| About |
| News |
| Player Profiles |
| Associations |
| Committee |
| Dictionary |
| Tournaments |
| Rules |
| Ratings |
| Youth |
| Home |
Adam Logan
ADAM LOGAN
by Roy Kietzman
When Adam Logan won the eighth World Scrabble Championship last November in London, the mathematician believes the 3-0 match fell in his favour "by avoiding mistakes."
Winning 20 out of 24 games ahead of the finals, he was pitted against Thailand’s Pakorn Nemitrmansuk who ended up runnerup, as he was in the ’03 WSC.
Looking back at his championship match, the Canadian says none of his final three games was "absolutely perfect, of course, but all three of them, I dare say, were surprisingly free of clear errors. Granted, no spectacular plays either but still it’s usually by avoiding mistakes that you win at Scrabble, not by being brilliant."
Adam, who is currently on leave from the University of Liverpool, England, is undertaking research at the Centre de Recherches mathematiques in Montreal before taking up a new assignment in April at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario.
He earned a bachelor’s in maths from Princeton, then a master’s and doctorate in the same discipline from Harvard University.
His mother taught him to play Scrabble at a tender age, and then he took part in his first tournament when he was 9 in Ottawa where he grew up.
The competition was the opener in several stages of a qualifying contest for the North American championships.
At age 20 Adam became both the Canadian and US champion in 1996, following that up in 2005 with the Canadian title again. The previous year he took the trophy in the British Elimination Scrabble Tournament.
At present, the Kingston, Ontario-born academic belongs to the club in Montreal. Besides his native country, the USA and Britain, he has competed in tourneys in Australia and in clubs in Israel.
He assessed his championship match as "surprisingly free of clear errors" but he was "appalled to discover, when I was writing down my racks, that I had missed the obvious play of ‘endostea’" in a previous game against Pakorn.
He considers himself "good at playing my game, recovering quickly from my own errors, not being intimated by my opponents’ high-scoring plays…and at giving myself good chances in difficult late-game positions though the way things were going [in the finals] I didn’t have too many of those." Adam complains, however, that sometimes he moves too quickly.
"I’m sure I would’ve seen ‘ordering’ in the final if I’d spent two seconds looking there."
England for two years helped hugely with that."
He recognises the extraordinary skills in the brainy game of competitors like American Brian Cappelletto (’01 world champion), Pakorn, ’95 world titleholder Mark Nyman (UK) and Nigel Richards (New Zealand). Besides important practice games with his Montreal club players and with Maven (a computer program), "I didn’t do very much word study in the runup to the WSC though I did quite a bit over the previous two years."
Adam hopes to compete in the Boston area competition in April as well as the newly renamed US Scrabble Open though work commitments may preclude participation in either events. But the Canada-US contest in June seems a surer bet for him taking part.
When not playing Scrabble, you’re likely to find the mathematician listening to classical music or just out for a stroll and, of course, likes to spend quality time with his girlfriend in Boston.
"At the moment the most prominent Scrabble contest is the WSC, and, since it seems that Hasbro (the North American copyright owner of the game) won’t be sponsoring any more of them for a while, perhaps there’s a good opportunity to form a strong relationship with Mattel to establish venues well in advance.
"There are, of course, other international tournaments - the pan-African
championship, the Trans-Tasmanian Challenge (Australia), the Gulf Scrabble Tournament - but I don’t know very much about these," Adam explains.
"It seems to me that Wespa would have much stronger obligations in this area than, say, Mattel [the trademark owner outside North America]."
With his championship trophy, Adam also took home $17,000 in prize money which he’s hardly touched so far.
He’s considering buying a new computer that won’t put much of a dent into the winnings.
"I’m starting to reach the age when you think about saving to buy a house though that’s still several years away" so perhaps most of the winnings will be squirreled away for that proverbial rainy day.
"OSPD isn’t quite same game as Sowpods, or Collins, Scrabble but I can’t agree with those who consider it dramatically inferior.
"Furthermore, the change to Collins, whatever its merits, will delay any movement towards a double dictionary in North America by some years, especially in light of the numerous errors and infelicities in the book as it stands."
"As for challenges, I feel strongly that in top-level tournaments challenges shouldn’t be completely free.
"Let the penalty be 2 points or even 30 seconds off the clock if 5 points is too much but, by all means, allow free challenges to new players in clubs as is generally done in North America…"
Wespa is also examining setting up international ratings for competitive players which Adam confesses is "a very difficult problem with so little data.
"Perhaps one day the best 100-200 players in the world will be professionals and travel and play each other frequently. "But until then I won’t have much faith in any international rating system.
Egypt or Mexico?
"One thing I’m sure of is that the centre of gravity will continue shifting away from countries where English is the standard language and toward countries where it’s learned: countries like Nigeria where many people learn English from an early age and speak it very well to countries like Thailand where many players don’t converse fluently in English.
"For me, as a traveller, this creates great opportunities, and I’m very happy for players who have something rich and wonderful in their lives that they wouldn’t otherwise have. As a champion, it definitely increases the need to watch my back." Nonetheless, admiring fans around the world will be watching his every move.