So after a few more weeks at the club I kept on improving, but still getting beaten by Lewis. One of the beauties of Scrabble is that it has everything, luck included. On my final night at the club before returning home I did what Scrabblers describe as ‘drawing the bag’. I picked everything against Lewis whilst he was crippled by awful letters. I’d defeated my nemesis and later sheepishly waved goodbye to everyone. I’d got the bug for Scrabble. I am a very competitive person, but also lazy, introverted, and passive. My academic studies had finished. But then they had never really got going. I was absolutely terrible at putting my head down and studying, so I relied on natural ability to get as far as I did. My skills growing up had all been about numbers, not words. Indeed, I had to redo my English Language qualification from school. (I thought I’d sneak that a few pages in and hope anyone reading has already bought this.)
Back home I’d been invited by Pauline Johnson to Cleveland Scrabble Club in Middlesbrough, a few miles from where I lived. Pauline had been the driving force behind the club since its inception in 1981 – the year I was born. In the early years the club played twice a week, playing High Score Scrabble. In the 80s this was the main method of play competitively – where wins and losses were irrelevant, only the aggregate of your scores mattered. This changed the game entirely, meaning wide open boards and lots of exchanging tiles until a big score came along.
Thankfully for me, Matchplay Scrabble took over soon after. Matchplay is the more technical name for what most of us would consider a ‘normal’ game of Scrabble, where the goal is simply to win. Cleveland Club is one of the biggest clubs in the UK and back then it had thirty members. It was more formal than Sheffield Psalter. Timers were used, all the fixtures for the night were organized in advance, and the games all counted towards an overall league or to the A/B/C divisions. Many of the members had been attending for over thirty years.
The best player at the club was undoubtedly Pete Finley. He had represented England in a number of World Scrabble Championships going back as far as the second event in 1993. He had a very posh board to show for his success. Pete and his wife Laura had met through competitive Scrabble more than a couple of decades earlier. I’ve since learned they were just one of dozens of couples who’d met through the scene. I always particularly enjoyed playing Pete. I loved the challenge. I was doing quite well. I was promoted into the A division and then soon after had my first ‘official’ tournament, which was organized by the club in the same venue.
This time, however, I struggled against a much stronger field, my racks didn’t seem to flow, and I got bogged down in awkward, scrappy games. I won two games out of five, finishing eleventh out of sixteen. Since it was an official tournament I got a provisional rating of 135, but I knew I was a better player than that. The ratings ranged from fifty up through to the early 200s. Almost every national association has a rating and ranking system. Many players take a very keen interest in their rating and whether it goes up or down after a tournament. I loved my numbers, so I was among them.
Given my ample free time – I was unemployed and living at home with my parents – I got into studying words with a program called LeXpert, developed by M. G. Ravichandran. This mostly consisted of being presented with a jumbled rack on the computer. I then had to type in all the anagrams. Anything I missed was displayed. There’s a bit more to it, because you try and learn words in a particular order, so you’d start out with the most useful first, and there are a number of methods to this.
It can be hard going when there are a lot of words coming up that you don’t know, but initially it’s rewarding because it significantly improves your anagramming skills, and you’re learning words that will come up fairly often. Back then I wasn’t really bothered about what the words actually meant, but there are always one or two outlandish words that come up and pique your interest.
The other program I used a fair bit was Maven, created by Brian Sheppard. Maven allowed you to analyse Scrabble positions. I found this particularly interesting, seeing how a computer evaluated the game. It also helped me to think about Scrabble; the value of keeping letters or sets of letters. And it showed me where I was making mistakes and improved my play on a more fundamental level, away from simply learning and then finding those words.
I felt like I was playing better each week. Later I played in my second tournament, where I won four out of five games and finished third. The year ended, and for the next – 2004 – I made it my goal to win a local event. I made a good start at the club, getting a new highest game. I’d won the match 660–260 with six bonuses against an opponent who’d beaten me by one point a few months earlier. It’s a funny old game, and one that always keeps you grounded. I soon became Pete’s bogey player. He was superior, but I kept beating him. More tournaments followed. I tried my first weekend event in Durham, organized by Pete and assisted by his wife Laura. It was a different experience to what I’d faced so far. Over 100 players in a university building, staying overnight, and seeing all those faces from further afield across two days. I did moderately well, but nothing to write home about.
Soon I was playing more and more events. I’d taken part in a national head-to-head knockout competition. I’d won my first match 4–0 but was eliminated soon after, losing 4–2 with a poor run of tiles. Looking back, it was easy to get carried away with drawing badly, obsessing over not getting any Ss or blanks. But ultimately you have to just do the best with what you’ve got and accept whatever happens. Soon after I had a great run of games in a local five-round event at Newcastle. I ended up winning all five matches and won the tournament. I had had my first win in only April, so it was a surprise and it only spurred me on to do more.
I had a great year. I won other nearby one-day tournaments in Peterlee and Middlesbrough. At the club I had completed all my overall league games. I was top, but Pete would overtake me if he won his last couple of games. Whilst I was sitting at a table elsewhere, he walked over to me and congratulated me. Laura of all people had just beaten him. I had my name engraved on the club shield and got to keep it until the same time next year.
Whilst for me the competitive scene was largely about pitting my wits against other people and striving for success, you do get a lot of different things out of it. Whatever level you’re playing at, there is something to play for, with divisional structures in most competitions. Since Scrabble has so many elements, it has a wide range of benefits which aren’t immediately obvious. Scrabble certainly developed my language skills, got me out in the world and seeing more of it. It helped me a lot socially.
I kept on playing and studying, winning the odd local tourney here and there. I enjoyed the occasional weekend event, usually pitting myself against a few of the top players from further afield. It was always a bit of a buzz to play a big name. I remember holding my own against 2005 World Champion Adam Logan before he pulled away towards the end of the game.
In late 2006 I found myself in contention to qualify for the World Championships. This was a really big deal for me. To make the England team I had to finish as one of the nine highest English players in the ratings at the end of the year. Unfortunately, in practice it meant players would get their rating up to a point they were happy with and then not play at all in the last three or four months of the year, so as to not risk a rating drop.
My last tournament of the year came along, a national team tournament involving England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Because of so many players turning it down I got invited to the English side. I had a horrible tournament and missed out on the World Championships place. I could take the disappointment as I hadn’t expected to make it, but how it happened – the fact that such an obviously flawed qualification procedure was in place and that people were gaming the system so blatantly – made me angry. It was one of very few bitter moments I’ve had with Scrabble.
Soon after I switched my attention to a different game: the UK words and numbers TV show Countdown. I had a break from Scrabble and tried to accustom myself to a completely different dictionary. I did my best to ‘forget’ the tens of thousands of obscure words which wouldn’t be valid on Countdown. Unlearning words is much harder than learning them, because