Word Freak : Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (9780547524313)

by Fatsis, Stefan

  Still, even under Edley’s care, I stumble on Long Island. I’m 5–2, then lose three of four. After dinner with Edley, Laura, and Amber on Saturday night, Joe offers to replay a couple of my games in order to analyze my performance. I choose two losses that I believe were winnable. Sitting at the kitchen table, Joe dumps out the tiles from the British set I picked up at the Worlds, separating them by letter.

  We spend ten minutes discussing my opening play and run a computer analysis that vindicates my move. My next two plays withstand Joe’s analysis, and then my problem becomes clear. As soon as I tell him my next rack, AAILNTY, he says, “You missed the bingo.”

  “ANALITY, right?” I say. “I set it up on my rack and thought about it. I thought, I’d know it because it’s BANALITY without the B. So I wasn’t sure. I chickened out. I played INLAY.”

  “Yeah, INLAY was a big mistake,” Joe says in the matter-of-fact tone that makes other players loathe him.

  Two turns later, I did it again. With the rack of AEFILST, I set up FETIALS but couldn’t remember whether it’s a word. It is (priests of ancient Rome). I did bingo a turn later and took the lead a turn after that. My opponent drew the better-balanced late racks while I got six consonants and an I, and he squeaked out a win.

  Joe points out that the sooner I bingo the sooner I have a chance to bingo again. Same deal next game. My first three plays were strong, Joe says. Then, with the rack of ABEIOT?, needing to start a seven-letter bingo with the A, E, or I (ruling out OBvIATE and nIO-BATE, which I saw), I set up the rack in the following order: I?E-BOAT. I thought, LIFEBOAT, FIREBOAT. I didn’t think, IcEBOAT.

  “Yeah, you’ve got to learn those bingos,” Joe says.

  The more you know and the better you get, the more frustrated you are by what you don’t know—and what might have happened had you known. The more you know the more there is to forget. I see INFAUNAE but miss RUCK. I turn WITCH into SWITCH into SWITCHEROO (winning high praise for creativity) but challenge LEA.

  When I get home from Long Island, after an 8–7 finish that will send my rating down to 1532, I look up and write down in my notebook all of the bingos beginning and ending with BOAT. Not including plurals, there are thirty-six.

  Words, words, words. Next to the 450,000 entries in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary—not including certain plurals, verb tenses, neologisms, and technical terms—the Scrabble word list seems minuscule at 120,000. But when one considers that the working vocabulary of an average English speaker is commonly estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 words, the Scrabble task seems absurdly daunting.

  How Scrabble players learn words is a bit like how people arrange a collection of books. Some players are random—paperbacks mixed with hardcovers, fiction with nonfiction, travel with sports. They'll anagram some sevens, read the dictionary, flashcard the fives, whatever rings their buzzer at a given moment. Others are Dewey-decimal anal—like Joel Wapnick with his vowel-order lists—and set out to learn words in rigid sequence, often for a fixed amount of time during a specific part of the day. Some players, like G.I. Joel, hate studying. Their method is the equivalent of leaving the books stacked in piles on the floor until forced to put them away.

  How do players remember? Again, techniques vary. Lately, I've been trying to digest a couple dozen eight-letter words a day by using “anamonics,” a term combining anagrams and mnemonics. In the early 1990s, a few superexperts took the most highly probable seven-letter stems. Using all of the letters that combined with a stem to form bingos, they created phrases. The idea was to be able to identify quickly whether a rack of tiles plus one more letter contained a bingo, rather than wasting precious minutes shuffling and searching for words.

  So if you hold the stem SAINTED, remembering the phrase “GETS IMPROVED TOUCH” reveals all of the letters that combine with the stem to form at least one eight-letter word. For instance, SAINTED plus a C makes DISTANCE, plus a D is DANDIEST, plus an E is ANDESITE, and so on. For the stem LATRINE, Medleys editor Nick Ballard came up with the classic “MOVING FUNNY SPICES.” For ATONERS, he created “FRUMPS BEING NICE.” For CINEAST, he found “FANS OF THE DIRTY MOVIE BIZ.” DIETERS produced “BLIMPS EATING CRAWFISH.” Ballard devised anamonics for the top two hundred seven-letter stems, and other players did another three hundred seven-letter stems, plus two hundred six-letter stems (RETINA: “THE RED PUPIL PREFERS MUCH WINKING”).

  The only problem with anamonics is that you have to remember the stem, then the accompanying phrase, and then the words themselves. Some players, however, find that creating anamonic phrases helps with retention. My expert friend Martin Smith draws pictures to accompany his anamonics. For SALUTER, he devised the anamonic STIFF VET BOMBING and drew a picture of a stick figure with an erection saluting a flag while bombs fall around him. For the stem AEIORST, which doesn’t form a word, he wrote ASTEROId. His anamonic is JJ UNHURT, DMV, and his picture shows a guy named JJ standing next to the DMV, which has been hit by an asteroid. Political correctness doesn’t matter: For the anagram of the word GINGER, Martin, who is black, discovered the anamonic MY SLAVE. Whatever helps you remember.

  Other players create songs or write stories to remember words. Steve Polatnick, a Miami lawyer and top-fifty player, tapes pictures from magazines next to words in his OSPD. He draws a skull and crossbones next to words that don’t take an S but logically should. TELAMON (a male figure used as a supporting column), for instance, is pluralized with ES, he notes, while WANDLE is an adjective (meaning supple). Words related to Judaica get a Star of David. Piscine words are denoted by a fish drawing. Polatnick tape-records new words and plays them while driving. For fish-related words, he records the same sentence, with minor variations. “What’ll it be? Filet of CORBINA or filet of CUSK?” He says, “I always use the last fish I learned and the new one.”

  Polatnick’s dictionary is nothing compared to the one belonging to retired legend David Gibson. Gibson is a soft-spoken math professor from Spartanburg, South Carolina, who won the Nationals in 1994 and the Superstars in 1995 and earned the adoration of his fellow experts for his unmatched gentlemanliness and for sharing part of his $65,000 in winnings with them. (“He’s a saint,” Jim Geary says.) Gibson annotated all 668 pages of his copy of the second edition of the OSPD. Virtually every word bears some notation. Anagrams, anamonics, front hooks, back hooks, extensions, declensions, related words. All are crowded onto the page in neat, tiny, block capitals, each with its own explanatory code: a plus sign for the anamonic, front and back hooks in parentheses, component words separated by an equals sign. (For example, “LARGANDO = GARLAND + O = GRANOLA + D.”) Gibson could recite the OSPD definitions almost verbatim and he did further research in “real” dictionaries on meanings and etymologies. He worked the book so hard that he had to have it rebound. Gibson put a new dark blue cover on it titled “David’s Lexicon.” He studied an average of four hours a day. Every day. For twelve years.

  The most intricate mnemonic system, though, may be that created by the British player David Webb to remember all of the 412 (in SOWPODS) eight-letter words containing five vowels. (It’s an important list because there are so many vowels in the bag, forty-two.) Webb described the method to me as we strolled to dinner through a park in Melbourne one night. Later, he sent me an e-mail elaborating.

  Webb arranges a mix of five vowels in alphabetical order, say AAIOU. Then he sums the alphanumeric value of the first three letters, where A = 1, E = 5, I = 9, O = 15, and U = 21. So in the example AAIOU, A + A + I = 1 + 1 + 9 = 11. Then he converts the total into the corresponding letter in the alphabet. In this case, 11 = K. For the last two vowels, he uses an alphabetical list of the pairs in order, where AA = 1 = A, AE = 2 = B, AI = 3 = C, all the way up to OU = 14 = N and UU = 15 = O. Then he considers the letters generated by the two groups of letters as a pair. In this example, the first three letters (AAI) yield a K, and the final pair of letters (OU) yields an N. He associates that letter pair with an image. In this case, KN = KNEE. Then he uses the image to
trigger a story: “A knee in the balls (BLS) of a cadet (CDT) gives him spots (SPT) so he goes to the Ritz (RTZ) hotel, where he sees a crocodile (CRC). He gives the crocodile buns (BNS) and hits him with rakes (RKS). Then the [English] football team Spurs (SPR) arrive followed by a sailor (SLR) carrying roses (RSS) and wearing a clog (CLG).”

  Each of the consonant triples creates a word when combined with the vowel set AAIOU. The words prompted by his story are: ABOULIAS (AAIOU + BLS), AUTACOID, AUTOPSIA#, AZOTURIA, CARIACOU#, OUABAINS, OUAKARIS#, PAROUSIA#, RAOULIAS#, SAOUARIS#, and GUAIACOL.

  “Not all stories are of this length,” he tells me.

  Some comprise a single-consonant-triple such as that generated by AIIIO, which converts to (19, 11) = SK, which I associate with skiing. Skiing triggers the image of slaloming down a slope using cacti (CCT) as flags. CCT gives us the splendid word OITICICA.

  This system may seem absurdly complicated and esoteric given its end product, but the five-vowel eights are a crucial list in Scrabble. The words are difficult to see and if you miss the bingo you are likely to score little and have a problem rack the following turn ... It was my goal for many years to develop a memory system that delivered this list on a plate. I viewed this goal as a Holy Grail, not believing I would ever achieve it, but the technique came to me one evening out of the blue and it works. Although it took awhile to create and learn the stories, it now takes me only three hours every three months to keep the stories fresh.

  I head over to Matt Graham’s apartment, where the game itself is a Holy Grail.

  We’re playing “three and three”—$3 a game plus 3 cents per point in spread. Matt gives me 50 points to start, which I need, as I lose the first game by 2 points in reality but win with the spread, 480–432. In the second game, I draw the blanks on the final two turns, play UNLOCK for 50 points and then go out with DOVeTAiL for 70 to win 500–410, not even needing the spread. That’s when Matt tosses his tiles on the board and his clipboard on the table, and barks, “You ready to play without a spot?”

  How far I’ve come. Just a few months ago, Matt first asked whether I was ready to play for money. Now, for Game 3, we leave the stakes the same but cut the spread in half, to 25 points. I get both blanks and win again, 432–374, again not needing the spot, to increase my edge to $11. To Matt, this money is meaningful, but the losing hurts him more. Not that I don’t want to win money. It’s just that I view playing Matt as an investment, and I budget $20 or so per session. Incentivizing gamblers is an excellent way to get them to play, and, with this gambler, for me to learn.

  “I’m really not as bad a sport as it seems when I throw the clipboard,” Matt says. “I’m just trying to have my way. But it really is amazing,” he says, meaning the fact that I’m six for six on blanks in this session. It really isn’t, but his ploy works: Matt persuades me to increase the stakes to six and six. As probability would have it, he promptly gets both blanks and crushes me in the fourth game.

  The loss puts me $6 in the red. Matt squeaks out a win in our fifth game, dropping me in a $15 hole. I reclaim my 50-point spread, but he pulls both blanks again and hammers me, 492–362. Now I’m down $30. We play one more, still at six and six, and I win, 384–367, without the spread, leaving me down $23. Still, it’s a morale-boosting session: I won three out of seven games straight up, and a fourth with a spot.

  Before I leave, Matt shows me his latest health potion: activated charcoal, a “universal antidote and detoxifier that extends life” and has medicinal uses dating to the second century B.C., according to one of the vitamin journals Matt reads. The stuff is called Entera-Klenz Drink Mix. It turns your lips, teeth, and tongue black. Matt says he’s using it to clean out his body. He hasn’t had a drink of alcohol in four days.

  “For the tournament?” I ask. We’re heading to one soon.

  “For the tournament,” he says, “and because I’ve been going off the deep end.”

  I don’t need to ask anymore what he means.

  I’m on a playing binge. After the setback on Long Island, I head to the tournament that has been my bête noire: Waltham. I’ve stunk it up both times I’ve played there, 5–7 one year, 4–8 the next. Maybe it was the proximity of greatness in the form of the premier division, maybe it was my inexperience, maybe my stubborn refusal to commit the time to learn the words.

  Now I’m playing in the expert division. Waltham is liberal about playing up; in this instance, anyone rated 1400–1700 has the option of joining the expert field. Still, when I check in and receive a nametag that also bears my rating and the word EXPERT, I experience a tiny rush of pride.

  Things start well. My first game is against one of the Scrabble misfit savants. He’s a small, nervous, muttering man wearing large, rectangular glasses and a tight plaid short-sleeved shirt. I’ll spot him later at the urinal saying, “I am stupidity!” (John Williams once remarked, “When you look up ‘Scrabble player’ in the dictionary, he’s what you expect to see.”) On my second turn, I find a word I’d just learned: the anagram of BARONET, which is REBOANT. (Marlon had said to me, “Never play BARONET. Always play REBOANT,” because the odder word might draw a challenge.)

  I feel locked in, my confidence unshaken when my opponent bingos with the blanks, playing UnBUCKLE and, appropriately enough, UrINALS. I find MOULDIER to tie the game. But my brain cramps in the endgame, spotting what would have turned out to be my only board-blocking, winning play, QURSH (a monetary unit of Saudi Arabia), but chickening out because of uncertainty. I lose a barn burner, 471–456.

  Then I win three in a row, and find myself at Table 2 on Saturday morning. It’s April 1, my thirty-seventh birthday. (When I was nine, in 1972, I calculated how old I would turn in 2000 but couldn’t fathom that day arriving; it might not have seemed so terrifying had I known I’d be playing a board game full-time.) Chris Cree, the country club Texan, who’s playing at Table 1, apparently thinks my presence at a top table is some sort of April Fools’ Day joke. He does a double take, and a smile cracks his face. His voice goes deep country. “Whoa!” he says. “What’re you doin’ here?” I don’t stay long. Jan Dixon whips me. I drop down to lesser competition and win the next game to improve to 4–2, but then lose three in a row, one especially painful because my opponent artfully manages to find a nine-letter bingo through a disconnected G and D—EStRANGED—a spot I chose not to block. (When I mention the play to him at a tournament two months later, he says, “You’re still thinking about that?”) After the final defeat, which plunges me to 4–5, I realize the numerical designation of expertise, alas, has been postponed again.

  Not so fast. One win can foster the perceptional difference between happiness and disappointment. I’m riding an emotional StairMaster, up, down, up, down. So when I take two in a row and improve to 6–5, I’m up. In my mental ranking of records in twelve-game events, assuming even or slightly better opposition, 4–8 rates as a disaster, 5–7 is lousy, 6–6 is barely tolerable, and 7–5 is just acceptable. But seeded thirty-ninth of forty-two people, 7–5 in the expert division at Waltham would be a better birthday present than the blue baseball glove I got when I turned nine. And the thought crosses my mind that 7–5 could make me an “expert,” too.

  One game. My opponent is a longtime Boston-area player rated about 1800, a calm and friendly gray-haired gentleman I’ve never before met. Our game turns when I lay down EXpIRER for 99 points. It’s a guess; many noun forms of verbs aren’t words. So when he challenges, I’m not optimistic.

  But it comes back acceptable, and turns out to be the only bingo in that rack of tiles, a cognitive achievement that makes me either lucky, good, or both. I pump my fist under the table and cruise to a 423319 win.

  At the club on a Thursday night a couple of weeks later, G.I. Joel is up on his chair, announcing the pairings for the third round of the evening: “Lynn Cushman versus Stefan Fatsis, who just beat Bob Felt!”

  Some exclamations of surprise, a smattering of applause.

  Perhaps searching for a d
ose of humility, I head to Washington Square Park. The weather has warmed and the usual suspects have emerged from their winter hibernation: Alan the contractor; Joe the World War II vet; John the Woody Allen lookalike; Aldo the diner owner; Jimmy the Flea House original, in a wool cap.

  I feel insecure around these men in a way I don’t anymore in the club or at tournaments. Their approbation is determined first by skill and second by familiarity. I’m a known face, but still a no-talent. The tournaments feel almost sissified compared to the gritty park—all those rules and scorecards and announcements and ratings, white noise obscuring what really matters: the game. No tracking tiles, no spinning the board after every turn. Just make words.

  Bob Felt is there, we play, and order is restored as I lose. I win a couple of games against lesser lights. And as I sit down for one more, with Joe, the experts are hovering over the board. I open with HONDLER*, which I think should be good because HONDLE means to haggle, and HAGGLER is a word. They all know it’s phony, but Joe doesn’t and the play stays on the board.

  When I play MAESTRI, slotting an M in the first column, the boo birds rise up out of their seats.

  “Why’d you put it in the triple line?” Alan asks incredulously.