1/12/95
Gone
Abroad for a Spell
You
can't afford to be at a loss for words at
the
World Scrabble Championships.
Been wondering how I did at the World
Scrabble Championships?
I didn't win. But you'll be glad to
know, I had excuses:
(1) After seven sessions of chemotherapy
my brain power has diminished considerably,
which meant I couldn't learn the estimated
40,000 extra words used by most of the world's
Scrabble players, which wouldn't have mattered
anyway because even at the best of times I
have a notoriously bad memory which means
I can't even memorize the shorter vocabulary
we do use and blah blah blah.
(2) I wasn't good enough.
That having been said, I think I did
pretty well.
Back in August, after I finished second
in the Israeli championships, and three days
later, second in the Jerusalem championships,
someone tried to console me that runnerup
was good enough for a spot in London to play
the best in the world. "Yeah," I
muttered, "and with my luck I'll probably
finish second there too." (As luck would
have it, I finished 40th, out of 64.)
In fact, I had seriously considered
not participating, because of excuse #1. But
my results at the Israeli championships won
me a free trip to the London tournament, courtesy
of those wonderful people at Ziontours Jerusalem,
and I was not so intellectually diminished
that I'd pass up a freebie.
I was more worried about letting down
Ziontours than Israel.
DAY
ONE: Cocktail reception, a chance for players
from 31 countries to meet each other. Having
spent more time studying the roster than the
dictionary, I know who is who. I could have
really impressed everyone by introducing Missaka
Warusawitharana to Wimal Samarasundera.
The three Nigerians create a minor
flap just by showing up. Nigeria had, in the
previous two championships, thrown the organizers
into a tizzy because at the last minute, the
military government had denied them visas.
This time, however, Ifeanyi Onyeonwu, Sammy
Okosagah and Femi Awowade managed to attend
because, it turned out, the chairman of the
Nigerian Scrabble Association had become one
of the military rulers.
I don't know what it is about us Israelis,
whether we're more loved, more hated or just
more curious than other nationalities, but
everyone seems to have something to say to
us. Zelig Leader, the other half of the Israeli
contingent, is cornered by a Kenyan the moment
we arrive. Gitonga Nderitu has some very strong
views to express on the peace process. When
he finishes with Zelig, he comes at me. "I
hope you are not a rightist," he says.
I find myself apologizing to the gentleman
from Malta for the little tiff we allegedly
caused in his streets just a couple of days
before, with the killing of Shkaki. He assures
me there are no hard feelings. In fact, he
says we are kinsmen. Same religion? No; same
dictionary.
To explain: the players are divided
into two distinct groups, us and them. No,
not "Israel" and "Rest of World."
The difference is akin to the gulf between
Britain and America. The British -- and most
of the English-language Scrabble world --
use a Chambers Dictionary-based source called
Official Scrabble Words (OSW); the North Americans
-- plus Israel and Malta -- consult the Official
Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD). A few
countries use both.
The difference is crucial: "their"
OSW is about 40 percent wordier. Many of those
extra words are extinct devils labeled as
Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Spenserian or Miltonian,
or not-very-English foreign words that often
look like typos. (You can imagine my gruntlement
when somebody later played PAYSD on me.)
Mind you, our dictionary has a lot
of Hebrew and Yiddish words that they don't
have, such as SHEGETZ; pl: SHKOTZIM. The Filipino
champ told me he was completely flummoxed
in his efforts to learn the 700-odd Jewish
words; I commiserated, explaining that I was
having trouble memorizing the four allowable
Tagalog words.
As it turned out, 15 of my 18 games
were against OSW players, all of whom had
the advantage of 40 percent greater word power
than I. Of my three games against fellow-OSPD
mavens, I won two. Ironically, I lost the
third because my American opponent played
a British-only word on the last turn to overtake
me.
Right, where were we? Noshing and mingling.
There is no mistaking Robin Pollock:
she has a crowd of men around her. Robin,
a 33-year-old Canadian psychology student,
is the glamor-girl of the tournament. A glamor-girl
who speaks Yiddish, noch. Turns out, while
I'm looking for her, she's looking for me.
Well, what is it about us Israelis?
Nobody comes up to me to say "Hi!
I'm Jewish," but many of the two dozen-odd
Jewish players seek me out, making it clear
we share the same forefathers.
I'm pleased to meet them, of course,
but I'm looking for others a bit more, um,
exotic.
I get my chance during the formal introduction
ceremony, when we receive our national flags
and assemble in a line. The fourth person
after me is the representative from "Kurdistan-Iraq."
For an embarrassed moment, they can't find
his flag. Daring myself, I step out of line,
walk up to him and whisper, "Perhaps
you'd like to borrow mine?" He looks
at my auspicious Jewish symbol, smiles, and
responds, "Actually, I wouldn't mind."
We become fast friends.
DAY
TWO: The two Israelis win their first game.
I am, at this point, seventh. Unfortunately,
there are 17 games to go.
After the first round, Zelig is 3-0.
Zelig, characteristically, is moaning, expecting
disaster. "Aw, c'mon," says Paloma
Raychbart, a Ramat Gan player here as a spectator,
"think positive!" Zelig throws her
a basset-hound look and says: "Excuse
me, but I'm doing quite well thinking negative."
Australia's Joan Rosenthal, who loses
to me despite devoting much of her recent
life to word study, points out that "the
worst of it is, you learn the other dictionary,
then you return home and have to unlearn all
those new words you've learned." She
should have adopted my strategy, I say: "I
haven't learned any new words to unlearn."
I wonder if I will be allowed back
into Israel after I lose to a Bahraini --
a 15-year-old Bahraini. Zelig consoles me
later that, with a name like Akshay Bhandarkar,
my victor is most certainly not an Arab. "Okay,"
I grumble, "but he's a quarter of a century
younger than me."
At day's end, I'm 3-3, having beaten
Joan, the Maltese, and the British champion.
I lose to whiz kid Alan Saldanha, who was
British champ at the age of 15, Bhandarkar,
and a delightful South African named Steven
Gruzd.
Zelig is 4-2.
Robin, constantly surrounded by her
cortege of male groupies, is 6-0 and in first
place.
DAY
THREE: I get a lot of attention for the T-shirt
I'm wearing, a work of art handmade by a Zahala
player, Joni Lev, depicting a Scrabble board
filled out with wacky words.
In my worst result of the tournament,
the British champ, Mike Willis, gets revenge,
beating me 514-402. But I get a little satisfaction:
my last word is SNOOL, which he challenges.
"Don't bother," I tell him, "it's
good." To prove it, I point to my belly:
it's one of the words Joni had painted on
the T-shirt; I had learned the word by getting
dressed that morning.
Robin finally loses, to American Bob
Lipton. Pointing out that she is taking the
loss in good humor, I say: "that's very
Jewish of you." Bob smiles. "Actually,
I was about to say that's very white of you."
He makes me promise I won't quote him.
I assemble several players together
for a group photo: the two Israelis plus the
representatives from Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates,
each of us holding our little flags. Michael
Holmes, the champ from Seychelles, tries to
join us. I wave him away, explaining: "You're
not at war with us." Every camera in
the place records this historic moment --
except mine. I make a mental note to buy new
batteries -- soon.
I lose to Naween Fernando, who is also
15 years old, also from Bahrain. I don't even
want to talk about it.
My final game of the day is against
Selwyn Lobo, the gentleman from the United
Arab Emirates. I lose, but my consolation
is that he's 37 years old. He reassures me
that he's not really from the UAE, but from
India. "And I'm not really Israeli, but
from Canada," I reply. All the players
from Arab countries, he stresses, are either
Indian or Sri Lankan, Scrabble hotbeds both.
"It'll take a million years to teach
the Arabs to play," he snorts.
If I haven't sufficiently shamed
my country by now, this'll do it: following
that loss to Selwyn, I'm collared by a woman
with a microphone as I'm leaving the game
room. She identifies herself as a reporter
for Australian radio. "I'm speaking to
a player from Israel. I would guess you just
lost, sir, because I heard you say a four-letter
word." "I did? Which word?"
"Can't say it on radio, but it's spelled
S-H-I-T." "Yeah, well I probably
misspelled it."
After 12 games, I'm 5-7. There are
still some Hindus from Arab countries I haven't
lost to.
DAY
FOUR: I wake up, groggy and spent, having
had more than enough cutthroat Scrabble for
a while. Six more games to go. I pull myself
together, rallying around a new strategy:
I'll learn one new OSW word per day, thereby
ensuring that I remember it. "Today's
new word is UG," I tell Zelig. "You
mean GU," he says.
In the Underground on the way to the
tournament, I sit waiting in the station,
facing a huge billboard advertising a business
information service. Its message: "On
an average day 7% of your work is meaningless
scribble." In my browned out state of
mind I read that as "meaningless scrabble"
and frown, saying to myself, "Nah, it's
much more than 7%."
Selwyn Lobo and a countryman are nattering
away in some foreign tongue. He pauses to
explain to me that "we're talking in
an Indian dialect." "Oh," I
say, "I thought you were talking in OSW."
With the pairings posted for the final
round, I note with disappointment that I didn't
get to play Blue Thorogood. Blue is Maori.
I may never get another chance to play a Maori,
or a man named Blue, again.
However, my final game was against
Dr. Karl Khoshnaw -- the Iraqi. By now, I
had invested in a new battery for my camera,
and had a photo taken of us with our respective
flags crossed in the flag stand, next to our
board. I'm sure it's the first time an Iraqi
and an Israeli have squared off against each
other in anything but hostility.
Karl and I had already dined together
twice, and had several long conversations
about everything from Scrabble to Saddam.
Turns out he detests the Iraqi dictator more
than any Israeli I know. Karl -- who holds
the world record for highest-scoring play
(CAZIQUES, for 392 points) -- is a Kurd living
in London. So how did he come to play for
the glory of Saddam? He explained that
the 11 known Kurdi players -- 10 of them had
fled their homeland, for fear of Saddam's
genocidal policies -- got together for a national
championship ... in Sweden. Karl won, but
the London organizers wouldn't let him represent
Kurdistan, so as not to offend Turkey. Ergo,
the compromise: he could call himself a Kurd,
but his flag identified him as Iraqi.
(I lost to him, too.)
DAY
FIVE: After 18 rounds, the top two players
-- David Boys from my former Montreal club,
and Joel Sherman from New York -- had to continue
in a best-of-five basho for the world championship.
David was like a revving Mack truck; Joel
was kvetching like he'd just been run over
by said truck. "I don't want to
be in the finals. I shouldn't be in
the finals. I came here for a vacation..."
Nevertheless, Joel took David all the
way to the fifth game before succumbing.
David Boys, the new world champion,
said: "I have [North American champion]
David Gibson to thank for me being where I
am." Somebody asked why. "Because
he's not here," he cracked.
Nothing like a bit of false modesty
in a victory speech, but nobody could deny
this tournament separated the men from the
Boys.
