Word Nerd: Dispatches From the Games, Grammar, and Geek Underground

by John D. Williams Jr

  Brian Cappelletto finally got the proverbial monkey off his back when he won the 1998 National Championship in Chicago at age twenty-nine. Even better, he lived in Chicago, which was both convenient and media-worthy.

  In Las Vegas, Brian had the opportunity to laminate his legacy with a win at the 2001 World SCRABBLE Championship. There was just one obstacle in his way, and he went by the name of Joel Wapnick. It goes without saying all of us were beyond excited that the finals would pit two of the greatest players in history against each other.

  They did not disappoint. The first game was a nail-biter, with Wapnick winning at the very end by 3 points, 482–479. Consider it: a game of almost 1,000 total points decided by 3 points! Word lovers were not disappointed either, as each player dredged up some spectacular plays from his arsenal of esoterica. Wapnick played WHEEP (to give forth a prolonged whistle) and BAJU (a short jacket worn in Malaysia)—a word not even acceptable in North America! (Wapnick knew it from international play.) Brian, for his part, played INDUSIA (an enveloping layer or membrane). I can state with certainty that I had never seen that word before and have not seen it since.

  Though Joel won that first game, Brian went on to win the next three in a row to capture the title and take home the $25,000 first prize. He joined Peter Morris, Joel Sherman, and Wapnick as the only players at that point in history to have won both Worlds and Nationals. (Nigel Richards would achieve this later.) Like Peter Morris, Brian would retire early from the game, in his case to pursue a business career. Yet his place in SCRABBLE lore is intact. In fact, over the years I asked many experts this question: If you had to name one player who is just a bit better than everyone else, who would it be? Their answer would almost always be “Brian.” What exactly earned Brian this distinction? Basically, he brought the whole skill set when he sat down at the board. For openers, he’d been playing at the expert level since he was a teenager—so he’d seen it all and was not intimidated by any opponent or situation. He knew almost the entire dictionary. His board vision and strategic skills were as good as anyone’s. And he was calm and calculating in every game.

  Brian Cappelletto’s place in SCRABBLE tournament history would be eclipsed with the emergence of Nigel Richards. A quiet New Zealander who works in Malaysia as a security consultant, Nigel has dominated the World and National SCRABBLE Championships in recent years. He’s won the NSC five times as of this writing and the WSC three times. And Nigel is far from finished.

  I remember Joe Edley telling me many years ago, “There’s this new player named Nigel Richards who will definitely win a World Championships someday and may have more potential than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  Nigel brings an impressive arsenal to every game and no apparent weaknesses. He’s alleged to have a true photographic memory, knowing every word in both the “American” and international dictionaries. Don’t try a phony word on this guy! He may also be the most placid competitor I’ve ever seen. It’s impossible to tell by looking at him whether he is ahead or behind, or, for that matter, whether he’s just won or lost a game. Nigel has said more than once that he really doesn’t care that much about winning or losing; he simply loves to play.

  Nigel also epitomizes the mind/body connection espoused by champions in many pursuits. I remember a National SCRABBLE Championship in Dallas where he had booked a hotel room over twenty miles away from the event. Each day for almost a week, he rode his bike to the tournament, played SCRABBLE for six or eight hours, went out to dinner, and then pedaled back to his hotel. Oh yeah, it was during a heat wave when the Dallas temperatures hit triple digits a number of times. And yes, Nigel won that championship as well.

  ■ ■ ■

  After the 2001 WSC both Hasbro and Mattel decided to either scale back or eliminate their financial support for an international event. In mid-2013, it was announced that a third-party company called Mind Sports International would take over organizing and promoting the World SCRABBLE Championship. As described in the UK SCRABBLE newsletter, the company is “the driving force behind the internationally recognized Mind Sports Festival, which takes place in fantastic locations around the world, whilst working to promote all of the positive aspects behind intellectual sports in a bid to help increase popularity of these games with both new and established players.”

  It was also announced that the World SCRABBLE Championship would be renamed the SCRABBLE Champions Tournament, presumably for legal reasons. The first event, with a guaranteed first prize of $10,000, took place in Prague in late 2013. That the WSC would go through this metamorphosis and end up in the adopted home of Franz Kafka is priceless. As they say, you can’t make this stuff up. The 2013 SCRABBLE Champions was won by Nigel Richards. Brit Craig Beevers won in 2014.

  8

  MAN VS. MACHINE

  ONE OF THE BEST THINGS TO come out of World SCRABBLE Championships was a challenge match in May 1998 that teamed the top two finishers of the 1997 WSC, Joel Sherman and Matt Graham, together in a best-of-nine showdown against something called “Maven,” at that time the state-of-the-art SCRABBLE software program. It was inspired by two highly publicized chess matches between IBM’s program “Deep Blue” and international chess master Garry Kasparov, who won the first match, in 1996, and lost the rematch a year later.

  The SCRABBLE Man vs. Machine match was first proposed to me by my friend John Tierney, an author and veteran New York Times columnist. An excellent SCRABBLE player himself, John wanted to stage the match for a long piece in a New York Times Sunday magazine. It would be titled “Humankind Battles for Scrabble Supremacy.” (A wonderful in-depth article, it appeared on May 24, 1998, and is available online.)

  The event would be sponsored by the Times as part of SCRABBLE’s ongoing Fiftieth Anniversary celebration. Obviously, all of us involved jumped at the chance.

  As preparations began for the match, we had numerous considerations. Chief among these were our expectations. In theory, the human race would have a better chance with SCRABBLE than with chess because of the luck factor. Chess is all skill; the better man or machine should win. SCRABBLE is, by most accounts, 15 percent luck. Backgammon has been estimated at around the same as SCRABBLE. Based on my admittedly scant research, no one seems to agree on the luck factor in poker.

  So if the human team of Matt and Joel drew reasonable tiles, it would be a competitive match. On the other side, the computer would have the entire dictionary completely at its disposal, mistake-free with no wrong guesses. Maven would also have a bit of a psychological advantage—if that’s even possible for artificial intelligence. The advantage? Speed. It was more than likely that teammates Matt and Joel would have to carefully evaluate every move, discuss it, and then agree. It was also entirely possible they might disagree on the best move, with one guy ultimately caving in and conceivably pouting. Perhaps I’m exaggerating here, but the point is real. Never underestimate the subtle, corrosive damage a bad SCRABBLE move can do to the human ego and psyche.

  So that was our reality. Maven, being soulless, did not have this potential liability. To perform well, Matt and Joel would need to find and agree on their best play. Maven could and would counter every move of its human opponents within two seconds. That could be disheartening at best.

  So a group of us gathered in the penthouse of the old New York Times Building on West Forty-third Street in Manhattan. It was a cavernous space, with high ceilings, windows overlooking the city, and scores of artifacts and artworks that chronicled the paper’s history. There was a bar and kitchen area, beautiful rugs, and antique furniture as well. Looking around, I tried to imagine all the various functions that had been held here, populated with authors, presidents, tycoons, celebrities, and the like. And now it was SCRABBLE players. Us.

  Our group included, of course, Joel Sherman, Matt Graham, and John Tierney. Also invited was NSA staff member and three-time National SCRABBLE Champion Joe Edley, who would serve as the official and word judge. This was curious, as Edley would be watching closely,
doubtlessly second-guessing some of the plays of his colleagues. Hey, bring on the drama!

  We’d also invited Brian Sheppard, the genius MIT computer programmer who invented Maven. We’d flown him down from Cambridge for the historic event. A polite, unassuming guy, Brian had not been a serious SCRABBLE player when he began to invent the world’s best nonhuman SCRABBLE player. Yet through the experience of the project Brian—almost through osmosis—became a top-rated expert. He played his first tournament game in October of 1987 and his last in December of 1990. He achieved a rating of 1840 after just two events, placing him comfortably in the Top 100 ranking among all North American competitors. Also in attendance was Eric Chaikin, who a few years later would go on to codirect and produce the documentary Word Wars. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 and was later nominated for an Emmy. Eric’s film featured both Joel Sherman and Matt Graham as central characters.

  Rounding out the spectators was my friend Beth Balsam, an executive at Fleishman-Hilliard, Hasbro’s PR agency for games and other activities. A serious SCRABBLE lover, Beth made what may have been the play of the day. We were all hanging out at lunch playing anagrams. The topic was common words that anagrammed into names of celebrities. For example, one was PRESBYTERIAN, which amusingly rearranges to BRITNEY SPEARS.

  We were all staring at the word NARCOLEPTIC when Beth blurted out “ERIC CLAPTON.” A collective gasp nearly sucked the air out of the room. As Beth herself told me, “It was great. No one could believe that the friggin’ PR woman came up with the answer first!”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “that one’s definitely going on your lifetime highlight reel along with your wedding day and the birth of your first child.”

  The match itself was fascinating. Just before we began, I told Matt and Joel, “Not to add any pressure, but the entire human race is counting on you guys.” In reality, no one could put more pressure on these guys than themselves. Confidence was another matter. Matt was convinced they had both the ability and experience to beat Maven. Joel thought they were evenly matched at best.

  For me, there were a couple of vivid recollections. One was perhaps among the most amazing plays I’d ever seen. It was close to midway during the best-of-eleven match. Matt and Joel were trailing and had worked hard to come up with a good play in a crucial game. Maven, true to form, took a second and then threw down the word TIRAMISU for a gazillion points. Matt and Joel exchanged shocked, wounded looks and slumped in their chairs. Personally, I felt it was the deciding play of the entire day; there was no way these guys were going to win. I mean, really, think of the construction of that word. An eight-letter bad boy ending in U? Is there any other eight-letter word ending in U in the entire language? If so, Maven could tell us in 1.5 seconds.

  Then there was the inevitable shouting match between Matt and Joel as they started to fall behind. They essentially disagreed about the choice of a particular play, each convinced his move was the best. It became so contentious that I had to stop play for several minutes so the human beings could cool off. Maven, for his part, remained predictably nonplussed. It was quite a contrast: two agitated humans arguing in front of and gesturing toward their opponent—a computer and screen on top of a table. The match lasted nine games, with Maven winning 6–3. Matt and Joel had played as well as possible considering they were matched against an opponent with total, perfect word knowledge. Indeed, the guys made some brilliant, subtle plays that Maven could never have “seen” as they had not been programmed into its strategic DNA—yet. Most importantly, everyone in the room, including Maven inventor Brian Sheppard, agreed that Maven had clearly benefited by better tiles during the course of the day. So far, there has been no rematch.

  ■ ■ ■

  However, humankind did get revenge a few years later when 2006 National SCRABBLE Champion Jim Kramer defeated the “Genius” SCRABBLE program from Real Networks in a best-of-three match in Seattle in an outdoor setting. “Gentleman Jim” is the former proofreader of the SCRABBLE News. He took home $10,000 for the win.

  9

  THE SCHOOL

  SCRABBLE PROGRAM

  YOU HAVEN’T LIVED UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN a group of twelve-year-old boys fighting over a dictionary. Nearly twenty years ago I witnessed this, along with a group of astonished teachers and parents in Springfield, Massachusetts.

  The boys—in jeans, sports jerseys, and backward baseball caps—were taking part in a SCRABBLE tournament for local middle schools from all over the region. A disputed play had emerged during their match, and four boys ran over to the nearest dictionary and began a playful tug-of-war to see who could find the word first. “If I wasn’t watching this myself,” a nearby teacher whispered, “I never would have believed it.”

  That incident pretty much epitomized the mission and spirit of the National School SCRABBLE Program. It is probably the single most meaningful accomplishment in my twenty-five-plus years at the National SCRABBLE Association. Here’s how it began.

  By 1990, it was clear to us at the NSA that we were going to have to devise a plan and course of action to create the next generation of SCRABBLE consumers and players. The America that spawned the initial SCRABBLE craze back in the early 1950s barely existed anymore. The days of Mom, Dad, Grandma, and the kids sitting around the kitchen table playing board games seemed doomed. The norm had switched to single-parent households, working mothers, MTV, and powerful new distractions such as the Internet and cell phones.

  Since we could no longer safely assume kids would be introduced to board games in the family setting, we had to find fun, effective alternative ways to expose them to SCRABBLE. We knew the best way would be through schools.

  This was easier said than done. Justifiably, American educators are extremely dubious about letting any commercial interest infiltrate the sanctity of the classroom. It was one thing—already controversial—to have vending machines in school cafeterias selling soft drinks, chips, and candy. Bringing a commercial product into a classroom and having students sample it was a far more challenging prospect. The only large-scale precedent and successful venture of the kind we knew of was when Apple donated computers to schools back in 1975.

  Still, there were at least two factors that I knew could work in our favor. First, for better or worse, SCRABBLE was often perceived as a generic “brand” like chess, bingo, backgammon, and cards. The idea that it was a product owned and zealously guarded by a large corporation never even entered people’s minds. To them, SCRABBLE was just another piece of the American culture—like baseball. Most everybody owned a board. Most everybody had played it at least once or twice. SCRABBLE had just always been there.

  I calculated that this de-commercialized image of the game would help us counter any resistance from educators. I also knew that between word-loving teachers and parents, and thousands of NSA members throughout the country, we would have a motivated force of individuals to serve as our foot soldiers in this initiative. But the overwhelming selling point for the fledgling School SCRABBLE Program was the innate and obvious educational value of the game itself.

  The learning aspects of SCRABBLE were twofold: the obvious and the subtle. The obvious included spelling and vocabulary. The less obvious were math, spatial relationships, decision-making, and “cooperative learning.” The latter is a term for teamwork: students work in pairs or small groups on a specific learning task or project in an effort to organize classroom activities into social and learning experiences.

  SCRABBLE is in many ways about math. In School SCRABBLE, kids have to keep a running score, which includes basic addition. They have to apply multiplication in calculating a specific move. And they quickly learn the core skill of figuring probability by knowing how many of a certain letter have been played and how many remain in the bag or on an opponent’s rack.

  Spatial relationships and decision-making are learned by developing board vision—seeing every possible play in every place on the board. At any given time, a player has numerous options all
over the board for making a play, and the best play is not always about the most points. So we knew kids would learn critical thinking by having to both identify and evaluate their options. We introduced this concept in a very simple way. In classroom testing, we had each student find the tiles for his or her name and place it on the board, then move it around to cover various bonus squares. They quickly understood it was worth different values in different places. Bingo!

  The cooperative learning aspect was extremely interesting, and underestimated in the School SCRABBLE Program. If one accepts the premise that competition and life at large are not always about winning, it makes sense. Our overriding belief was this: if the School SCRABBLE Program was not fun above all else, it would fail. That’s why we decided early on to have the kids play in pairs. For one thing, it would substantially limit the intimidation factor. No one likes to look stupid, especially middle school students; teaming kids up, we gave them a built-in sense of comfort by partnership. For another, some kids were better at spelling, others at the math side of the game, so teamwork maximized the chances for success.

  Teachers soon learned to pair up kids in experimental ways: a shy kid with an extrovert, the class bully with a nerd, a black kid with a white kid, and so on. We collected a huge amount of anecdotal research. A long-term goal was to hire a team of educational experts to track two different classes for an entire school year. One group would participate heavily in SCRABBLE, both after school and in the classroom. The other would conduct their studies as always. After a year, testing would be devised to see how the former group matched up with the latter in spelling, vocabulary, dictionary use, math, and other more abstract skills such as collaborative ability and even attention span. (I should emphasize that this is a simplification of what the study would have been, had it progressed beyond the talking stage.)