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

by John D. Williams Jr

  So by 2009, the National School SCRABBLE Championship had grown to the point that first prize was $10,000 for the winning team. Even better, we were about to make both the kids and adult experts TV stars!

  10

  SCHOOL SCRABBLE

  MAKES THE GRADE

  IT TOOK A COUPLE OF YEARS, but we were able to grow the National School SCRABBLE Championship into a truly spectacular event. The best part is that it grew in every way. More kids participated. The student competitors continued to catch up with adults in their abilities, and the world was starting to pay more attention to our core messages: it’s cool to be smart, and competition can take many forms. As a bonus, it was proven that the world’s favorite word game could enrich lives and help teach in unanticipated ways.

  Our efforts reached their high point around 2010. The glint of an idea a decade or so earlier had gone from a small ballroom at the Marriott in Springfield, Massachusetts, Royal Pacific Resort in family-friendly Orlando.

  By now, the event had become a family affair. It was routine to see a young competitor accompanied by as many as a half-dozen relatives—most of whom would sit patiently on the sidelines during play, even though they really couldn’t see any “action.” Team uniforms had also become standard. Scores of colorfully decorated T-shirts, baseball caps, and hoodies bore the name—or nickname—of each team. Examples might include the Word Wizards, the Tile Masters, or the clever You Can’t Spell Awesome Without Me!

  The NSA’s Jane Ratsey Williams and staff also organized a wondrous evening social to build camaraderie and relax the competitors a bit. It was always a themed party, once a luau with leis for each guest, another time a Cinco de Mayo party complete with a mariachi band. We’d serve up plenty of treats for the students and their families, with ice cream sundaes, fruit parfaits for kids with allergies, and a fun take-home memento. Another highlight of the party would be games. It was fun to see these kids—after a day of intense matches of SCRABBLE—playing other classics such as Jenga, Scattergories, Perfection, Twister, and Boggle. To add to the excitement we also made sure to have on hand a couple of adult National SCRABBLE Champions—who are heroes to kids—to play fun matches against groups of youngsters. These events emphasized and reinforced the beauty of board games. Children from North Carolina would be playing Monopoly with kids from Toronto. Thirteen-year-old girls would be competing, and practicing flirting, against two brothers from Texas.

  As you might imagine, Hasbro executives almost wept with appreciation as they witnessed this swirl of two hundred kids and their families captivated by their products. After all, this was not a Saturday morning commercial on Nickelodeon with child actors; this was the real deal. It was important for all of us involved to make this event the experience of a lifetime for everyone who attended—whether it was the team who won $10,000 or the fifth-grade first-timers who lost almost every game. As in sports, the life lessons learned from games are invaluable and incalculable.

  Then there was the actual competition. The skill level of some middle school students had become so refined and lethal that they now routinely played and defeated grown-ups in official play.

  This evolution was hammered home in dramatic fashion at the 2008 National SCRABBLE Championship in Orlando. Remember, this is arguably the largest and toughest SCRABBLE tournament in the world, and that year it featured $100,000 in cash prizes. It included twenty-eight intense games over five days. Players competed in six divisions, depending on their skill level and rating. Astonishingly, four of the six divisions were won by kids coming out of the School SCRABBLE Program, the oldest being just twenty years old. If we’d ever had any doubts about the ability of the program to feed the tournament scene, they were eradicated by those performances.

  The National School SCRABBLE Championship remains one of the most meaningful, exhausting, and fun experiences of my life—on both a professional and personal level. I’ll never forget getting to know these young champions and their families. All of us at the NSA and the people from Hasbro Games also gleaned enormous satisfaction from watching the kids go through this experience.

  While the championship is the high-profile centerpiece of the National School SCRABBLE Program, it’s important to pay tribute to what is happening on the local level throughout the country. In Washington, DC, for example, we went from no presence whatsoever to having a School SCRABBLE club in every single middle school in the city—127 in all. Spearheaded by DC resident Stefan Fatsis and, on the NSA side, Jane Ratsey Williams and Katie Schulz Hukill, the Washington initiative became a true template of what we were trying to do all over the country. It typically began with a visit to a school, or a conference with teachers or administrators from many schools. Most meetings began with us showing a fun, energetic video of kids playing SCRABBLE. Next came explanations about the School SCRABBLE Kit, educational benefits, program guidelines, and game rules, and random questions.

  As with anything of this nature, the growth was organic. That said, once SCRABBLE was introduced properly into a classroom or as an after-school activity, the rest took care of itself. After all, SCRABBLE is nothing if not approachable for kids. The rules are simple, and there is plenty of scoring. Time and again, we witnessed the sense of discovery when students “got it.” Just like generations before them who’d learned about the game around the kitchen table, these kids couldn’t get enough of it.

  Philadelphia became another hotspot for kids and SCRABBLE. The driving force there was Marciene Mattleman, a dynamo who seemed to know everyone in the City of Brotherly Love. Marciene is a longtime media personality and social activist, the kind of individual who is unwilling to take no for an answer. She and her organization, the Philadelphia After School Activities Partnerships (ASAP), had earlier success with a vigorous after-school program featuring chess. Now it was SCRABBLE’s turn, and Marciene took it city-wide. Marciene, who coincidentally knew Stefan Fatsis from his days at Penn and as a young reporter, soon brought impressive participation to Philadelphia’s School SCRABBLE effort as well. By 2012, Philadelphia had annual school championships, more than a hundred clubs, and thousands of kids involved. Marciene also cajoled numerous mayors, politicians, and business leaders to both attend and contribute to the effort. Throughout this, Marciene was fortunate enough to work with NSA member Matt Hopkins, a local SCRABBLE organizer and one of the most respected people in the NSA community.

  Chicago was a different story. As noted, outreach is only as good as one’s local contact and operatives. In the Windy City, that turned out to be not an educational institution but the Chicago-based American Library Association via our main contact, Jenny Levine. Jenny’s another hardworking, smart, caring person who believes in the greater good and has chosen the not-for-profit career to the benefit of all of us. She also introduced us to having a presence at both the American Library Association National Conferences and the Public Library Association. Working closely together, we were able to establish nearly eight hundred library SCRABBLE clubs across the United States for kids and families.

  As clubs started sprouting up outside of traditional schools and libraries, we noticed that SCRABBLE clubs were also starting to sprout up in other unanticipated venues such as Scouts and 4-H clubs. To expand this outreach, NSA staff members started to attend various annual conventions to spread the word: middle school teachers, gifted and talented programs, the Girl Scouts of America, the National Reading Association, Newspapers in Education, the National PTA, and others.

  Each conference taught us something new. We learned that education was a multilayered entity and a big business. It was also no place for idealists. Though we bore the warm and fuzzy banner of America’s beloved word game—along with an innovative teaching approach—we were subjected to the same gauntlet of skepticism, testing, waiting, and approval as anyone else. Everyone wants to do business with schools because it’s an important and feel-good enterprise, but there is also a lot of money to be made. And, understandably, everyone has a voice: federal an
d state government, school boards, parents, and teachers. So we had to become realists with a lot of patience

  Having grown up just thirty miles from New York City, I was especially excited about taking on Gotham on behalf of School SCRABBLE. We went at this a couple of ways. First, we have a mutual friend with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who had become very active as a volunteer to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an effort to improve the public school system. So we reached out to her, but our timing was bad. Ms. Schlossberg was considering her first attempt at elected politics, possibly running for the US Senate from New York. She later was appointed ambassador to Japan.

  Our next plan was to reconnect with legendary New York restaurateur Danny Meyer. One of the nation’s most admired businessmen, Danny made his mark with such New York establishments as the Union Square Café, the Gramercy Tavern, the Modern, Blue Smoke, and the Shake Shack franchises, among other ventures. A true SCRABBLE fan, Danny participated in our 1998 SCRABBLE 50th Anniversary SPELL-A-BRATION tournament at Madison Square Garden to benefit literacy. Other guests included Al Franken, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, literacy activist and actress Tina Louise, Miss America, New York Post columnist Richard Johnson, and film critic Jeffrey Lyons.

  Danny Meyer is known as a caring member of the community and has been involved in numerous charitable causes over the years. So the NSA staff met with Danny and his people and created a project model we felt would work well for New York City and could then be applied to other major markets as well.

  The plan was simple. Through Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, we would reach out to various restaurants throughout the city. We would then encourage restaurants to purchase one or more School SCRABBLE Kits and donate them to middle schools in their neighborhoods. It would be as little as $49.95 to participate and a great public relations move by participating restaurants.

  In addition to this involvement, Danny offered other support. For openers, he would host an event at one of his establishments where we would announce the initiative to the media. Danny also owned one of the city’s most desirable Rolodexes, and he offered to invite numerous power brokers, celebrities and others to the event. Understandably, we were thrilled with Danny Meyer’s graciousness and potential involvement.

  Unfortunately, this is as far as it ever went. The timing was horrible in regard to Hasbro’s participation. The NSA was in the throes of dealing with, in my opinion, the least imaginative and least cooperative team of Hasbro Games marketing executives in our twenty-five-year relationship. It got so bad that, despite our efforts, we went an entire year without a single face-to-face meeting with anyone at Hasbro! Meanwhile, the Danny Meyer ship had sailed. I suspect he was understandably astonished—and possibly insulted—by our inability to step up and pull the trigger on a project of this scope and importance. I sure was.

  Fortunately, we eventually found our way to the New York City Parks and Recreation Department. Even by municipal standards, the Parks and Recreation Department was a vast and deep operation. Among their responsibilities was the organization and supervision of various youth programs in the city’s five boroughs.

  The Parks people loved the idea of SCRABBLE. They had more than enough of the standard indoor and outdoor activities, and we represented a fresh idea. Plus, the prospect of Hasbro donating School SCRABBLE Kits had great appeal for the schools’ cash-strapped budgets.

  After our initial meetings with the coordinator, we began a plan to set up SCRABBLE activities at selected locations throughout the city. First the NSA held training sessions with the Parks personnel, just as we had with schoolteachers in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. Many were unfamiliar with the game and initially intimidated by the prospect. We understood. One of the chief elements of resistance to SCRABBLE—regardless of the venue or group—is that people are afraid that playing will reveal them to be stupid, a terrible speller, or both.

  Happily, our effort expanded and even culminated in several local Parks and Recreation tournaments, culminating in a city-wide tournament at the Castle, the headquarters in Central Park. I attended the event and watched the competition with Commissioner Adrian Benepe and his staff. Our goal was to have the winners represent New York City at the next National School SCRABBLE Championship. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, our initiative lost steam when our main contact left her position, followed by Benepe himself not long thereafter. It’s my understanding that this initiative is no longer active.

  And then there’s Los Angeles. Contrary to what some cynical East Coast intellectuals might assume, LA is one of the most active and successful SCRABBLE cultures in North America. Among its SCRABBLE stars is Roger “Trey” Wright, the 2004 National SCRABBLE Champion and a world-class touring classical pianist. There’s also Mark Landsberg, whose record of 770 points scored in an official SCRABBLE match stood for nearly thirteen years. Also in LA were tournament expert and documentary filmmaker Eric Chaikin (Word Wars) and Scott Petersen, whose acclaimed Scrabylon garnered awards at numerous festivals around the country.

  Unfortunately, we never really made any inroads with the LA public school systems or other conventional channels.

  11

  SCRABBLE HITS TV

  ONE OF MY GOALS RUNNING THE NSA was to have an actual SCRABBLE match on television. Chess and poker had been on periodically over the years, and I felt that, done properly, a high-level SCRABBLE match would make for an interesting show. There had been a SCRABBLE game show in the mid-1980s, hosted by the ubiquitous Chuck Woolery. It was actually more like Hangman than SCRABBLE, so, as one might have expected, it was dismissed, if not reviled, by most serious NSA players. The production company even sent two casting people to the 1985 National SCRABBLE Championship to interview “real SCRABBLE experts” to appear on the show. A handful actually made it onto the air, where most got their butts kicked by your average experienced game show contestants.

  While we’d had various champions interviewed over the years on television, a broadcast match had remained elusive for us until 2003. We had identified ESPN as our most likely platform for a number of reasons. First, we loved the idea of SCRABBLE being positioned—if not perceived—as a legitimate, serious competitive event. Second, we knew that ESPN was expanding into multiple channels as well as quirky programming such as competitive eating. We saw ourselves fitting right into that niche. After all, it was ESPN that brought the successful National Spelling Bee coverage to national television. It had become such a ratings success that ESPN’s broadcast cousin ABC eventually took over the program to expand the audience. Who better to fill in the programming void than SCRABBLE!

  Third, we knew that—at the time—one could still essentially buy one’s way onto ESPN by buying an hour of time at a negotiated price. After that, the buyer would own the commercials within. In theory, the buyer could then sell off the spots to a third party to offset production and time costs, or use them for itself.

  But we were able to go one better. We ultimately convinced ESPN to allot the time at their cost and pay for the production of America’s first televised SCRABBLE match.

  As it turned out, the NSA was pitching the network from two fronts. My talented colleague and School SCRABBLE Program director, Yvonne Lieblein, had been talking to ESPN executives at their Bristol, Connecticut, headquarters about telecasting the first National School SCRABBLE Championship. I, on the other hand, had been in conversation with veteran ESPN producer and director Jonathan Hock. I met Jon through his best friend, Stefan Fatsis, and we connected over our love of sports, video, and film. Jon is a gifted person, responsible for several programs in ESPN’s remarkable 30 for 30 series as well as wonderful documentary work. Jon loved SCRABBLE and was interested in pursuing the project through his own contacts at the network.

  I had learned early in my career that very often a particular media outlet might have more than one person chasing down a story. For example, a New York Times reporter might be talking to us about a SCRABBLE story while a Times columnist might als
o be thinking of doing a piece. It had happened with NBC, NPR, CNN, and others. I also learned early to simply let the chips fall where they may. It was up to these guys, not me, to decide who was going to do a SCRABBLE piece. They would find out eventually through the editorial process about each other’s interest.

  At any rate, Yvonne got the call first, and we headed up to ESPN to talk about the project. Jon Hock eventually dropped out. He felt he needed ninety minutes to do the show properly and a larger budget than ESPN was willing to provide.

  Our ESPN contacts were friendly, smart, and enthusiastic. However, as we discussed the possibility of the National School SCRABBLE Championship show, I became concerned. The chief reason was that this was going to be the first year of a real national school competition—all the others had been regional. There was a plethora of variables and unknowns. How many teams would we have? How good was the level of play? How would the kids—and their parents—behave? As excited as I was to be in the meeting, my gut was telling me that to hold the first-ever NSSC and have it on television at the same time was not a good idea.

  So I introduced the idea of having a SCRABBLE All*Stars tournament instead, postponing the NSSC broadcast until at least the following year. It was a concept similar to our 1995 SCRABBLE Superstars Showdown spectacular in Las Vegas. That event generated serious publicity—including a seven-page article in Sports Illustrated—and featured the fifty best players in the world vying for $100,000 in cash.

  ESPN liked this idea a lot. For openers, it had the built-in all-star sports element. Even better, Hasbro would soon agree to both put up the prize money and underwrite the entire event. ESPN would provide the time and assign an approved producer to the project. They also assigned a designated ESPN person—dynamo Ashley O’Connor Mintz—to be our day-to-day contact.