US Nationals By Philip Nelkon
All photographs copyright Julie Nelkon
I attended the North American NSC in Buffalo from 9-13 August. It was the first time I have been to the event and I had a great time.
Julie and I started our trip staying in Brooklyn for 3 days. Leaving aside our general sightseeing we had 2 Scrabble-specific sights to visit. Firstly we took the F train to Jackson Heights to the area where Alfred Butts lived when he invented Scrabble. The Community Methodist Church in 35th Avenue was the site of the first Scrabble Club at which Alfred refined his prototype game.
This is commemorated by a road sign where the letters appear with their points value underneath them, T=1, H=4 etc. There is also a dedicated plaque mentioning Alfred's invention on the building next door, a non-descript educational establishment which Butts, in his day job as an architect, designed.
The next day we met with Robert Butts, Alfred's nephew on the Butts homestead, built in 1811 by one of Alfred's antecedents, a farmer, deep in New York State. Amongst a number of venerable items, we were able to see the original designs for Scrabble's predecessors - Lexiko and Criss-Cross Words as well as the actual score sheet, dated 3 months after my birth, where Alfred's wife Nina scored 284 points for laying the nine-timer QUIXOTIC.
We arrived in Buffalo on the afternoon of the 8th and I hastened to the Buffalo Convention Center to register. There were around 530 players split into 4 divisions + a small youth tournament competing with a Collins Division of 63 including 15 International players from Australia, Barbados, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Trinidad and the UK.
The Center is a great venue, despite having 500+ players, I'm sure they could have fitted in a lot more. I had the usual trouble with air conditioning, playing most of my games in a sweater despite the 25+ degrees temperature outside. The organisation was impeccable, each division having 2 referees and a computer inputter plus a few others to sell goods, write reports etc. It really felt like we were playing in something big and important.
NASPA, in the persons of Chris Cree, John Chew and tournament referee Dallas Johnson, were very welcoming to their overseas guests, standing us a really good Thai meal at a Thai restaurant selected by the Thai players, all of whom were playing in the US dictionary groupings. It was good to catch up with Kay Faust nee Hurwitz (last seen, 1982!), Mike Baron (we met once before in '87) and Stefan Fatsis (his 9 year old daughter - Chloe finished 4th in Division 4).
The Collins division played to 5 point penalties. Not having competed much recently, I probably did as well as I could have expected. With some extremely jammy pickups, I hit a high of 4th after Day 2 but dropped away slowly to 16th with one game to go. A 180+ point loss to Mark Kenas in the last game demoted me to 26th, which was a bit galling, I would have settled for a top 20 finish. I was proud of a win over David Wiegand in a very blocked game and led most of the way against Adam Logan (runaway winner) eventually losing by just 10 points. I did have the compensation of improving my WESPA rating by 30 points or so.
I played 65 bonuses in the 32 games. Amongst the better ones were SEQUENCY (Q = blank), BEDPOST, ASKANCE ( blanks were both A's and the word had to begin with A,E,I, or O),PELERINE, MISCEGEN, THIONINE and PARANOEA . Those I should have played but didn't included UNPRETTY, UNTRUSTY, NUTTERY, LABELLATE, UNSICKER, ALLOXAN, BERNICLE, STEREOED, EGESTIVE, TITHINGS, and BECLOUDS.
Against Evans Clinchy holding QZERRED in a close endgame where he had plays that could score well on a triple word score or stick me with the Q. I made a neat play of REZ, ZO blocking the triple for him whilst setting it up for me to play DZO for a winning 39 points. That forced him to block, thus enabling me to dump the Q in the one available spot, elsewhere on the board, next move. You can see the game at cross-tables.
Adam Logan won from Joel Wapnick with Dave Wiegand in 3rd. There were divisional prizes for my UK compatriots - Austin Shin and Nicky Huitson. In the main event, Conrad Bassett-Bouchard was crowned Champion for the first time, I hope Hasbro use him to publicise the game as he will make a great ambassador - charming and articulate. Nigel finished 12th.
The future of US Scrabble seems assured with young players like Conrad, Noah Walton, Mack Meller (only 14) and Jason Li finishing in the top 10, whilst Jim Kramer (2nd) and Joel Sherman (3rd) showed that the oldies are not finished yet.
So, that's another tick for my bucket list. Travelling to, and playing in, the NSC certainly wasn't cheap but it was well worth the outlay, probably the best tournament I have ever played in. Do try to do it at least once.