| Look out – Scrabble mania is taking over the world one tile at a time. And it’s a lot more competitive than you think.
That innocent little game you play in your living room on cold winter evenings is a far cry from the Scrabble tournament circuit, where grown men collapse in tears after a particularly hard day on the tiles. Scrabble tournaments are so rampant across North America that you could hit one every weekend if you were so inclined. And winnings can run as high as $25,000. Which begs the question: what the hell is a Scrabble tournament?
In a tournament, Scrabble-ites come together and play timed games against competitors in their division. It’s all about strategy, tactics and defence, and in tournaments you can use words that you wouldn’t be able to use at home: racial terms, slang, swear words. The player with the largest point spread over the tournament is the winner of his or her division. And let’s dispel the myth that this is a game for language mavens – to a large degree it depends on the mathematical linking of symbols. It’s likely no coincidence that the winner of the recent World Scrabble Championships, Canadian Adam Logan, is a multilingual mathematician.
Evan McIntyre, formerly bass player of Regina band Blue Beard and now of Numbers Hate Letters, claimed the Division Four title during the latest Western Canadian Championship in Calgary. Although an unlikely hero, this tattooed musician held his own against the math geeks and the blue-haired old ladies who haunt the Scrabble halls.
McIntyre’s love affair with Scrabble began when his competitive streak couldn’t stand the 300- to 400-point losses to his girlfriend, so he learned how to beat her at her own game. But the glory wasn’t enough – he had tasted triumph and wanted more. He started to look for outside players to dominate, dabbled with the online world and finally found the Regina Scrabble Club. At the same time, he discovered and devoured the book Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, which added fuel to his fire. He was ready to leap into the cutthroat world of Scrabble tournaments.
McIntyre’s first competition was in Moose Jaw. "I got my butt kicked by a bunch of old ladies," he admits. "To be fair, I kicked a few old ladies’ butts, too." The end of the tournament found him clutching two blank tiles in his sweaty palm. He recalls that the pressure of the clock, ticking away his time as he tried to put together winning combinations, and the creaking of the old ladies’ chairs were nerve-wracking. Today, he still admits to being a little nervous before he enters a tournament. One of his most uncomfortable moments was laying down the tiles to spell out the word "vulva" while playing against an elderly lady. "Good word," was her response.
McIntyre says that, for a lot of people, Scrabble can become an obsession. In the past, the largest Scrabble tournament, the Nationals, was held every two years, but because of increasing demand it is now being held every year. The game used to be an "esoteric subculture" where people had to play solitaire Scrabble for practice. That’s all changed.
McIntyre believes this is due to the increasing opportunities to play, with lots of live tournaments and endless games online. Scrabble was even featured on TV’s CSI as a murder motive when a player laid down a fake word without being challenged and then challenged his opponent when the latter added to that word – one of the dirtiest tricks in Scrabble.
Now that McIntyre has won the Division Four championships, he moves on to the next level. Does he want to make it all the way to the top? Become a Scrabble god?
He says he’d love to play at the Nationals, but it takes a lot of time and effort to make it to the top, something that he doesn’t have. Besides being Scrabble man, he’s also pursuing his master’s degree in social and political thought at the University of Regina.
What is McIntyre’s favourite word?
"Wamefou," he says.
What does that mean?
"To Scrabble players, the definitions are meaningless." |
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