“Different breed of cat,” says Marlon Hill, one of Graham’s few friends on the competitive Scrabble circuit, an African-American guy from inner-city Baltimore and an expert himself, who is helping Graham prepare for the championship match. “Fucking alien.”
Might as well be a UFO convention. The Scrabble tournament scene, it turns out—and I’m shocked, shocked —isn’t the most highly functional subculture around. “We’re dealing with some borderline pathology here,” Charlie Southwell, a former highly ranked player who is directing the World Scrabble Championship, says as he surveys the hotel ballroom where eighty top players are competing.
My limited exposure in Washington Square Park has prepared me well. I arrive on the third day of the four-day tournament and, as a journalist, am given free roaming rights on the playing-room floor. Southwell and John Williams, who has invited me to attend, point out the exotic mammals in their natural habitats. There’s Adam Logan, a red-bearded, mathematics doctoral student at Harvard, padding around in short pants and holey socks, his hands pulled inside his shirtsleeves like a shy schoolgirl. There’s Bob Felt, a former national champion, notorious for his rambling monologues about long-forgotten games and his slovenly appearance; at this moment his fly is open. There’s Joel Sherman, who calls himself a professional Scrabble player. He lives in the Bronx with his brother and father and hasn’t worked in years, ostensibly because of a Merck Manual’s worth of physical disorders; his most notorious is a volcanic gut that has earned him the nickname G.I. Joel, as in gastrointestinal. There’s Joe Edley, who in addition to being a two-time national champion is associate director of the National Scrabble Association and perceived as arrogant by his peers. When I first encounter Edley, he is lecturing Felt for messing up the score of their game, a fact that went uncorrected and has affected the pairings for the next round of play. Overhearing the exchange, an expert-level American woman not participating in the event mutters about Edley, “Busy, busy, busy. He plays. He administrates. Prick.”
Graham started the tournament with a 2–4 record, but by the time I arrive he has reeled off ten straight wins, a feat unmatched in the history of the Worlds, and one of the greatest pressure-packed streaks ever. When I first glimpse Matt, he is wearing a Walkman, inhaling nose spray, and swallowing a handful of unidentified pills. Then he sits down to play Joel, who extracts a piece of pita bread from a mug of water and eats it. Matt whips him by a score of 576327 to improve to 13–4. “He might run the table,” says Marlon Hill, who seems to be president of the Matt Graham Fan Club. “It’s like DiMaggio’s fifty-six.”
Joel has a different perspective. “Matt just got every fucking thing in the world,” he says. “That game probably cost me twenty-five thousand. Somehow it always goes this way. I always get blown out in the key game. He just played EGOTISE# in the last game on the second play. This time he did it for twenty points more.” Joel belches. It’s his stomach talking. He can’t control it.
Matt wins his next game, and the one after that. Thirteen straight wins. Two to go. The top two finishers will play in the finals. Matt, Joel, and Edley are in the strongest position to advance. First prize is $25,000. Second prize is $10,000. It’s not the World Series of Poker, where the winner takes home $1 million, but to these players it’s not small change, either. “I owe my mom ten thousand or she’s going to throw me out of my apartment,” Matt says. “I’m maxed on one of her credit cards for twenty thousand.” Standup comedy, which Matt does part-time when he isn’t studying words or playing games, is not a lucrative vocation, and neither is Scrabble.
In the hallway between rounds, the players and spectators—which include a number of top American experts who didn’t qualify for the event—gather to pore over the results and swap stories about great plays or tricky board positions. I listen attentively, struggling to understand the Scrabble argot. Even more than I was in the park, I’m amazed by the words I’m seeing played, and there’s a reason: British Scrabble has a more expansive word source than does Scrabble in North America, an additional thirty thousand or so two- through eight-letter words above the one hundred thousand in the OSPD. At the Worlds, words found in both the OSPD and the British word source, Official Scrabble Words, or OSW, are acceptable. (Play using both word sources is known as SOWPODS, a pronounceable combination of OSPD and OSW.) “Ours or theirs?” is a commonly asked question, meaning, Is that word in our (the North American) or their (the British) dictionary?
I came looking for a story, and I found one. I came wondering whether this world was interesting enough to write about, and I wasn’t disappointed. But I didn’t expect to get so absorbed so quickly. I’m blown away by the plays—HAFTAROT$, NITCHIE$, OXTERING#, RATICIDE$, ANGIOMAS. I’m drawn to the intense concentration and complex banter. After losing to Matt, Joel, a balding, sunken-eyed thirty-five-year-old, is kneeling on his chair hovering over the board. “Oh, shit. OUTEDGES# is good,” he says. “I could have bingoed instead of playing UDO. I could have been in the game, darn it. I could have bingoed right through the G.” “Oh, Jesus Christ,” he says a bit later. “I missed FILARIID$. That’s bad. That’s disgraceful. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have spotted that. I was just making incredibly stupid plays.” He’s suffering, I think, he’s really suffering.
By the time I observe my third game in the room, I’m running scores to a woman who is posting the results on a Web site. I’m hanging on the results. The park felt casual, an intellectual challenge more than a competitive one. But this—the money, the tension, the pressure, the egos, the pride, the prestige. This isn’t just about playing a board game. This is about skill and achievement and self-worth.
Standing at the front of the playing room, rapt with wonder, I think: I want to be able to do what they do. I want to be one of these people.
Matt Graham has never beaten Joe Edley in a tournament, and now he faces him in the twentieth game of the twenty-one-game event. If Matt wins, Edley is out of contention for the finals.
“He get to eliminate you,” the Fila-wearing, trash-talking Marlon Hill says to Edley.
“No, actually I have a good record against Matt,” Edley replies.
“That mean he due,” Marlon says.
But he don’t. Joe beats Matt, but not without controversy: Matt accuses Joe of coffeehousing. “I opened with QUINOA, and he says, ‘That’s a good sign—for me,’” Matt relates after the game. “Then on the second play, I play ZINCKES*, and he says, ‘Well, that looks like a good sign—for you.’” Matt says Joe made the remark before Matt had hit his clock, ending his turn. And once he did, Joe challenged the word, which was indeed a “phony,” costing Matt his turn. “Just to screw with me. It’s an absolute absurdity that it continues. He makes the rules. And he violates all the principles of etiquette. He doesn’t shut his mouth.”
“Yeah, he’s outrageous,” Bob Felt concurs.
“I don’t think it disrupted my play a lot, but it made me more conservative,” Matt says. “It upset me. I’m concerned about getting into the finals. It’s weird. Other people’s coffeehousing doesn’t bother me that much. But him, because of his position...”
Matt stalks off, donning his Walkman and heading to his room between games. He has a 15–5 record and has to play Edley, who is 14–6, again in the next round. Edley still can advance to the finals, but he needs to win by 138 or more points to do so. (Ties between players with the same record are broken based on “spread,” the difference between the total number of points scored by a player during an entire tournament and the total number of points allowed. Joe needs to score 138 points more than Matt in order for his spread to exceed Matt’s.) Joel Sherman, who rebounded from two losses to Matt, can clinch a spot with a win over a teenager from Bahrain. Matt won’t let the previous game go. “I’m just so outraged. And he knows I’m an emotional player.”
Edley is a master of calm who meditates and practices tai chi chuan before games. His unflappable behavior is easily perceived as arrogant detachment, or, as by Matt, psychological a
rson. Matt is so tightly wound that Edley’s mere presence seems to unnerve him. Now Edley is staring at the table, breathing deeply, barely even blinking. He takes a quick lead, but Matt stays close. I don’t know most of the words they are playing: ELOINERS, REZ#, NONSOLAR. I check on G.I. Joel’s game.
“Any idea what’s going on there?” Jan Dixon, one of the top American women players, who is spectating, asks me.
“Joel’s kicking ass,” I report.
“Good,” Jan says. “Because I think Edley could pull this one out and still not make it.”
Edley wins by 99. Not enough. The players shake hands, all slights momentarily forgotten in a display of sportsmanship. Matt will play G.I. Joel in the finals the next morning.
I meet Joel in his room late that night. My Scrabble-playing friend Jon is shooting film for a possible documentary, and Joel is a willing subject. He’s been down this road before, posing in Sports Illustrated on the edge of a bathtub in his BVDs, reading a word-list book. Joel apparently likes flaunting his idiosyncrasies. And I don’t get the sense he’s acting. For our encounter, he’s wearing mismatched striped flannel pajamas—a red, white, and blue top with a gray, white, and maroon bottom. He rips down the bedcovers and stuffs a blanket in the closet, then climbs in bed and reads a dictionary while Jon stands on the mattress to get an overhead shot. An inhaler rests on an end table, asthma being one of Joel’s ailments.
Joel tells us about his life. How he mostly just plays Scrabble, having opted out of the working world because he was physically unable to sustain his job. How he sleeps but four hours a night. How he figures he’s going to win.
“This is definitely the biggest deal he’s ever had in Scrabble,” Joel says of Matt. “Although we’ve expected him to reach this level. But I can’t imagine he’s going to win five in a row from me. I don’t know anybody who’s capable of beating me five in a row head to head.”
Joel has another thought, about being awarded the first-place trophy, a silver cup. “I hope I can lift it,” he says. “I’m kind of a weakling.”
For his prefinals dinner, Joel wore a suit and tie, tucking his napkin into his collar, and splurged on lamb chops in the hotel dining room. Matt had one and a half beers and a bag of chips. He’s skipping breakfast but will have a couple of MET-Rx energy performance bars. And, of course, the regimen of pills.
“I can be a little haphazard as my own pharmacist once in a while,” Matt tells me as he prepares on the morning of the finale. “But I try not to take anything that would contraindicate.
“I used to be heavy into protein, but now I find that carbs are better. While they won’t make me super sharp in the first game, they’ll help in the fifth game.”
Because he snores, Marlon slept on the floor of the hotel-room closet so as not to disturb Matt. They fight like a codependent couple, but Matt considers Marlon a lucky roommate.
Matt sits on the edge of the bed eating a peanut butter MET-Rx bar. “I think I might need some Claritin,” he says.
Marlon had unnerved Matt by saying that another player was giving Matt a funny look after one of the games against Edley. Matt suddenly remembers his anger, and launches in on Marlon. “I need to know who gave me a funny look,” he says. “No one,” Marlon replies, knowing it’s no time to freak out his nervous friend even more. “Then shut up, asshole,” Matt says.
Marlon lets it drop. Before we head downstairs, Marlon helps Matt conduct a final inventory.
“What do I need when I play?” Matt asks rhetorically.
“You got your cow?”
Matt nods and races off down the hall, hauling his bag of supplies—manatee, stress ball, smart-drug concoction, distilled water, lucky pencil, clipboard.
“He just said, ‘Shut up, asshole,’” Marlon says to me. “Crush him like a fucking bug. Most high-strung guy. I stay friends with him because I don’t have many friends. We share this in common.”
The finals are staged in a small room outfitted with camera equipment so the games can be televised on closed circuit to the rest of the players, who gather in the main playing room. It’s an elaborate production: a camera suspended over the board, others trained on Matt and Joel, others on their racks. In the hallway before play starts, Matt proposes to Joel that they split the prize money—$20,000 to the winner, $15,000 to the loser. Joel refuses. He combs his hair, puts on a gray sweatshirt that says G.I. JOEL on it, and stretches in a corner. He kicks his left leg up toward an outstretched hand, stumbles, then kicks the right one. He stretches his arms overhead. He burps. He pulls one leg back.
“Suddenly he’s Joe Edley,” Matt cracks.
Matt goes first and plays FUSTIAN, a cotton fabric. Joel plays DJIN. Matt plays MiSTHrOW$, using both blanks. Joel plays TORNADIC. In the playing hall, England’s Mark Nyman, a former world champion who is doing play-by-play commentary, notes the possibility of extending FUSTIAN to RUMFUSTIAN#, a drink containing port or sherry mixed with hot water and spices. These guys are scary.
As the game progresses, the tight board prevents Joel from making a comeback. “Apparently there’s a blockage problem,” Nyman says. “Usually when there’s a blockage problem it refers to G.I. Joel.”
Matt wins the first game. He bounces out to a lead in the second, and his spokesman, Marlon, is shouting, “World champ.” But Matt misses a play the other experts spot—BOWNED#—and Joel ekes out a win. He does the same in the third game, and the crowd boos when Matt misses a big score with the common word BERTH and plays HERB instead. “I just missed it,” he says afterward. “Maybe I need more coffee.”
Before the fourth game, Joel suddenly tears down the hallway.
“He does that all the time,” John Williams tells me when I express concern. “Bathroom.”
Upon returning, Joel announces, “I just want to warn everyone in the room during the next game that the reason I’m called G.I. Joel will become evident.”
Matt ingests more caffeine. Joel belches.
Joel jumps out to a 304–218 lead—a respectable final total in most living room games—and Matt needs to score big before Joel shuts down the board, that is, closes off the places where Matt can bingo. So he takes a risk on an iffy word, laying down FLEXERS for 101 points.
“I want to check,” Joel says, challenging the play. (Under the so-called “free challenge” rule used in international competition, a player who challenges a word that turns out to be acceptable isn’t penalized with a loss of turn, as under North American rules.)
“I hope it’s good,” Matt says. “There’s an understatement.”
It’s not, and Joel plays defense. After a few more turns, it’s clear that Matt doesn’t have a chance, especially when he draws a rack consisting of the letters DLPRSTV.
Joel looks as if he would topple in a light breeze.
He gets a standing ovation from his peers. He manages to hoist the small, silver cup over his head and accepts a giant cardboard check for $25,000. Joel delivers a five-minute acceptance speech, thanking dozens of people, a list so long that other players are laughing and hooting for him to stop. Finally, he does.
“I want to thank the late Alfred Butts for creating this game,” Joel finishes. “Without it I don’t know where I’d be.”
I ride the elevator with Joel back to his room. He literally bounces off one of the walls. “Whooooo!”
“I know I’m not the brightest guy out there. There are a lot of geniuses in the room,” Joel says. “Here’s something that even a lazy, good-for-nothing bum can accomplish if he’s got a little common sense.”
Joel jams his crumpled clothing and his word books and his medicines into a hard-paneled suitcase. He had packed several ties in case he won, as the champion would get billeted at a fancy Manhattan hotel that night and appear on Good Morning America the following day.
“It’s the only thing I’ve ever put a lot of hard work into,” Joel says. “When I can prove that my approach to the game is just as good as their approach—my concentration on strategy
as opposed to their concentration on rote dictionary memorization—it elevates my selfesteem. It’s the one thing I’m really good at, and if I can’t accomplish something in this field, it’s unlikely I’ll accomplish something in any other field.
“So this basically validates my existence.” He pauses. “I’m not kidding.”
3. Unrated
THE ALLERTON HOTEL FOR WOMEN opened in the 1920s at the corner of East 57th Street and Lexington Avenue as a single-room-occupancy residential hotel for young ladies of proper breeding embarking on careers in postwar New York. For decades it boasted a lobby adorned with a white marble staircase, a grand piano, and elevator maids in white gloves. When I first visit, the lobby is dingy, the paint peeling, the elevators slow or broken. Not a white glove in the place.
This is where the Manhattan Scrabble Club meets, on the second floor, in space rented from the old-line Beverly Bridge Club. Inside the Scrabble room on this Sunday afternoon, Susi Tiekert is playing solitaire on a computer between cigarette breaks. Along with her husband, Ron, who is one of the game’s all-time greats, Susi runs Scrabble Club No. 56, and I’ve decided to join a one-day, six-game tournament (entry fee: $25) that they are staging the following weekend. The park games have ended with the colder weather, and I’ve been playing alone on a Turkish rug on the living room floor of my one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment late at night after work. I don’t feel ready to play in a tournament; I still haven’t memorized the three-letter words. Susi is a big confidence-booster.
“Even if you study you could lose every game,” she says. Susi has a gravelly Noo Yawk voice she wields like a blunt object. “Or it could happen immediately. You get lucky with the tiles and have an idiot opponent.” She recalls the story of one such woman who started off with an expert-level rating. “We've seen her play for many, many years, and she stinks.”
Word Freak : Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (9780547524313) Page 3