitions," said Luise Shafritz, a Las Vegas Scrabble player who will serve as a word judge at this week's championships -- a duty she also held at the 1995 World Scrabble Championships in London.

Look it up

As one of three word judges on the floor of the tournament games, Shafritz will be looking up words challenged by Scrabble players.

The "Official Scrabble Words International Edition," which combines allowable words from American and British Scrabble game dictionaries, is the reference book used in competition.

At tournaments, Shafritz said, "There are always wonderful words being used."

Experts will average two seven-letter words a game, she said. In Scrabble, using all seven letters on your tray to create a playable word is called a bingo and worth an additional 50 points.

Which is why knowing seven-letter anagrams is essential to advancing in the game, Shafritz said. For example, she explained, the word "retains" will make eight other seven-letter words, including "anestri."

Some players have also memorized the 96 two-letter words and the 22 words (including plurals) that contain a Q but not the letter U, such as qaid, qintars and sheqalim.

Scrabble players use flashcards and computer software when training for tournaments. Some even use placemats with notes on them, so they can study while they're eating, Williams said. Top experts spend three to four hours a day playing Scrabble.

"Letters come in patterns," Williams said. "Once you think in patterns of letters you're on your way."

And unscrambling has become second nature to some tournament players.

Williams said that once, as he was having dinner with three-time national American champion Joe Edley, a waitress at the restaurant asked if either one was up for dessert -- more specifically, Peach marble.

Without hesitation, Edley blurted out "cheap blame."

"There's a million stories like that," Williams said.

Scrabble players are creative, cunning, fiercely competitive, have slightly addictive personalities and are highly intelligent, he said. "Many are Mensa members."

Counting tiles

During a game, Williams said, "They'll remember everything that's been played. It's called tracking tiles. They'll count letters. So they know how (for example) many E's have been played."

Which makes them excellent gamblers, he said.

"They love Las Vegas," Williams said. "They're great blackjack players. They can count cards in the same way they can count letters."

The average Scrabble score among players in the tournaments is around 400, he said. High scores have been around 700 points. According to Hasbro, tournament players average 35 points a play.

To prepare for tournaments, Edley said he studies 1,000 alphagrams (the letters of a word arranged alphabetically) using flash cards and computer programs. He began studying for this year's World Scrabble Championship in June.

Because the British and American Scrabble dictionaries are combined for the tournament, players in Canada and the United States are having to learning an extra 40,000 words for the competition. They'll have to unlearn the words for the next national competition.

As Edley, one of the favorites to win the world championship, said, "It's not easy."

Nor is learning to unscramble alphagrams instantaneously.

"At first it seemed nearly impossible," Edley said. "But in study regiments, you are basically training your brain to do that."

Edley began playing Scrabble while in his 20s. Then in 1978, at age 30, he became a competitive Scrabble player, competing that year in the national championships. Since 1991 he's played all the world championships.

He said he's always played games such as chess, backgammon and pool.

Edley is co-author of "Everything Scrabble," a step-by-step guide to learning and advancing in Scrabble. He is also director of clubs and tournaments for the National Scrabble Association and is the only person to win the American national championship more than once, a rarity according to Williams.

In college Edley studied math and philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit. Known for his study of Eastern philosophy and religion, Edley uses breathing exercises to to help clear his mind during his games. The entire fifth chapter of "Word Freak" is devoted to his story.

Along with Edley there will be other noted players at the tournament, such as World Champion Joel Wapnick, from Canada; 1997 World Champion U.S. player Joel Sherman from New York; and 1995 World Champion David Boys from Canada.

Is it likely that Wapnick or any of these players will win again this year?

"No one's ever won this twice," Williams said. "The odds are against it."

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