An Apology to Jewel
Reflecting on the power of words in real life and in tournament Scrabble
“Is this tournament using the same dictionary as the last one?” asked Chris.
My older brother Chris, my 14-year-old nephew Griffin, and I watched a Scrabble tournament live-streamed on my phone. We were trapped at the far end of a long table hosting my whole immediate family: each of the five Canik siblings, their better halves, and the teen and tween children of my older sister and her husband. We were on summer vacation but had come into town for a meal at a popular restaurant.
I wouldn’t usually watch a Scrabble tournament on my phone during a family meal, but I can’t hear well in loud places. When I sit at the far end of the table at a crowded restaurant, I won’t talk much during the meal. Streaming Scrabble it was.
We were watching the 2024 Word Cup, the second of two back-to-back Scrabble majors. Only two North American tournaments carry a USD 10,000 first prize. Each is 5 days long, and they were two days apart this year. I’d performed five straight days of commentary for the first major, NASPA’s Scrabble Players Championship, but was on the sideline for the first two days of WGPO/CoCo’s Word Cup. I’d be in the booth for the last portion of this one. (I wasn’t sure who was doing commentary for this section. We were watching on mute. I can’t hear well in loud places.)
“Basically,” I replied, “but you can play all of the racial slurs in this one.”
“Nice,” said Griffin. Teenage boys.
—
The first Scrabble tournament I played in was the Texas State Scrabble Championship in 2005. It was open to players of all ages, but Chris (13) and I (12) would be the youngest players by about two decades. I’d later discover and play on the School Scrabble scene, open to elementary and middle school students, but always found competing with the adults more fun. In the adult game, you could play all of the words.
To prepare for school tournaments, I printed a list of the most profane words (called the “Poo List” by Scrabblers) and tried to memorize the two hundred or so words it contained. I couldn’t use these words when I played on the youth circuit. That’s right: as a 12-year-old, I had to memorize the most profane words in the English language so I could be properly “protected” from them in competitive Scrabble play.
Adults didn’t make sense to me then. They still don’t really make sense to me now.
The tournament was in Salado, Texas, on a cold February weekend and comprised 13 games of one-on-one Scrabble over two days. Chris and I had been practicing Scrabble for weeks on a now-defunct website called Quadplex. Unfortunately, we’d learned that while the website used the international lexicon (then called SOWPODS), but this tournament used the more restrictive North American lexicon (then called TWL). I had a play of OB challenged off the board by a nonagenarian woman named Mary Lou Thurman, who wore an oxygen mask and traveled to our table by electric scooter. She beat me soundly.
I went 2–10 and finished 2nd-to-last. Chris won three games. I had a bye in the final round because the woman who finished in last place wanted to leave early and beat traffic. I had a blast anyway.
—
The second and third adult Scrabble tournaments I played were in Fort Worth, Texas, in June of 2005. Chris and I would first play in the Early Bird, a 6-game event on Friday, as preparation for the main event, 11 games across Saturday and Sunday.
I saw a neat word on the board next to me during the Early Bird. It was short (just four letters long), started with the letter C (a crippling tile for most newbies because it doesn’t form any 2-letter words), and contained my least favorite vowel (U). You can probably guess what the word is. I’d never seen it before.
Useful.
I stored the word away in my memory. It had no meaning to me except that it would help me on some future turn. This was before smartphones, and I hadn’t yet bought a Franklin, so I couldn’t look it up in real-time. I didn’t know what it meant.
It is probably a noun, so it should take an S. But it could be an adjective, like a weird past tense of cunning?
I went 5–1 in the Early Bird. It was the first time I’d win money at a Scrabble tournament. My mom took us to to celebrate.
—
Earlier this year, I read The Four Agreements. It is a short and sweet self help book written by the Mexican author Don Miguel Ruiz.
No book has spoken to me as profoundly as this one. It’s simple but spiritual in a way that might make you roll your eyes.
I didn’t roll my eyes. I bought in. Your mileage may vary.
The first agreement, Don Miguel Ruiz argues, is the most important.
Be impeccable with your word.
You can read what he says if you want. He likens the words we use to magic.
“Every human is a magician, and we can either put a spell on someone with our word or we can release someone from a spell. We cast spells all the time with our opinions.”
To Ruiz, negative things are spells of black magic. Positive things are instead white magic. People cast all of these spells all of the time with everything they say and write, and the world is the result of these collective spells. Or something like that.
I’ve found myself in several conversations recently where people were gossiping. I love gossip. But I also promised to be impeccable with my word. I couldn’t think of anything nice to say. So I tried something I’ve never done before:
“I don’t want to say anything right now. I am trying not to say bad things about anyone anymore.”
My conversational partner waited several seconds the first time I used that line. She finally answered, “I respect that.” Our conversation rumbled along to something else. We still had a swell time.
White magic.
I won’t bore you with Don Miguel Ruiz’s final three agreements.
You didn’t come here for that. You want to read more about the results from the lowest division of a Scrabble tournament from 19 years ago.
—
I won my first game of the main event in Fort Worth. In the second round, I was paired with a 91-year-old woman named Jewel. I had beaten her by over 200 points in yesterday’s early bird. She was sweet about it.
I went first. I don’t remember the exact rack, but I drew the letters in that word and three other consonants on my first pull.
I played it for 12 points. I still wasn’t sure if I could put an S on the end. It’s always risky to play a word when you don’t know its hooks. I was prepared to try it if I drew one. I was also thrilled to shed a C and a U simultaneously. Using the words you’ve just learned is like crack for Scrabble players.
“Oh my,” uttered Jewel.
I didn’t know what I’d done. I was 12 and innocent. The word meant nothing to me. It meant something to Jewel.
Words have no meaning unless you give them meaning.
—
About a decade later, I heard a grown man use this word aloud during a Scrabble tournament. He aimed it at his female opponent during a particularly heated Scrabble endgame.
“Pat, shut up. You are a cunt.”
“Director!”
I think about this story often. I wish it were made up. It’s not. No wonder I’d grow up to be such a poor loser. These people were my role models.
Think especially hard about the way you behave when around people younger than you. You are always setting an example for them. When they write their stories, will you be a good character or a bad character?
I try to manage my emotions at tournaments. I don’t want to be a bad character.
Be impeccable with your word.
—
I beat Jewel in round two, no doubt aided by my incredible 12-point opening move. Six games into the tournament, I was 6–0. I then lost my last five games in a row to finish 6–5. I placed 8th of 23 in the tournament’s lowest division. It was fun.
Chris played in the championship game of that tournament against a man from Oklahoma named Joe Gatz. Chris lost and finished second. I’d “re-meet” Joe at I’d direct in Austin 13 years later. I remembered him. How could you forget the name of the guy who beat your brother at a Scrabble tournament 13 years ago? He was surprised to learn that I was gay. I was surprised to learn that he was gay, but when you’re 12 and at a Scrabble tournament, you don’t notice things like that.
—
The competitive Scrabble scene in North America now features play in one of three lexicons:
(1) NWL2024
(2) WOW
(3) CSW2024
The first two are near clones of one another, except that the former disallows words that are explicitly slurs while the latter does not. I grew up playing and studying this lexicon and had a good amount of mastery over it despite not having studied it in 10 years.
The third one is the lexicon used in every part of the world except North America. It’s complicated, and I don’t want to explain it now. It contains (pretty much) all of the words NWL2024 does, but about 30% more words are included.
A subset of players in North America use the CSW2024 lexicon. Most of these players are very good at Scrabble. They hope to compete internationally; their sights are set higher than North America. I will play Scrabble against people using this lexicon, but it’s like boxing with my left hand tied behind my back. They get 30% more words and 30% more plays available to them. Sometimes, I still win in CSW2024 games, but I never feel good about it when I do. They don’t either.
I do enjoy the company. Scrabble people are always my people, regardless of the lexicon they prefer to play with.
—
Until last month, I had not studied Scrabble words seriously since 2014. Student teaching, then four years of real teaching, and finally four years of pharmacy school had claimed most of my free time and even more mental energy. Between 2015 and 2024, I’d play in tournaments whenever I could, but I was coasting on what I remembered from years prior. The rust became more and more apparent each time I played. Two lexicon updates in that window meant that there were thousands of new words I’d never seen or studied before.
At the 2019 North American Scrabble Championship, I was on the brink of placing in the top 10 — cashing at a major — for the first time. Then, I played a phoney 4 letter word in and blew a sure win. Nearly any valid word would win me the game, and I played HOLA*. It crushed me. Top experts don’t play phoney 4s. But I never belonged with the top experts anyway.
You can’t perform at a high level in Scrabble unless you have a good grasp of the words. After 2019, I decided that I needed to study them again, or I wouldn’t ever be good. I just had to choose which words to study: the international ones or the North American ones. The COVID pandemic in 2020 gave me an excuse to forestall my decision. Online Scrabble was just not fun, so I did other things like binge drinking and logging 500 hours of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I decided to wait until tournaments started again before choosing a word list to study.
Then I blinked, and it was 2024. Tournaments were back in full force. I had money in the bank and could afford to travel to play for the first time.
Decision time.
—
The World Scrabble Championship is held every two years. The location rotates like the Olympics or FIFA World Cup.
In 2023, it was in the United States, but I hope it does not come back here soon. Much of the world’s top Scrabble talent comes from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and the African subcontinent. The United States does not like issuing visas to people from some of the places on that list. Most major American Scrabble tournaments have several dropouts due to visa issues or other logistical issues, as do several in European countries. Will Anderson made a where Nigerian players and organizers tell their stories with this — start around the ~16:00 mark.
The 2025 World Scrabble Championship is going to be held in Accra, the capital of Ghana. This is much better for the entire world of competitive Scrabble. Visas will be easier for international players. Plus, the scene in Africa has exploded. There is so much talent there; Africa deserves this.
I will not going to Ghana in 2025 for personal reasons, and I do not want this post to be about those reasons. I’m penciled in to do commentary from home, and I’ll do whatever I can to support the event and showcase the world’s premiere Scrabble players. From home.
The biggest draw of studying CSW2024 is competing on the world stage. I’d need to wait until at least 2027 to try. I’m also taking a minor leap of faith in assuming that championship is in a place I’m comfortable traveling to.
I’ve chosen to study NWL/WOW. I will still play in and commentate on CSW games and support the growth of all Scrabble at all levels. For now, though, I will not pass up on an NWL/WOW division to play CSW. I’d rather fight with both hands than with one. If CSW is the only option at a tournament, sign me up. It’ll always be better than not playing at all.
My true north is that I want to play a board game with my friends.
—
The NWL/WOW choice made the most sense on a personal level, but it was also the more annoying of the two options. I am again forced to print and memorize a list of profanities, like I had to do when I was 12.
Did they put BIMBO on the naughty list? (no.)
HIMBO? (also no.)
GRINGO? (yes, I know this because I’ve lost a turn trying to play it.)
SLUT? (it was expurgated but then re-added with a few hundred other “kind of” slurs).
The C word that I played on Jewel? It’s been expurgated. Sorry Jewel. The only takeaway for 12-year-old me is that the C and U tiles are slightly weaker without it.
—
Words have as much power as you give them.
We give them more power when we use them to cast black magic.
We give them more power when we put them on naughty lists, then sanction Scrabble tournaments in a way that compels people to study those lists.
Think about which words you use. Think about why you use them.