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

by John D. Williams Jr

  So we get to the finals of Trey Wright versus David Gibson, both great guys and friends of mine. At one point in the game, Trey laid down the word LEZ. Both players nodded and wrote the score down, and Trey fished in the bag for three new tiles. Only then did we all realize the word could not be played on television. Chaos ensued in both the viewing room and the production booth.

  We had to stop play immediately. Then we had to explain to both players and the crowd of three hundred spectators in an adjoining screening room what had happened. No one was happy. Trey was understandably upset. Gibson, being Gibson, was totally sympathetic. And the audience, most of whom were tournament SCRABBLE players, was jeering.

  Worse, I had no idea what to do. Time stood still as I tried to figure out a solution. This exact situation had never happened in the twenty-five-plus years of tournament SCRABBLE, so I had no precedent for reference. Meanwhile, the players were twitching, the audience was squirming, and the cameras were idle. The one thing I did know was that I was not going to make this ruling by myself.

  I announced that we were going to take a break. I then asked all the members of the NSA Advisory Board to gather for an emergency meeting. Once assembled, we reviewed all the various options we had. Ultimately, it was decided that Trey would withdraw the play without penalty, put his new tiles back in the bag, and make another play. Graciously, Trey did as we asked. He made a lesser play but still won the game and the championship.

  However, that was far from the end of it. Among the spectators who witnessed this debacle was SCRABBLE tournament player Whitney Gould. I knew Whitney, and knew her to be a smart and very cool person. She’s also a journalist. And she’s based in San Francisco. As you might imagine, the LEZ controversy would be of interest to any reporter, especially one from a San Francisco newspaper.

  So as this was all happening, Whitney approached me and said she was going to file a story with, I believe, the San Francisco Chronicle. She was almost apologetic, but I told her that as a writer myself I completely understood.

  Over the years there have been basically two flash points where I knew the media would be all over us: the offensive words and cheating. Try as we might to generate stories about SCRABBLE’s legacy, educational benefits, interesting people, big-money tournaments, and the rest, nothing appealed to the media as much as the sensationalism of dirty words and dirty play. In other words, Whitney’s story went viral.

  This led to the usual and demanding routine of explaining what happened, our position, and all the rest. As was always the case, I got to be the point man in the debacle.

  At the height of all this, I received a call from a producer at The Daily Show who said the LEZ story had caught their eye. The show was looking for someone to come on to “explain” what had happened. That would be me. A fan of the show, I was at first excited about the prospect. Then I realized that “explain what happened” actually meant “defend your ridiculous position.”

  I’d failed to consider one fatal flaw. I could be as funny and articulate as I wanted, but it’s the job of The Daily Show to make me look foolish, stupid, or both. At the end of the day, I’d be no different to them from an arrogant NRA spokesman, Tea Party zealot, or corporate shill. And as soon as I was off camera, they could use charts, graphs, stock footage, commentary, and Jon Stewart himself to make me look like a clown. Sadly, that probably happens enough on its own; I don’t have to go looking for it.

  I declined the appearance.

  14

  WORDPLAY

  ANY SERIOUS SCRABBLE COMPETITOR CAN TELL you two things in a nanosecond: his or her best play of all time and the anagram of his or her name. It comes with the turf. My best play was CONQUEST for 221 points. It was a “triple-triple” extending from one triple word square to the next for nine times the value, plus a 50-point bonus for using all my tiles. The Q was already on the board.

  If you are lucky enough to have a nice blend of vowels and consonants in your name, chances are as many as a half-dozen curious and fun phrases can be made from the letters. When I first started being serious about SCRABBLE years ago, all of us had to painstakingly shuffle the letters on our rack to try to find the words within. As with so many other things, technology has now made it possible to achieve in forty-five seconds what used to take forty-five minutes. Just Google the word ANAGRAM and you’ll find numerous sites that will anagram any word or phrase, including your name. Don’t forget to use your middle or maiden name for variety or flexibility.

  The first time my name was anagrammed was by my NSA colleague Joe Edley. We worked with John Dunbar Williams, leaving out the JR or JUNIOR. The first one Joe configured was ADMAN JOB WILL RUSH IN. This one was particularly apt, as before I started my SCRABBLE career, I was a partner and creative director of a small advertising agency. That said, anagrams of people’s names are even more fun to me when they are beyond random with no context whatsoever. For example, the second anagram Edley came up with for my name was I HURL WILDMAN’S BANJO. Huh?

  Joe Edley loves to anagram. He’s convinced that, designed and marketed properly, an anagramming-based game could someday become as popular as SCRABBLE, Monopoly, or Trivial Pursuit. Call me skeptical—or even cynical—but I just don’t see that happening in an increasingly dumbed-down America. Well, maybe if the anagrams were limited to three or four letters.

  My family and I were once having dinner with Joe near Philadelphia after a SCRABBLE tournament at, of all places, the Franklin Mint. (The Mint had just launched a super-duper SCRABBLE set with 24K gold-plated tiles, and the tournament was a promotional event we set up with them.) After we had finished our meal, the waitress approached the table and asked if we’d like to hear about the desserts. We agreed.

  “Well,” she began, “tonight our specialty is peach melba.”

  Without missing a beat, Edley shouted out, “Cheap Blame!”—an anagram for the dessert name.

  As the waitress stood there stunned and confused, my teenage daughter and her friend dove under the table in embarrassment. Grinning, my wife faked a cough into her napkin while I tried to explain, which was almost more embarrassing.

  This kind of thing happens all the time when you hang out with SCRABBLE players. During the 1998 National Championship in Chicago, one of our event interns, Ben Lyons, who went on to become an entertainment reporter and ESPN radio host, decided to attend a Cubs game with a group of tournament competitors. I asked him later how the game was; he shrugged and said it was okay. When pressed, he said it was tough to watch because some of his companions seemed more excited about anagramming the names on the back of the players’ jerseys than about the action in the game.

  As a matter of fact, baseball is the overwhelming favorite among sports for the SCRABBLE crowd. For openers, it is very strategic, and the pace is decidedly slow. (A major-league baseball game lasts, on average, three hours. The average SCRABBLE tournament game is forty-five to fifty minutes. The average living room game can last twice as long, depending on the number of players and disagreements.) Then there’s the massive amount of statistics and mountains of esoteric knowledge to discover, memorize, and have ready should you ever need it. Just like obscure words. Most sports fans agree that baseball is the “geeks’ sport.” Not only do you have all that crazy stuff to know, it’s only marginally athletic. Don’t get me wrong. I love baseball, but it is the only sport where at any given time, sixteen of the eighteen participants are either standing still or sitting down. After the recently formed NASPA—more on that later—the two organizations most tournament players belong to are probably Mensa and SABR, the six-thousand-member Society for American Baseball Research.

  The latter is a group devoted to the compilation and analysis of baseball statistics. At their annual conventions, new evidence might be presented that could change a long-held record. For example, someone might have uncovered an obscure newspaper article or letter that casts doubt on a home run hit by Babe Ruth in 1931—thus changing his lifetime total from 714 home runs to a m
ere 713. While insignificant to most Americans, this is as exciting to this group as the admission of QI to North American SCRABBLE was to me. I get it. (Note: my example of Babe Ruth’s bogus home run was purely hypothetical. Please, no calls or letters!)

  ■ ■ ■

  A wonderful anagram moment took place in Los Angeles during the 1994 National SCRABBLE Championship. I was having dinner with a group that included World SCRABBLE Champion Mark Nyman, who’s English, and veteran American expert Robert Kahn. After dinner the group stood outside the restaurant and chatted. I happened to look across the street and spot a large red neon sign that said SHERATON.

  I studied the letters, convinced there must have been—given the favorable letters—several good anagrams. Yet after a few minutes I’d come up empty. Frustrated, I tapped Nyman and pointed to the sign.

  “Mark, there’s got to be a couple of good anagrams in there, right?”

  Nyman stared at it for no more than two seconds. “No, sorry. But with an I, you’d have ANTIHEROS.” The word is acceptable in the Collins international SCRABBLE dictionary but not in North America—although ANTIHEROES is.

  I remember thinking that I could study anagramming flash cards ten hours a day for the rest of my life and I could never do that. Later, I wished I’d asked Robert Kahn, a superb anagrammer, the same question. Robert once played the word UNREALIZED from a SCRABBLE rack of AEILNRU, adding it to the ZED that was already on the board. He also once scored 801 points in a match, the second-highest total in history. The record is 830 by Michael Cresta in an official Boston club game in Lexington, Massachusetts, on October 12, 2006.

  Probably the funniest anagram story was told to me by the writer and talk show host Dick Cavett a number of years ago. We were both presenters at the annual Wonderful World of Words Weekend at the Mohonk Mountain House resort in New Paltz, New York. The event was created by word lover and game expert Gloria Rosenthal and her husband, Larry, and now run by Will Shortz. If you’re reading this book and finding it at all engaging, then you owe yourself a visit to this amazing venue. It’s a weekend packed with mind-boggling puzzles, serious game playing, and programs and lectures by people like Ira Glass, Cavett, and Stephen Sondheim. I’ve been honored to present twice.

  Anyway, Cavett and I got to talking anagrams. He told me that he was essentially an “anagramming savant” and that anagrams just popped into his head on a regular and random basis. Cavett’s best story concerned an appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. During Dick’s conversation with Johnny they were talking about—among other things—former vice president Spiro Agnew. The conversation went on to other topics; then other guests came on, and Dick moved down the guest couch.

  As Cavett told it, later in the show Carson was interviewing an actress about her new movie when Cavett suddenly and loudly blurted out, “Grow a penis!” The conversation screeched to a halt. The entire studio went silent as a thousand eyes bored in on Cavett. Flustered, he hurriedly went into an explanation about how Spiro Agnew’s name anagrammed into GROW A PENIS. Laughter ensued. This anecdote is now part of the Anagramming Awards Hall of Fame at Anagrammy.com.

  Obviously, anagrams are a critical part of the SCRABBLE skill set. If you’ve got AEIMNRS on your rack, you’d better be able to find MARINES, REMAINS, or SEMINAR or you’re in for a long game. It’s important to know that these skills can absolutely be developed and improved. There are numerous Internet study aids for practice. Those most favored by tournament players include Zyzzyva, Quackle, and Zarf.

  The typical exercise below is at a level for most good casual players. Find an anagram for the each word. Answers are in the appendix.

  1. PYRIC

  2. CHURL

  3. TRADED

  4. SADDLE

  5. RACOON

  6. NASTILY

  7. PAYOUTS

  8. BEEFIER

  9. DROOLED

  10. EXCLAIMS

  11. SPAWNING

  12. INDULGED

  No discourse on anagrams would be complete without examples of some of the better ones floating out there in the world of word lovers:

  DORMITORY

  Dirty room

  EVANGELIST

  Evil’s agent

  DESPERATION

  A rope ends it

  THE MORSE CODE

  Here come the dots

  MOTHER-IN-LAW

  Woman Hitler

  SNOOZE ALARMS

  Alas! No more Z’s

  ELEVEN PLUS TWO

  Twelve plus one

  CLINT EASTWOOD

  Old West action

  SLOT MACHINES

  Cash lost in ’em

  CONVERSATION

  Voices rant on

  NORWEGIANS

  Swen or Inga?

  THE PIANO BENCH

  Beneath Chopin

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  Hot sun or life in a car

  PALINDROMES

  And, of course, no conversation about anagrams would be complete without at least mentioning their complicated, confounding cousin—palindromes. A palindrome is a phrase, name or sentence that reads the same backward and forward. Common examples include:

  STEP ON NO PETS

  A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL: PANAMA

  If anagrams have at least one useful purpose—improving your SCRABBLE game—palindromes’ one purpose is mind-boggling amusement. I’d never even think of attempting to create a palindrome, let along completing one!

  One of the more interesting people in the word world is a fellow named Jon Agee. A gifted illustrator and gamer, Jon is considered one of the country’s foremost palindromists as well. He is the author of such books as ELVIS LIVES! and Other Anagrams; SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OTIS! More Palindromes; and PALINDROMANIA! Jon is one of the most creative and original people I’ve ever met.

  Astoundingly, Jon once told me that he could not really understand anagrams and why anyone would do them. This coming from a guy who does palindromes! Jon and I were doing a mutual book signing many years ago when a woman asked him to inscribe her copy.

  “To whom shall I sign it?” Jon asked.

  The woman replied, “Naomi.”

  “I moan!” Jon blurted out immediately.

  Here’s another fun story involving Jon Agee. Many years ago, a bunch of us had assembled at the home of Gloria and Larry Rosenthal, the Wonderful World of Words creators, for one of their periodic, heavy-duty game-play sessions. Gloria is a writer and former word-game editor for Games magazine and Larry a retired veteran of Madison Avenue.

  An evening at the Rosenthals’ always featured serious, high-level gamers who got together to play obscure, intense games and often test out new games from inventors. Guests that night included Will Shortz, Jon, David Feldman, a tournament bridge player, author, and game master, and me. I should add that, while respectable at most games, I was in way over my head in this crowd.

  After a couple of hours of games, we decided to head down to a local restaurant for dinner. It was a beautiful summer evening, and I wanted to show off my new convertible. So Jon and Will jumped in with me, while David Feldman went with the Rosenthals.

  About halfway to the restaurant, we stopped at a red light. Almost immediately, a car with three women in it pulled up next to us. All of us were in our thirties and forties and, I’d like to think, checked each other out for perhaps a second or two. Then the light changed and everyone zoomed off. I remember thinking later: Man, if those women only knew! Those three guys in the convertible? The crossword editor of the New York Times, the country’s foremost palindromist, and the executive director of the National SCRABBLE Association! Talk about chick magnets!

  15

  ARE MEN REALLY BETTER

  THAN WOMEN?

  THE CONCEPT OF ONE GENDER BEING superior to the other at SCRABBLE has been—with the possible exception of the offensive-words controversy—the most discussed and volatile topic among players for years. At face value, it seems groundless, sexist, mean-spirited, a
nd irrelevant. Yet it remains a topic that just won’t go away. Having participated in hundreds of interviews over my years on the job, I’d have to say this is one of the questions most often thrown at me by the press.

  Let’s start with some assumptions. First, it’s widely accepted by both academics and social scientists that women test better than men in regard to language skills. So, theoretically, women should be better at SCRABBLE, right? Wrong. Or at least not necessarily.

  As author Stefan Fatsis so beautifully nailed it in Word Freak, SCRABBLE’s “dirty little secret” is that it is about math. Also widely accepted is that men test better at math than women. At the very top level of the game, for example, it’s pretty much assumed that most of the top fifty or so players have committed all or most of the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary to memory. So that covers the word and language part of one’s arsenal. That leaves the math-based skill set to determine superiority, which means having the ability to assess probability of tile possibilities. For example, there are twelve E’s in the game; if seven have been played and there are only twenty-two tiles left, what are the odds your opponent has a vital E, or even two of them?

  Another component in this skill set is what we call “board vision,” the ability to look for—and find—every possibility on the board given your rack and position in the game. At the same time, you’re performing multiple calculations and assessing spatial relationships. Of course, the deeper you are in the match, the more tiles have been played, so the more complicated the calculations are—and you’re performing them for both yourself on offense and for your opponent as part of your defense.

  On the day I wrote this, I went to the marvelous website Cross-tables.com. Created by players Keith Smith and Seth Lipkin, it is by far the most comprehensive collection of data from decades of official SCRABBLE tournaments. It features player rankings, ratings, tournament results, best plays, standings, highlights, and pretty much any other data one might want to know about themselves and other tournament players. (Please bear in mind that the ratings and rankings discussed here were researched well before the publication date and certainly have changed, but the analysis is still valid.)