Will Anderson is your World Blitz Scrabble Champion
This, to be perfectly candid with you, is why you do it.
This is why you spend hours planning the event in the months leading up to it - mapping out the structure of it, recruiting directors to help run it, putting out feelers with people who might play it. It's why you put in all the time to promote the event, whether in conversations with friends or on social media or on this very website you're reading right now. It's why you slog through seemingly endless Scrabble, including nine weeks of pool play and four additional weeks of playoffs, totaling more than 3,000 individual games in all.
You do all of that because, at the end of it all, you'll have the gratification of seeing two world-class players do battle in an epic championship series with the title on the line. You do it because, after all that work, the final product will be an awesome show for a live audience of 100-plus Scrabble lovers. Ultimately, you direct a World Blitz Scrabble Championship because it's gonna be cool as hell to get to crown a World Blitz Scrabble Champion.
BlitzChamps culminated this past week - either late Wednesday night or early Thursday, depending on your time zone - in a thrilling best-of-19 series between Will Anderson of the United States and David Eldar of Australia. In the end, it was Will who won the match and captured the title, topping David by a count of 10 games to 6. After enduring 13 matches in 13 weeks and winning every single one of them, Will is now officially your champion. The title is obviously well deserved.
Here's a game-by-game synopsis of the 16 games that went down between the two finalists:
The first game of the match was a fairly easy win for David. It was close midway through, but David broke through with HARTENS for 89, then followed that up with heavy-scoring J and K plays. Nothing Will did could make up the difference - not even a really sweet find of UNSUREST for 74 with two U's. David 440, Will 355; David leads, 1-0.
Game 2 was an incredibly close one. David appeared to have the game won late, as he broke a roughly tied score with TRANTED for 72, leaving just 4 tiles in the bag - but Will had an answer. He came up with back-to-back big scores in the pre-endgame and endgame, namely EJIDO for 63 and BRAKE for 50. In the end, David couldn't find enough points in the endgame to overtake him. Will 454, David 450; series tied, 1-1.
Will kept the momentum going in Game 3. His opening rack was ThONGED, which he played for 70; he basically never looked back. David tried a phony bingo of NIELLOES* for 60 in the middlegame, trying to come back - this didn't work. Will didn't even bother to challenge it off, instead just playing JUDIES through it for 66 points of his own. David kept battling a little longer, but he eventually resigned. Will 453, David 394; Will leads, 2-1.
Game 4 was back and forth, with both players coming up with some flashy bingos, including David's SAGUINS for 86 and Will's BASILECT, also for 86. The result was a very tight endgame, and Will had just a little more scoring punch on his final rack (EEJMNSV) than David (AAIIKRU). Eventually, he squeaked it out. Will 473, David 466; Will leads, 3-1.
Will won fairly easily in the fifth one. David had a fighting chance for a while, but after Will hit back-to-back bingos late in the game (PATCHILY for 92, SUETTIER for 68), his lead was pretty much insurmountable, so David threw in the towel. Will 422, David 358; Will leads, 4-1.
Suddenly David was in serious trouble, already down 4-1; he needed to start the comeback immediately. Fortunately he did. It was a weird game, as Will definitely had his chances, but he allowed David to get away with another phony bingo - UNWRAPT*. He followed that up with ZINGER for 52 into the R, and that left Will desperately trying to open lanes for himself at the end. His try of JOY, one short of a triple lane, was met with URVAS and JOYS for a big score from David, and that was that. David 462, Will 433; Will leads, 4-2.
It looked like David might continue storming back in Game 7 - his midgame bingo of ANTILOGY for 72 gave him a solid lead, and things were looking up. But Will immediately played AIRDROPS for 74 from that newly open A, and David's post-bingo draw was awful - EEEIIVV. Will just kept scoring, and he really started to pull away after he found a sick bingo of POSTCAVA from a rack of AACOPST. Will 412, David 334; Will leads, 5-2.
Game 8 was close the whole way... until the end. Late in the game, Will had a terrible rack of ADGHNOQ; he dinked away the Q and the D with Q(A)D(I) for 17, keeping AGHNO. He drew IX. He then played HOAXING for 97. David then resigned. Will 453, David 330; Will leads, 6-2.
Once again, David was in serious trouble and needed to fight back - and once again, he did. This time, in rather ridiculous fashion! Midway through the game, the two players unleashed an insane sequence of big plays - David hit (OXY)TONES to a triple for 54, then Will got FOUNTAIN for 70 through the O in OXYTONES. Then David hit ZINGER for 70 through the N in FOUNTAIN. Then Will overlapped ZINGER with WEAKONS for 120. Once the dust settled, we had a close game, and Will took a chance with a board-opening play of ANYONE for 29, dangling an A in the triple lane. David used that A to play BUTtHE(A)D for 203. A few more plays went down after that, but it was only a matter of time before Will resigned. David 557, Will 378; Will leads, 6-3.
It wasn't long before the Twitch chat was abuzz with talk about BUTTHEAD being the turning point in the match. David won again after the BUTTHEAD game - Will made Game 10 competitive, but David eventually ran away with it, powered by big plays like WENCHED for 51 and FROSTEDS for 82 late in the game. David 431, Will 403; Will leads, 6-4.
David kept it going in Game 11. He made a good decision early on to burn a blank on a non-bingo - cAIQUE for 74. He was rewarded with a draw of ADEIOT?, giving him IODATEd for a 194-127 lead, and Will couldn't come back. It was a rare 0-bingo game for Will, and he never really had a chance. David 401, Will 273; Will leads, 6-5.
It looked like Will would snap his losing streak in the 12th game. Early on David had three I's, and he was basically forced to play IRIDISE one tile short of a TWS square; Will immediately punished him with LARNEYS and IRIDISES for 104 and a big lead, 169-61. But David kept fighting, and he eventually landed a 1-2-3 punch of big plays - TALEGGIO for 74, PITUITES for 90, and REAVOW as a non-bingo for 57. Will tried to come back, but his desperation move putting an E in the triple line was met by F(E)RNS for 36. David 530, Will 434; series tied, 6-6.
We had ourselves a series! From here, it was a best-of-7 for the championship. Either player just needed to win 4 games. And as it turned out, Will was able to do so rather quickly. He righted the ship in Game 13, drawing a clutch blank late in the game and getting down INCREASE into an open E for 74 points and the win. Suddenly, he was just 3 wins from the title. Will 442, David 331; Will leads, 7-6.
The following game was not close. David pushed his luck with an ugly phony, SIERRANS*, on his first move; it did not stay. This enabled Will to take a 109-18 lead early, and he never really looked back. Will found a bunch of really nice scoring plays in the middlegame (EQUITY for 57, PENMAN for 32, XU for 36), and he stayed comfortably ahead the rest of the way. Will 383, David 250; Will leads, 8-6.
Just two games away from elimination, David really needed a win, but it wasn't happening. Will got down three relatively easy bingos in Game 15 (DENTINS, PRINTED, LORIMERS); David, much to his dismay, never really drew a balanced rack. Suddenly, he was one loss away from being knocked out. Will 377, David 280; Will leads, 9-6.
With David's back up against the wall, Game 16 was sure to be a fight. And it was a slow fight to start - neither player bingoed for the first three turns. David led just 94-60 with only 55 tiles left. But Will landed the first bonus with the awesome MONOFUEL for 80, and he followed that up by finding a cool six - FIDDLY for 42. The two players then traded 72-point bingos (EROSION for Will, COLBIES for David), but Will wasn't done. The final play of the World Blitz Scrabble Championship was REVENGE for 77, giving Will a lead of 422-348 that David could not overcome. For the final time, he resigned.
Will wins the match, 10-6.
This was a fantastic match. There were some misses and some phonies and some time-scrambled goof-ups, but that's going to happen to anyone in 16 games of blitz, and overall both players played amazing Scrabble considering the circumstances. It's not easy to take on a world-class opponent with only 3 minutes on your clock and the pressure of a large worldwide audience watching, but both players handled the situation with aplomb. Bottom line, Will is an extremely worthy champion, and David is a deserving runner-up as well. I'm thrilled for them both.
Overall, I'm thrilled about a lot of things from these past 13 weeks. We put together a really enjoyable event, and we did everything we could to bring people together, virtually anyway, during this time that we're all forced to live apart. We hosted 80 players from 15 different countries (and 11 different time zones!), and we gave the world more Scrabble video content than it's ever seen before.
I have so many people I want to thank - it's hard to even know where to begin. Jennifer and I did a lot of the work to make this tournament happen, but we absolutely could not have done it alone, and fortunately, we didn't have to. The entire CoCo board - Becky Dyer, Geoff Thevenot, Peter Armstrong, Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, Puneet Sharma, and Steve Pellinen - contributed a lot of ideas back in November and December when we first began shaping this tournament concept. Will, 13 weeks ago when he was just a wide-eyed blitz newbie and not yet a champion, did us a huge solid by helping us broadcast a selection show to introduce the field. Conrad did a ton of design work for us, including creating the tournament logo and giving input on Twitch screens as well. Becky did an incredible amount of work as a co-director, answering countless emails from players requesting scheduling changes as well as handling a zillion director calls in the Woogles chat.
The entire Woogles team, obviously, has done an amazing job creating and maintaining this word-gaming site that we've all become so desperately addicted to.
Every single player who helped broadcast this tournament on Twitch was awesome. We put out 151 total hours of content! This included 14 of the 80 players streaming their own games, as well as a handful of people - including myself, Will, Josh Sokol, Edward Okulicz, Ben Schoenbrun, and Mack Meller - who streamed other people besides themselves. (Mack isn't even a Collins player himself - yet, anyway. We'll see about that.)
I'm sure I'm forgetting some people. For that, I'm sincerely sorry. These last 13 weeks have been an absolute blur, and my brain is beyond mush. But suffice it to say, I'm filled with gratitude for everyone in the Scrabble community. This past year and change has been difficult, with in-person events cancelled and all of us isolated from one another, but together, we're doing what we can to get through it. I'm so thankful.
As for the CoCo, we will be back before too long with more announcements about future virtual events. It's still going to be a while before it's safe to resume in-person play, and in the meantime, we plan to do everything we can to keep the Scrabble community - both in North America and around the world - engaged with one another and competing over the board. We'll talk again soon, I promise.
In the meantime, head over to our results page and recap all the BlitzChamps action that was.