Scrabbler Q&A: Ben Schoenbrun

Welcome to another installment of our Scrabbler Q&A series. Once every month or so, we'll sit down with a member of the community for a lengthy interview about their life in Scrabble.

Seeing as the outbreak of COVID-19 has basically taken over all our lives, I thought we'd conduct this month's interview with that in mind. Now seemed like the perfect time to interview Ben Schoenbrun - a.k.a. Bnjy - about the work he's done to create virtual Scrabble tournaments while all of us are stuck at home. He's currently running a 32-player double-elimination matchplay bracket, and he's got ideas for future tournaments as well. So we sat down together (by video chat, of course!) and had a conversation about running Scrabble events remotely. Hope you enjoy!

EVANS: The first question I wanted to ask you is just, how are you doing? How have you been dealing with being cooped up at home, hiding out from the pandemic? What's it been like coping with everything?

BNJY: It was fine until yesterday, and now it's fine again. I'm an introvert, so if there's anyone that's equipped to deal with sort of thing, it's me.

Obviously, there are challenges to it. There are problems. I would love to see you guys again. I would love to see all of my friends again; I'd love to see my parents again. But it's OK. It's not forever.

EVANS: So the main reason I wanted to talk to you is, you're one of the most prominent people out there running virtual Scrabble tournaments. Let's start from the beginning of that - when did you first have the idea to start doing this? Was there a particular moment when you realized there was an opportunity for virtual tournaments? How did that start?

BNJY: It was basically when Poughkeepsie was cancelled [the weekend of March 14]. I said, "Oh, I should run something this weekend instead." People seemed to want it. So I just ran a simple single-elimination tournament. One day, 16 people, four rounds, and I streamed the whole thing. Cesar [Del Solar] joined me on the stream after he lost to Tim [Weiss] in the first round.

Part of the reason I did that was as a proof of concept for the tournament that I'm running now.

EVANS: So you think the first one went well? Did it prove that you could scale up to something more ambitious from there?

BNJY: Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that people didn't, like, absolutely hate the structure of an elimination tournament. Obviously, there are some people who don't love it, but my goal for the tournament is honestly... it's not going to be perfect for the players. Nothing is. And it's not going to be perfect for the viewers. But I wanted something that could cater to both of them. I wanted the viewing to be just as much of an experience as the playing. And actually, this tournament allowed me to do something that I've wanted to see in Scrabble for a while.

EVANS: What's that?

BNJY: I think every night this week, someone has been streaming Scrabble.

EVANS: Wow, that's impressive.

BNJY: Yeah. On Monday and Thursday, Will [Anderson] streamed. He's really been putting a ton of effort into it. He's also streaming the School Scrabble championship this weekend. I streamed Tuesday, and I'll be streaming again [Friday] for Tim and Noah [Slatkoff]'s match. I also might stream Brad [Whitmarsh] and Geoff [Thevenot] if I'm feeling up for it. And Mack [Meller] will be joining me. So it's a lot of fun.

EVANS: So what was it like for you, scaling up from the smaller first event you did to the bigger second one? Were there any challenges you came across, or lessons you learned from that?

BNJY: Honestly, just seeing how on top of it everyone was in the first one was great. I had 16 people, and I had basically just announced the tournament the night before, and literally everyone was there at noon ready to play. So I said, "Wow, if people are going to be this good, I can run something bigger."

EVANS: So it's been pretty smooth overall? Not a lot of major issues?

BNJY: Yeah! I kind of want to run it back with 64 players now.

EVANS: Hey, depending on how long this whole quarantine thing lists, you might have time for that.

BNJY: Well, that's the thing. I just put out a poll about the tournament, just to see what people thought of it and see, if I were to run it again, if there's anything people would really want me to change. And it's mostly what I would expect - just normal answers, split down the middle on most things. But one thing that really jumped out at me was, one of the questions I asked was, "Would you play in this sort of tournament again, even when things are in a more normal state?" Literally everyone answered yes.

EVANS: Interesting! So I guess there's an opportunity to continue running events like this even after things are back to normal.

BNJY: That's exactly what I was thinking. I just got these results in today. About 15 people answered the poll, and it's, like, 15-0 on that.

EVANS: So, another thing I wanted to ask you about was the format of the tournament you're doing, with the best-of-5 series and the double-elimination bracket. Both of those are pretty original ideas in Scrabble - you don't see them often. How do you feel about how the format has played out? Have people liked it?

BNJY: I think the higher-rated players have liked it. That's another thing I learned from getting feedback - people wanted to play more if they got eliminated early. So one of my ideas is, if I run another one of these, maybe I'll run a side event after round 3, and call it a "rebound tournament." It would just be a five-round, best-of-5 thing, run weekly, and the only restriction for entry would be that you can't enter if you're still in the other one.

As far as the best-of-5 format, the poll favored that. I asked in my poll, what would people prefer - best-of-3, best-of-5, best-of-7 - and most of the answers were best-of-5. The 15-minute clocks were also fine with people. One of the things I kind of regret is I changed the "Who goes first?" rule midway through the tournament. I probably shouldn't have messed with that. But that was also split down the middle, so people don't really care much, I guess.

EVANS: I also wanted to ask you what it's been like to broadcast these events on Twitch. It seems like you've had a lot of people in the community really engaging a lot with the broadcasts and having a lot of fun with it. What's that been like?

BNJY: It's great. I've seen people stream, and interact with the streams, that I never thought I would. I didn't peg James Curley, for example, as the type of person to say "Oh, I'm going to set up a Scrabble stream, come watch." And he even gave Will some ideas for how to set up his stream.

One of my goals, starting a few years back when I first started streaming, was to see if I could inspire other people to stream too. Will jumped on board just before this whole thing started, and like I said earlier, he's working really hard on improving his. As for me, I may not be the best at it, but I was the first! That has to count for something.

EVANS: Absolutely!

So overall, just to sum things up: What are your thoughts on how the Scrabble community has been holding up through this pandemic? And do you feel like there are any positives we'll be able to take away from this, once it's all over?

BNJY: Well, it's a good learning experience. It shows the flaws in our community - the big one being that we don't have a good online platform for playing. We have a couple of things that are split down the middle. We have form in Scrabble Go, kind of, and we have function in ISC, kind of.

But other than that? As far as takeaways go? It's just a really good time to have a hobby.