When Scrabble Lost Its Innocence
ByAccording to the letters page of the UAE’s The National, Scrabble tournaments in the Gulf have become a little too competitive of late:
To clarify the rules of the Gulf Scrabble Tournament referred to in the editorial Strong Words (June 7), following last year’s tile picking controversy, this year the Gulf tournament organisers were very stringent on how tiles were drawn before each turn.
The tile bag should be held at eye level, the player’s head turned away, tiles drawn preferably one by one (no counting tiles while the hand is in the bag), and placed face down on the table.
Another interesting rule that was reiterated was the “hold†rule, where a player can ask an opponent to wait before drawing new tiles after his turn to prevent unscrupulous players from “fast bagging†– ie, playing a phoney word (often deliberately), then drawing tiles (which validates the move) without giving their opponent a chance to assess the move and challenge the legitimacy of the word.
As one former Gulf player remarked following last year’s controversy: “Scrabble has lost its innocence.â€
Competitors may want to keep an eye on their Gulf Team opponents at the World Scrabble Championships in Malaysia, this fall.
3 Comments
June 16th, 2009 at 2:45 am
Didn’t think my little comment would reach New York! Just to clarify, the situation reflected is on the world stage and not just the Gulf, the quote about Scrabble’s lost innocence was made on the World Scrabble mailing list…there’s been lots of gamesmanship worldwide over the years, as is to be expected with any competition where pride and prizes are at stake. The stringent rules that were reiterated at the Gulf tourney have been in place in tourneys all over the world for years now.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Nikhil,
Paul is an avid scrabbler… he got over 600 points once. He has often considered turning professional but sadly a lingering knee injury has made this impossible.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Found your blog via normblog, and am chuckling over “fast bagging,” even though it makes perfect sense to me that Scrabble would get this competitive. It never was a leisurely activity at my house, despite my Mother’s protestations that there was no better game.