With each year that our great big CoCo team keeps chugging along, I tend to keep one overarching goal in mind - to improve on the year before. We're striving for growth in every metric you can think of. We want more tournaments, more directors, more players, more games... heck, more 64-point plays of QI. You name it, we want to grow it.

On that front, there's good news to report as we look back on the year 2023. A cursory glance at our numbers reveals that the CoCo as an organization has made progress on many fronts. Things are moving up, up, up.

But hey - what fun are cursory glances? Deep dives are way better. So let's take an in-depth look at CoCo tournaments by the numbers in 2023.

(A note before we begin: Huge thanks to Becky Dyer for all of her help compiling these numbers! We published a similar post in this space last year, looking back at our 2022 stats, and after seeing that post, Becky took the initiative to put together many of the stats herself in '23. Talk about a superstar volunteer!)

And now, the stats:

23.5

CoCo tournaments that took place in 2023. (For the second consecutive year, I'm including a point-five in this figure because half of our New Year's event took place in the previous year, on New Year's Eve 2022.) This number is markedly up, from 17.5 a year ago! Woohoo.

15

Different cities where we hosted CoCo tournaments in 2023. Events this year took place in Albuquerque, NM; Austin, TX; Columbia, MD; Hood River, OR; Lincoln City, OR; Los Angeles, CA; New Orleans, LA; Palm Springs, CA; Portland, OR; Potomac, MD; St. Louis, MO; Seattle, WA; Silver Spring, MD; Slingerlands, NY; and Vancouver, BC. This year saw plenty of activity in both familiar old haunts and new locales! You love to see both.

104

Players who entered at least one CoCo tournament this year. In 2022, this number stalled at 99, and I was pulling so hard for us to break into triple digits! This year, we just barely pulled it off. So clutch.

9

Players who made a CoCo event their first-ever Collins tournament in 2023. Welcome to you all! We hope to see many more CSW newbies in the years to come.

2

Players who made a CoCo event their first-ever Scrabble tournament altogether in 2023! This is an especially key category for us. We're looking to bring as many new people as possible into our beautiful game, so we'll look to do everything we can to drive further growth in 2024 and beyond.

15

Players who won a CoCo tournament this year. Congrats to Peter Armstrong, Chris Canik, Joshua Castellano, Evans Clinchy, Jesse Day, Becky Dyer, Kevin Fraley, Jason Keller, Chris Lipe, Yukiko Loritz, Rob Robinsky, Ben Schoenbrun, Austin Shin, Alec Sjöholm, and Dave Wiegand. Jesse topped the leaderboard with 4 tournament wins this year; Josh and Dave each captured 3 titles.

$28,377.76

Total prize money paid out at CoCo events this year. (I have no idea how that random 76 cents came into play. I wonder if maybe one of our directors decided to honor America's independence by giving someone a prize of $17.76. Let's just take a wild guess and say this happened.)

2,044

Total games played at CoCo tournaments this year. Whew! That's a whole lot of Scrabble. Good work, team.

707

High score recorded by any player in a CoCo game this year. That distinction goes to Jesse Matthews, who put up a ridiculous 707-374 win over Conrad Bassett-Bouchard in round 14 of the Hood River Open in February. Yowza.

1,184

Highest combined score recorded by both players in a CoCo game this year. In round 11 of this summer's Oregon Coast beach tournament, Dave Wiegand beat Alec Sjöholm by the absolutely absurd score of 593-591! Holy cow.

28

Individual game scores of 600+ recorded by players at CoCo tournaments this year.

6

Ties recorded in CoCo games this year. So, out of 2,044 total games, that means that 0.293542074 percent of them ended up deadlocked. Pretty rare, huh?

24

Total directors and organizers who helped run CoCo events this year. Props to: Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, Evans Clinchy, Jennifer Clinchy, Lila Crotty, James Curley, Jesse Day, Becky Dyer, Kate Fukawa-Connelly, Tim Fukawa-Connelly, Randi Goldberg, Terry Kang, John Karris, Deborah Komatsu, Robert Linn, Chris Lipe, Sandy Nang, Sammy Okosagah, Dave Postal, Rob Robinsky, Austin Shin, Lindsay Shin, Chris Tallman, David Whitley, and Dave Wiegand. As I always say, directors are what make the Scrabble world go 'round. Without them, we'd all just be a bunch of people sitting together in a room doing nothing. So, the heartiest of thank-yous to everybody on this list. We would be nowhere without you.

5

Board members who worked together to run the organization this past year. Peter Armstrong, Randi Goldberg, Yukiko Loritz, Rob Robinsky, and I led the way in 2023.

5

Board members elected to run the CoCo again next year. Pete, Randi, Yuki, Rob, and I are all returning in 2024! Let's run the whole thing back.

57

Articles we published this year on the CoCo blog that you're reading right now. This is an important organizational goal - we want to be as transparent as possible with you, the player community, so you know everything that's going on with the CoCo. We look forward to keeping the regular posts coming in 2024 and beyond.

38

Videos we posted this year on our YouTube channel. Having lots of rich, high-quality multimedia content is an important part of growing the game. We'll look to keep cranking out even more compelling videos next year. This stuff matters!

4

Years the CoCo has been alive and kicking. We first launched our new organization just before New Year's Eve in 2019. Hard to believe that was a whole presidency ago! Where the time went, I couldn't tell you.

1

Year ahead that we're super excited for. Let's make 2024 the biggest and best year of Scrabble tournament action yet.