Word Addict: secrets of a world SCRABBLE champion

I was surprised to be playing Pakorn, because I expected him to be at the top of the field, which means he’d generally be playing other people at the top. It was exciting and tense, but I hadn’t really been in the game. A few spectators crowded round and I nearly played a showy nine-letter word, ITINERANT, but managed to mangle the order of the vowels in my haste to avoid time penalties. Four straight-forward games followed, with me taking three of them, and I finished day two on 9–7 and up to thirty-second place.

I felt like I was still in with a shot of finishing in the top ten, but it was an outside chance and I’d have needed to win virtually every remaining game. Unfortunately, the next day started with a blowout in my opponent’s favour. I kept plugging away, though, and managing to win one way or another. Meanwhile Pakorn had managed to win an amazing fourteen games in a row. I happened to be his fifth victim.

Suddenly I’d won six straight games and had made it up to ninth place. With one round to go I was drawn to play Andrew Fisher, a familiar name because he lived in England a number of years ago before emigrating to Australia. If I won I would get my top ten finish. Like the previous few games things seemed to flow my way. I had a good lead, and Andrew’s bigger plays weren’t scoring much whilst I was able to hit straight back.

I ran out a comfortable winner and watched the other results come in to see where I finished. Nigel Richards, the reigning World Champion, had finished top, Pakorn second. Both were on eighteen wins. I finished on sixteen wins and eight losses but had only moved up a single place to eighth. I was just happy to finish in the top ten though, with so many other big names. It also happened I was the highest finishing European player, which I was quietly proud about. After copious handshakes and a rushed ceremony, things got turned around for the final between Nigel and Pakorn the next day. I now had the opportunity to be on the other side of the showpiece clash, watching with the audience as two players battled it out over a best-of-five contest. I always enjoyed following games and tournaments online. A number of previous tournaments had included annotated games. These were games where helpers had written down racks and moves, which had then been put online and could be played through move by move.

Video cameras were set up so you could watch everything happen live. It was surprisingly dramatic, even things like tiles being placed one by one on the rack. Cheers as blanks and great letters appeared, groans as vowel after vowel or triplicate after duplicate were revealed. More noisy reactions as big scores went down, confused murmurs as moves we didn’t see or expect got placed on the board. It was a great atmosphere and I loved it.

I won’t go into too much detail about the first game, because it’s covered in the playthroughs later in the book. So as you can imagine it was a humdinger. To stereotype a little bit, Nigel was the machine. He was Scrabbling perfection; he had his own style and would often baffle people with a move, only for it to then turn out to be the best play. Nigel did everything at a sedate pace. Pakorn was much more erratic. He once famously took seven minutes to decide where to place a word on his first turn. He was a very deep thinker. Frantic and fidgety as he was, he would often go right down to the last second on his clock, playing and picking tiles very quickly.

The second game was in complete contrast to the first. Pakorn was already 203 points up when Nigel’s aura slipped a little. Richards had played PIG but had also made IR* in the process, an invalid word. Of course Nigel knew it didn’t exist. It was a careless mistake and his just happened to be on the biggest stage. Later in the game Pakorn rubbed it in further by pretending to play DINE onto the bottom left triple word score, before saying it’s not enough points and extending it to PALUDINE (an adjective meaning ‘of the marshes’) to hit two triple word scores for 167 points.

Another blowout followed, then game four came along. Pakorn, who had lost in two previous finals, led 2–1 and needed one more to take the title. The audience was on his side. The game flowed beautifully. ADVENES, GRIFTERS, GENETRIX, DOYLEY, FREEHOLD, and BOHEMIAN. But the board was getting closed down. Nigel led by fifty-four points and was looking good to force it into a deciding game. But there was still time for one more big move. Pakorn held AABCNOT, there was a floating I to play through, but it was obscured and any move would have to fit under J and O. Fortunately his eight-letter word slotted sweetly, making (J)A and (O)N. BOTAN(I)CA went down for ninety-four points.

ADVENES, advene, verb, to add over and above

GRIFTERS, grifter, noun, swindler, one who makes money through deception or fraud

GENETRIX, noun, mother

DOYLEY, noun, same as doily or doyly, an ornamental napkin

FREEHOLD, noun, permanent tenure of land or property

BOHEMIAN, noun, an unconventional person, especially one involved in arts

BOTANICA, noun, a shop that sells herbs and magic charms

Pakorn was now on the brink of becoming World Champion after twice being the bridesmaid. Nigel took a long time to try and find any way of winning. He made the best move, but it was futile. Pakorn only had to play any reasonable valid play. He declared the blank – ‘S as in Singapore’. Pakorn Nemitrmansuk from Thailand was 2009 World Scrabble Champion. He was overcome with emotion in the playing room and then later as he walked through to where all the spectators had been watching. Flashes everywhere, endless cheers and applause. It was amazing. It was not over though. After a lovely day spent in Jurong Bird Park, Zoo, and Night Safari across in Singapore, we had the Causeway Challenge to play in. Just five days and forty-five games of Scrabble to go. I got off to an indifferent start and felt more and more drained as the games ticked by. I was on the verge of another top ten finish and some prize money, but it was always just out of reach. There was still the team aspect of it though. I was part of the second UK side. We’d managed to secure the top spot and received a rather nice gold medal each. We all got up on stage and raised a massive marble and glass trophy aloft. I narrowly avoided putting my back out and dropping the thing. Unfortunately it didn’t quite fit in my hand luggage and we all left it to Lewis to take home.

After nearly two weeks away I returned home, sneaking my gold medal out now and then on the flight back. I hadn’t been at the Olympics but it still felt pretty important to me, along with the top ten finish in the Worlds. I felt like I’d given a good account of myself in my first real foray on the international stage. In the years that followed I was increasingly involved with the ABSP and WESPA (the World English-Language Scrabble Players Association), the British and World bodies for Scrabble respectively, being part of committee discussion as well as designing and updating websites. I kept up with the playing side too, making the World Scrabble Championships again in 2011. This time it was held in Warsaw, Poland. It was generally around freezing the whole time. I can’t say it was high up on my list of places to visit but it was pleasant enough and quite cheap.

My first game was a bit of a shocker. I was over 200 points behind and still trailing by well over 100 when in desperation I opened up a nine-timer (a move that links two triple word scores) – the only way I could score enough to win. I placed a T in the fifth position and then watched my opponent put down what I thought was TRUDGE and turned the board around, only to see he’d actually transposed two tiles and made (T)RUGDE*. A somewhat costly mistake as I was sitting with ADEINOR. Off went his word and down went DERA(T)ION for 140 points. I still can’t quite believe I won that game.

Over the three days I stayed up and around the business end of the table. There were thirty-four rounds in total, with the top two going through to the obligatory best-of-five final. I was lying at third at the start of day four, when I played Nigel Richards and drew tiles from heaven to win comfortably and go first overall. I then had a chance to put a bit of daylight between myself and the rest of the pack when I faced Andrew Fisher next up. Things were looking good when I was 150 points up, before Andrew hit me with a blank bonus. I was kind of expecting it because he’d been balancing for a few turns. But I was still in control, until he followed it up with MOSSIES (mossie, noun, the common sparrow) and (L)UTEFISK (noun, Scandinavian fish dish) to combine for a run of nearly 300 points in three moves.

I was still in with a shot at the end of that game, but couldn’t find the vowels in the bag that I needed. After that things fell away from me. With three rounds to go, I needed to win all of the remaining matches to make the final. Finishing in the top ten wasn’t even in my mind. My opponent started off with four consecutive bonuses and that was that. I just wanted to get out of there. I threw away any chance of winning in the last two games and ended up out of the prize money, down in eleventh place.

The final was between Nigel Richards and Andrew Fisher the next day. I still enjoyed watching it, particularly as it went down to a decider. Bonus words such as ZENAIDAS, ACEROLA, GONDELAY, DAROGHAS, TOLARJEV, and OMNIFIED were played. Richards ultimately went on to win 3–2 and became the first player to win multiple World Championships. The ceremony was met with much less emotion and exuberance than Pakorn’s win, in keeping with Nigel’s Zen-like persona. Everyone, though, appreciated that it was a great achievement, recognizing that Richards was the best player on the planet by a distance.

ZENAIDAS, zenaida, noun, a wild dove

ACEROLA, noun, a West Indian shrub

GONDELAY, noun, gondolier

DAROGHAS, darogha, noun, (in India) manager

TOLARJEV, tolar, noun, monetary unit of Slovenia

OMNIFIED, omnify, verb, to make universal

As more time passed, I got involved with running and organizing tournaments. It was a different experience, being behind a computer, typing results in, and generating fixtures whilst almost everyone else was busy playing. I’ve always found it interesting following tournament standings online, so being there and getting the results personally is kind of fun. Being a tournament director or referee, on the other hand, is extremely tedious. There are very few rulings to make. Scrabblers are a pretty well behaved bunch other than the odd grumble (although given the way the media dredged up controversy over the missing G tile at the 2011 World Championships you may think otherwise).

The global Scrabble scene had grown with a lot more events taking place. MSI (Mind Sports International) had taken on the role of organizing and running the World Championships for 2013. The format had changed a little bit, with the top four going through to the knockout stage instead of just the top two playing a final. With an Open tournament taking place alongside the invitation-only World Championships, there were an awful lot of Scrabblers about in Prague, Czech Republic. It was probably the best overall event I’ve ever been to. Lots going on, a charged yet friendly atmosphere, and comfortable surroundings.

I bobbed up and down the standings without ever being in the first four places. It was strange really, I should have been the best prepared I’d ever been. I had games I felt in control of towards the end that could have given me a great shot at making the finals, but I didn’t feel up to it. I was struggling with mental tiredness and it was affecting my word knowledge. Which meant I was stressing myself out trying to work out whether a word I’d found was valid or not, and it felt like my intuition had gone, like I was almost word-blind, and I just didn’t fancy being under the spotlight in that frame of mind. It was a relief once I was out of the running. I drew the bag to finish fifth and then relaxed and enjoyed the semis and final.

It again went down to the fifth game in the best-of-five final to decide the title. One unlikely move followed another. ADEGMPU went perfectly with a Z for GA(Z)UMPED. Then BEJEWEL. Then an outrageous play of AUR(O)REAN (adjective, relating to the dawn), with six overlaps (played words that overlap with other words) for ninety-eight points. Ultimately Nigel Richards ran away with the game and was crowned World Champion for a third time, beating Thailand’s Komol Panyasoponlert 3–2.

So what happened in 2014? I did almost no word studying all year. I moved away to Guisborough with my partner Karen and three soppy mutts. I had played in one tournament since the 2013 World Championships, when the 2014 event took place in the ExCeL, London, organized by MSI. Being a complete cheapskate I booked coaches for £9 or so each way and stayed in a £12-a-night hostel.

Each morning I awoke miles from the venue, with an ever-growing pile of rucksack, carrier bags, and clothes near a window. I was still in cheapskate mode, and on the first day made it into a two hour walk to the ExCeL Arena by going the wrong way several times. Fortunately the tournament was running a lot later than I was and I had time to freshen up and compose myself.

This time the top eight players would go through to a knockout stage. I felt like I had a decent chance of achieving this, and then basically anything could happen. I got off to a great start, winning my first five games, four of them by a good margin. I lost out to a fellow Englishman before a nightmareish game at the end of the first day, losing by more than 200. I shouldn’t complain, though, because I scored 728 against the very same opponent a few years earlier. The hammering pushed me down to twelth, but it was a reasonable start.

I won a couple of very tight games early the next day. My heart skipped a beat when I thought I’d miscalculated and, instead of winning by two, I was about to draw a game I’d picked great tiles in. But I went through the maths a third time and got the more favourable scoreline. I lost a game here and there, but won six out of eight for the day, and twelve overall. This left me in sixth place, and more or less where I needed to be.

By now I was getting into a routine of bacon butties (aka sandwiches) for breakfast, picking off sausage rolls during the day, and chicken fillets on the way back to the hostel. I’m sure there are better diets for keeping the brain going. I had plenty of support from home, lots of effervescent texts coming in regularly from Karen, being dead-batted by me.

As well as seeing how far up or down you’ve gone on the live scoreboard, players take a keen interest in how others are doing. You always want to see compatriots do well, but a lot of focus had also been on who was struggling. It never escapes anybody’s attention for long when a top player is languishing down the table, and the best player in the world was having a bad tournament. Nigel Richards was well off the pace. He’d rallied slightly but was in twenty-ninth on only nine wins. Everyone was expecting him to still make the knockout stage; however, he was running out of games.

After some head scratching, I decided I’d need to win five games on the third day to make the top eight. I got off to a winning start, edging a high scoring game 487–479. A blowout next match put me three wins away. I’d crept up to third but it didn’t really matter to me. Anywhere in the first eight positions was good enough. I won some more tight games and before I knew it I’d won the five games I’d needed. At this point, a few of us kind of wondered what would happen. I was hoping to sit out and rest up for the next day. But we all kept playing, and I tried my best to switch off a bit.

I got a nine-timer of DYNAMITE for 167 in the game that followed and eased to a comfortable win. A few people placed their attention firmly on how Nigel was doing and who looked like making the knockout stages. Richards had ominously clawed his way back to tenth place with two rounds to go, but still needed to win both remaining games to qualify. As I lost comfortably and quickly in my next match, my opponent and I had a look at how other games were going.

Brett Smitheram had beaten Nigel Richards; the three time and reigning World Champion was out. Even though we were all aware anything could happen in the knockout stages, it felt like the tournament had been broken wide open. I was among those quietly indulging in Schadenfreude. Later, after an extraordinary sequence, I won the last game by eight points after my opponent Dave Wiegand bonused to go 60–70 ahead and drew absolute tripe. I finished on nineteen wins and first place. The rest of the top eight emerged. Two Englishmen, two Americans, three Australians, and one Canadian were in the quarterfinals. As I finished top I played the eighth place finisher, Alastair Richards from Australia, in a best-of-three match. On one hand, I was trying to enjoy the fact that I’d finished top in such an amazing field, but I also realized that it would mean absolutely nothing the next day. I tried to look at it as having already won £250, and whatever will be will be. No-one from the UK had won the title for twenty-one years and nobody had come close for fifteen – before I took up the game.

I remembered how frustrating it was having no-one to root for when I followed big events from home, not just Scrabble, but sport generally. I grew up during a pretty lean period in the 90s: a few glimmers of hope in the football being cruelly ended by penalty shootouts; a cricket team that was awful year after year; an also-ran rugby team; barely winning a gold medal in the Olympics. Whilst I knew that maybe a few hundred or thousand people would be interested in what I was doing, it still mattered.

I watched England win the Rugby World Cup, and the Olympic medal count increasing every four years.

Cricket was my main sport of interest though. I’ve supported my local, county Durham, since their inception as a first class team. They’d gone from struggling at the bottom end of the table to winning a number of championships. I particularly remember the amazing 2005 Ashes, and Durham player Steve Harmison getting out Kasprowicz in the famous Edgbaston Test, when both teams were one blow from winning. It wasn’t just the success or failure, it was how it inspired other people, the dignified way they went about their craft.

I had made peace with myself that I wasn’t going to be playing at my best. I accepted that it isn’t really about what you deserve. You play out a game of Scrabble. If you can do it well, you’ll give yourself a better shot of winning, but there are no guarantees. When England beat Australia in the 2005 Ashes, it would be fair to say that Australia were by far the better team, and probably played better too. But none of that mattered when compared to the actual result. There are rankings for determining the best, but ultimately it is trophies that count. Sport is about producing a winner and a spectacle. I sat down for my quarterfinal match against Alastair. I was expecting to start the first game due to finishing higher in the main event. Instead we drew and I lost. Which pretty much summed up the game that followed. I was never in it. I was hit with APIARIES, CRUBEEN, NEOTERIC, PTERION, and HARTALS. The 166 point margin made it sound closer than it actually was. I resisted the urge to feel sorry for myself and resolved to win the next two games.

The next went my way. I started with AADELTU and quickly put down ADULATE. More big plays followed soon after. I was over 100 ahead, and every time Alastair got within striking distance I bonused straight back. I won comfortably 491–399 and got ready for the deciding game.

Once more I got off to a good start. Getting to a critical part of the game, ahead by seventy-five points with thirty tiles left in the bag, I was trying to shut the board down and clinch the game. I was going through a number of possible four-letter words I could play. Couldn’t play GLED, because that would set up OGLED onto a triple lane. Didn’t like the rack leave of DREG. Eventually settled on REDD and assumed my brain was playing tricks on me by quietly flagging up AREDD. It wasn’t.

At this point I got very lucky. There were lots of As to come and I’d just provided a great opportunity for my opponent to wipe out my lead in one big move. But he didn’t have an A. In desperation he tried BREDD* which I challenged off. I had a bit more of a buffer, but was caught between whether to risk AREDD and lose a turn, or to try and obscure it. I did neither, but nothing materialized for Alastair to bring him back into the game. I’d made it to the semifinal.

APIARIES apiary, noun, a place where bees are kept

CRUBEENnoun, a pig’s trotter

NEOTERICnoun, a modern author