Why Do I Love Scrabble?

January 3
Long Beach

Why I Love Scrabble

I am getting prepared for the first leg of my 2019 Scrabble Tour and honestly I don't know exactly what I am going to write in answer to the question "Why do I love Scrabble?".  Certainly flying across the country and visiting my dear pals Howard and John and playing cards and lazing by the beach and the pool would be enough of a fun vacation.  Visiting my old buddy Jeff in Miami and Maaahk (stress Boston accent) in Ft. Lauderdale are always enriching experiences, visiting a client who finances my adventures is a good tax-write off decision and always a decent excuse for a trip, hanging with my aunts and/or cousins would be satisfying taken alone.  Playing pinball with Roy and Maddy at the Silverball Museum in Del Rey Beach could easily occupy three or four days of my life and the prospect of visiting with my co-star in my high school production of "Fiddler On The Roof" who I haven't seen in 42 years is also on the agenda!

Then, the suggestion of a three hour drive to Sarasota during the trip to participate in a one day Scrabble tournament and suddenly my brain is flush.  Here's ten fun things to do with friends and relatives and then drop "Scrabble Tournament Mostly With Strangers" in the middle of it all and it's like icing on the icing on the icing of the cake.  What's THAT all about?


I was at the Laguna Woods Scrabble Club last night and met a recent Florida transplant named Sandy who took up playing at Gary Moss' Scrabble club  and when asked why she came to the club, she got into the typical stories about "playing with my Mom at the kitchen table" and so on.   Of course going from playing URGE for 5 points using the blank for the "U" because she had no vowels (which she did) to the fanaticism of studying the top 15,000 7-letter words on meticulously curated index cards is quite a long walk from the kitchen tables of youth and it got me to thinking about my Scrabble origin story and whether there was any inkling of what was to come.

   I think I had a run-of-the-mill-relationship with Scrabble growing up,  although my family tended toward screaming and bare-knuckle brawling as our recreations of choice.   I fondly remember playing a few rounds of a game called Po-Ke-No and proudly winning the "pushka" by attaining four corners once, but much of my long term memory has been bludgeoned into submission by the acreage my short term memory requires to learn the top 15,000 high probability 7's, so I can't even be sure Po-Ke-No is a real game.      I did a crossword puzzle or two, harumphed at the ease of "Jumble" dabbled in chess and backgammon, invented a dice game called "Zonk" that revolved around taking bong hits,  but my one daily word-related diversion  was the "Word Power" game in the nether regions of the New York Post.  The concept was simple (and still exists to this day).  They give you a word and you have to get as many five letter words out of that word.   The number was moderately easy to hit, and the satisfaction of reaching it was akin to scratching the best itch imaginable.   When in New York,  I still buy the New York Post just to visit my old friend "Word Power".  Some go to Mecca, I buy the New York Post. Little did I know back then that "Word Power" would be my gateway drug....

It wasn't really until I met Brian Nelson around 1995 that Scrabble even entered my peripheral vision.  Brian and I met through an AOL chat room and met to play tennis  (that was his memory of  how we met, mine was to go on dates).  Although no romantic sparks ensued, we had so much in common that  immediately we started playing tennis and going to concerts, baseball games and bowling tournaments..  He was also a Scrabbler and we began playing.  He had already been a member of the Scrabble Club and indoctrinated me to the rules with the bag and the clock and all the other easily ridiculed etiquette.  He also would beat me about 9 out of 10 times, but it was one of the many, many things we enjoyed doing together and that's what friendship is about, right?  I don't recall ever studying, but I know I must have had some word lists that I looked at because Brian is a good player, and I would say I at least generously held my own against him most of the time (I asked him and he provisionally recalls giving me some word list to look at).  .

Several years later, Brian suggested that we go to a Scrabble Tournament being held in Pasadena.  Keep in mind, he was the ONLY person who I played with in perhaps 20 years.  We went to this tournament, we played some games, I went 3-3 in the lowest division, shrugged my head afterward and life went on.  Oddly, I suppose, in retrospect, it's like meeting the future love of your life and just shining them on.  I was nonplussed.

Several years later Brian suggested we go to another tournament and somehow, he was sure I was going to win...and I did!  6-0 in the low division.  The victory served to whet my appetite and we ended up going to the big Reno tournament a couple of times and had a few laughs, and I recall perhaps my first Scrabble "incident".  Going in to the last day of play in Reno in 2003, I was in first place and I couldn't sleep the entire night before the final 3 games because  I felt if I didn't memorize every SATINE word, I would lose the tournament.  The entire night I tossed and turned with BASINET and ETESIAN rolling around in my head.    I did end up winning that tournament (probably without needing SATINE words)  but for me, the needle was unmoved.  That seemed like more stress than it was worth!  Scrabble was OK, the tournaments were something to do, but I was happy to just have a few fun games at Brian's house every so often and call it a day.  Then Brian met Mike and I stopped playing Scrabble entirely!

I don't know what got me back into it, but I went to my first club and attended a local tournament here and there and I noticed that after the initial flourish of winning in the lowest division, it required much more word knowledge to excel at a higher level.  Like anything, its easy to look at those who do it proficiently and muse at their awesomeness.  One of the early Scrabble champions I admired was Brian Cappelletto. .In my mind, he was the Derek Jeter of Scrabble. And he seemed like a pretty normal guy which seemed unique in and of itself in the higher echelons of Scrabble.

However, I noticed that talking about studying more didn't translate into improving.  It reminded me of people I see at the gym who spend all their time socializing but don't appear to actually lift any weights.  There's no osmosis in hanging around good Scrabble players (to speak of).  And just wanting to be better is not good enough.  Like everything else, it requires work.  I didn't seem terribly motivated to do much about it and my lackluster academic record and not-worth-the-parchment-it's-written-on liberal arts degree concurred.

At the 2013 Nationals,  I heard them give an award to the person who goes to the most states.  Devoid of needing skill to show up at different places, I  decided that was an award I wanted to win and set about wandering around the East Coast after the Nationals and amassing states.  That all worked out well until I hit Florida where I suqqed at a tournament so badly, I vowed to abandon this folly and do something, anything else. I had started putting some time into "looking" at word lists and committing time to learning more than just the basics and there I was at the bottom of the heap.  I felt like Scrabble had become my spurned lover.  "After all the attention I gave you, how could you do this to me?" I sobbed.   And Scrabble being just a game and incapable of response was just too inanimate to care.

As Vikki Carr sang in the song "It Must Be Him", I picked myself up off the floor and reassessed.  OK, if I really want to go from sitting in the back of one corner of the tournament room to sitting among the better players I have to get cracking.  Look at word lists, track your tiles, play a lot of club games, play people better than you.  Study.  And then study more.  And then study even more.  I tend to think that word knowledge and unscrambling abilities are the two keys to Scrabble infamy. These are cornerstones and require a modicum of time and patience.  And BORING AF!

But.... I started to improve.  Gradually, and not meteorically, although I have seen players who are handed a tile bag and a rack and suddenly catapult past me faster than Black Friday shoppers eyeing the new I-Whatever.   I think that's where the joy began to come from.  In most areas of your life especially as an adult, you don't necessarily get to gauge your improvement.  Sure you get a raise at work or there are satisfactions and milestones with kids or family, but here is an actual number helping you to assess and monitor improvement.  It's what I personally respond to.  If in addition to having a Scrabble rating I had a Guitar Playing Rating and a Romantic Partner Rating and a Career Aptitude Rating and a Good Person Rating, I might be better at all of those things too. Ha!  That would be something, and for me, motivating.

In preparation of writing this article I started asking people what they love about Scrabble.  Some said it was the social aspects of it, others said they love words, others say it gave them an opportunity to keep busy or get out of the house.  And on some level I concur with all of those things.  However, as I embark on this journey towards Scrabble expert status I will just say, that for now, I love Scrabble because it monitors how I am improving at life. And with something as uniquely indefatigable as life and the tenuous hold we all have on it, I love having some sense of knowing how I am doing.