The benefits of fusing Scrabble and fitness

Barely an hour before the 2023 Austin Tile X-Words tournament, a group of four current and former Scrabble champions raced across the campus of my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin.

Due to a series of unfortunate events that included incorrect Lyft directions and misplaced bibs, three of us runners were in danger of missing the race. As the 8:15 start time drew nearer, we scrambled our way down 21st Street, skirting around runners and onlookers while asking everyone where we could find the race staff. After countless "I don't know" or "that way" responses, a runner finally pointed towards Gregory Gym, where we saw a group of staff behind a row of tables. The four of us sprinted up the stairs and tried to catch our collective breath as I spelled out our predicament, the panic clear in my voice. No persuasion was necessary - a kind staff member was more than happy to assign new bib numbers, and she even obliged us by taking our photo mere minutes before we needed to walk to the starting line.

So how did four top Scrabblers - Dave Wiegand, Jesse Day, Evans Clinchy, and myself - come to find themselves running the Longhorn Run immediately before a Scrabble tournament?

Well, Jesse, ironically enough, had signed up for the race first, and only later did he realise that the tournament was scheduled for the same day. Jesse had already run a (virtual) 5K before the 2022 Hood River tournament, and the opportunity to run an actual race before a tournament was too good to pass up. Dave was a newbie to pre-tournament racing, but he had seemed intrigued with the idea when we chatted about it during the 2022 ATX tournament and Word Cup, and, like with Jesse, the amazing coincidence of race and tournament on the same campus, an hour apart, was compelling to him. After Dave signed up, just two weeks before the events, he messaged to ask if I was running. I am quite grateful for this because, surprisingly enough, given my passion for combining Scrabble with sport, I had not been aware of the race. Needless to say, I signed up immediately, and with this group of player-runners now at three, I set out to convince Chris Lipe to run, then Evans. Chris did not feel ready, but Evans finally gave in to peer pressure, and all of a sudden we had a heckuvah running/Scrabbling group.

Even with only four player-runners, I suspect that our group might be the largest number of players who have participated in an official sporting event immediately before a sanctioned Scrabble tournament, but the act of combining physical and mental sport is far from unprecedented. In the chess world, top players like Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen are known for taking the fitness aspect of chess quite seriously, and Carlsen has gone as far as to visit an Olympic training centre to seek out performance advice. Fabiano Caruana increases his stamina with running, swimming, and basketball. Danny Rensch swims, rows, and runs 5K distances. Regardless of their specific workouts and diets, studies indicate that grandmasters at the top levels burn an extraordinary number of calories during long matches, and top players recognise that diet and exercise are important factors in enduring the stress of competition at the highest levels.

The connection between physical fitness and cognitive performance is widely acknowledged, and there is no shortage of science on the topic. In fact, as described in a recent CoCo blog post, last year the athletic apparel company ASICS studied the connection between athletic performance and performance in mind sports, and they chose to incorporate four Scrabble players in their research. Informally, plenty of Scrabblers, including me, run or exercise before the day's games, or even in between rounds, and I have often wondered how this activity affects their performance. I have been a proponent of the mind-body connection for nearly two decades, and my interest extends beyond simply looking at improving cognitive function through exercise, but actually combining physical and mental sport - at the same time.

Sadly, the idea of fusing mental and physical skills into one activity has not yet suffused the public consciousness, but there is one well-known example - chessboxing. While the combination of chess and boxing might seem like a joke at first, the idea actually has roots in the 1970s, at a London boxing club, and the term "chessboxing" was coined in a kung fu film, "Mystery of Chessboxing," and later popularised by the Wu-Tang Clan with a track on their debut album, "Da Mystery of Chessboxing." Around that same time, a performance artist put on the first chessboxing event, and in 2003, the first chessboxing competition took place in Berlin. Today, chessboxing is active in several countries, with multiple organisations supporting the sport, and a world championship.

In the Scrabble world, our game has long been combined with athleticism in an informal manner. Scrabblers occasionally use tournaments as opportunities for pickup games of basketball or Ultimate. Informal runs before the start of gameplay are not uncommon, and some of the more adventurous (or foolhardy) players have engaged in the after-hours madness known as a beer 5K. A more direct combination of Scrabble and sport, Sprint Scrabble, was conceived a little over a decade ago (by yours truly), a variation of the game that requires players to run a lap (ideally 400 metres) before making their Scrabble play. About a dozen Scrabblers have participated in Sprint Scrabble games in the past decade, but no formal competition has ever been organised. 

Fusing the mental and physical game in a more formal manner, with official results and rankings, is a natural evolution of the concept, and, to my knowledge, the first step in that direction occurred in 2010, when Ohio player Dan Stock encouraged me to join him in running a half-marathon in Cleveland prior to a tournament in nearby Hudson. Unfortunately, the half-marathon was full, and my only other option was the full marathon, which meant that Dan and I could not directly compare our combined race + Scrabble performance. Although I would not run another race for nine years, I never stopped thinking about combining sport and Scrabble in a formal way.

Another opportunity to engage in an official Scrabble/running combination came in 2013, when a group of five players participated in a tournament in Whitesboro, N.Y., on a Saturday, then competed in the Boilermaker Road Race in Utica the day after. No attempt was made to come up with combined results, though, and once again players ran different distances - some entered the 5K, while others did the 15K. Across the pond in the United Kingdom, there is a series of weekly 5K races known as parkrun, and a number of Scrabblers have participated before a tournament, but it does not appear that running and Scrabble results have been combined at any of these events. Prior to this year's Austin tournament, both Jesse and I had run 5Ks before tournaments, and now that four players have all run a pre-tournament race together, I think that it is a real possibility that in the future, likely the 2024 ATX, we can employ a formula that would generate an overall Scrabble/5K result (with a side bet, naturally).

So, after surviving the bib mishap and finishing the Longhorn Run with decent times, how did our quarter of runners perform in Scrabble?

Well, Dave and Jesse reported no change in how they felt going into the first four games, while Evans and I both felt an added rush of adrenaline. One concern about directly combining sport and thinking is that brain functions are linked to glucose levels, but none of the runners reported any perceived decline in Scrabble performance that morning. No doubt the fact that postrace snacks were available made a difference, and in fact, both Jesse and Dave won their first four games, and of course Dave went on to win the whole shebang, while Jesse placed third and Evans fourth.

Our consensus was that running the pre-tournament race was fun, and we would all do it again. In fact, Jesse suggested we make it a tradition - an idea that I'm rooting for - and I hope that ATX director James Curley can make the scheduling work in future years. With advance planning and promotion, I see a real possibility of well over half a dozen players doing the Longhorn Run before the next ATX. I am already looking forward to 2024!