"I know you're gonna make us look like big geeks," Rebecca Slivka tells me on day three of the 15th annual Seattle Scrabble Tournament. Slivka, director of the Seattle Scrabble Club, looks big and geeky today in large glasses and an extra-large purple Cycle America T-shirt. "But we are geeks," she says, "so what the hell."
We're standing in a dim, low-ceilinged room, and we have to speak quietly because some games still have minutes left on the clock. Sixty-two players (from as far away as Pennsylvania) have converged here at the Silver Clouds Inn on Lake Union to compete in 22 games in three days.
So maybe they all wear their pants a little high. Big toothed, strange smelling, differently socially abled—call them what you want, these freaks know their shit. Your tiles vs. theirs, they could kill you. (Can you name any of the 10 Scrabble-acceptable Q-words that don't require U's? QAT, QAID, QOPH, FAQIR, QANAT, TRANQ, QINDAR, QINTAR, QWERTY, and SHEQEL. Can you define even one of them?)
Slivka takes me to the table in the far corner where Steven Alexander and Dean Saldanha, both first-division players, have just finished. Alexander will place first in this tournament and win $450. This is a man who scored 468 in a game this weekend and still lost. His opponent, Saldanha, at 19, is the highest-rated player in Canada and the youngest person here.
Alexander and Saldanha's completed board includes OBOLI, FUGS, VELAMEN, YOWIE, and BOYA[blank]. (That blank is an R. A boyar is "a former Russian aristocrat," according to the Scrabble Player's Dictionary.)
Saldanha—whose parents, Norbert and Miriam, entered the tournament with him (and both placed well in lower divisions)—tells me privately that SCLEROMA ("a hardened patch of cellular tissue") is his favorite word.
Other long words played this weekend: ENDOSCOPE, OVARIOLES, and HERMITAGES. Highest-scoring words: WORMIEST (185), LANITARY (122), and TONELESS. A few weird short words played: TAE, AMA, SCRY. Come on, scry? "To engage in crystal gazing." (I'm not shitting you.)
The highest single-game score of the weekend: 601.
At the awards ceremony, successful first-timer Greg Stone thanks a certain "lucky" tile bag, and Slivka, the club director, hands out jars of apricot jam she made last summer to thank her volunteers.
I ask Norbert Saldanha, Dean's father, if the Saldanha family plays Scrabble together at home. He says, "Oh, every day." An old lady, overhearing us, says, "The family that plays together," and Norbert finishes her thought, "Stays together." The Saldanhas are going to nationals together in August.
The Seattle Scrabble Club meets at the restaurant FareStart (1902 Second, 443-1233) every Tuesday at 6 p.m. Bring your lucky tile bag.
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