This weekend brought the eighth Portland Pub Scrabble tournament of the calendar year 2024, and compared to the others, this was the most... what's the best euphemism to use here? Cozy? Intimate? Let's go with intimate. It was the most intimate pub Scrabble gathering of the year to date, but nevertheless, spirited competition was in the air, and good times were had by all.

Four players met up for a Sunday afternoon of Scrabble at Level Beer, in the Buckman/Kerns neighborhood of Portland - Dave Wiegand, Gunther Jacobi, Travis Chaney, and Ruth Hamilton. With four players and six rounds, it made for simple pairings, as everyone just played a straightforward double round robin. Dave, the top seed, was matched up with Ruth twice, Travis twice, and Gunther twice, in that order.

Dr. Bing did his usual thing through the first four rounds, racking up big wins and rising to the top of the standings. Meanwhile Gunther won three of his first four, splitting 1-1 with Travis and taking both against Ruth. That set up a scenario where Gunther was a game back from Dave going into the final two rounds, plus a lot of spread, so it looked like he'd need to beat him twice in a row to win the tournament.

And then he did! Gunther prevailed rather convincingly in the final two rounds, winning 460-408 in the penultimate game and 575-401 in the final, rallying to clinch his first Portland Pub Scrabble title.

Congrats to Gunther!

Dave took second in the tournament, at 4-2, with Travis third at 3-3.

And with that, we've now completed 8 of the 11 Portland Pub Scrabble events this year. Dave came up short this time, but he's still the overall leader for the year, with three PPS tournament wins under his belt. Only Kolton Koehler has two titles, and three other players - Gunther, Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, and Alec Sjöholm - have one each.

The dates for the last three events are already scheduled - Oct. 5, Nov. 2, and Dec. 7. Pub info is still to come.

We hope to see you at the next Portland Pub Scrabble event! Or, perhaps, at PDXwords, which is also in Portland and coming up even sooner - in just a few days, in fact. Or, failing that, we'll see you wherever else we see you in the tournament circuit in the months ahead. You've got no shortage of options.

Until then...