After we finished running the World Blitz Scrabble Championship two months ago, we had a few internal discussions among our board members about what direction to take our tournament strategy next. It was a tricky topic, as we're at a bit of a crossroads currently - we're all enjoying virtual Scrabble play, and we're fresh off of one of the biggest online tournaments the Scrabble world has ever seen, but we're also keeping one eye on a potential return to in-person play. Especially here in North America, where vaccination is going well and we just might be turning a corner pandemic-wise, that's a very real thing.

Ultimately, what we decided on for this spring was a pair of small 1-day tournaments - enough to tide us over for a little while, but nothing so big as to commit us all the way to virtual Scrabble or to in-person tournaments. And there was one board member in particular, namely Peter Armstrong, who was really pulling for one event to be a Clabbers tournament. Pete's always been a Clabbers fan, and I enjoy the game quite a bit myself too, so eventually the two of us agreed to co-direct a Clabbers 1-day. That's what went down this past Saturday.

We had a small but enthusiastic group turn out for the Premium Swerve, our first Clabbers event - 10 players took part in 7 games each, and much fun was had by all. And ultimately, it was your two co-directors who took the top spots. I finished first place overall, and Pete took second, not far behind.

Here's a recap of what went down:

• We kicked off the live stream of the event on the CoCo Twitch channel at 2 p.m. Pacific on Saturday. I went through a brief overview of the tournament, along with a quick primer on how to play Clabbers. (In case you aren't familiar: It's a variant of Scrabble in which all letter strings that have valid anagrams are considered words. For example, DOG and ETAERIO and FLIBBERTIGIBBET are all in the dictionary, so they're all acceptable plays; GDO and RAIOETE and EIGTBFLTIBIERBB are their anagrams, so they're good too. Clabbers allows for a lot more hooks, a lot more overlaps, and just a lot more possible plays than regular Scrabble. Games tend to be very aggressive and high-scoring, with expert players regularly topping 600.)

• After some brief intros, Pete posted the pairings for the first 3 rounds of play, and we were off. Pete and Andy Kurnia of Singapore were the two dominant players during the opening session, each going 3-0. Pete posted monster scores of 689, 704, and 643, and he had some really flashy plays, including extending RECAV (CRAVE) to ESNGRECAV (SCAVENGER) to hit a triple word for 65. Andy also played some cool stuff, including a three-turn sequence in which he extended GORNITE to GORNITEX to GORNITEXT (GENITOR, OXTERING, EXTORTING). At the dinner break, Pete and Andy were 3-0, while a handful of others including myself were 2-1.

• I caught a lucky break with the pairings after the break - we paired players in quads based on their standing, and I was in fifth place. That means the top 4 players all had to beat up on each other, while I got paired down against the players in sixth, seventh and eighth. I ended up going on a run and winning three straight, while the others had a competitive battle at the top. Pete lost twice, once to David Eldar and once to Andy; Andy also dropped one to David. David, meanwhile, won three straight, but he was still a ways back from the top two because of a lower spread. After round 6, it was me and Andy at the top of the standings, playing each other in the King of the Hill round, with David and Pete likely playing for second.

• I had a barnburner with Andy in the final round. We traded big plays back and forth at the start; I began to pull ahead when a play of SHIK, turning IVTEAT and PDEOAM into IVTEATS and PDEOAMH, netted me 62 and the lead, 184-152. (That would be KHIS, VITTAE, APEDOM, STATIVE, and MOPHEAD.) I kept pulling ahead, and it looked like I'd win comfortably for a minute, but then Andy dropped the bomb in the pre-endgame - ITROJASN (JANITORS) for 126. This put him within striking distance, down just 457-398, and then he drew the last seven tiles out of the bag - EILNRX?. He had RELAXIN for 109! I freaked out for a moment, then collected myself, found a high-scoring endgame play of my own, and scored just enough to outrun the bingo. The final score was 534-511 when the dust settled. I took first place; Pete moved to second with a win over David, meaning Andy would be third and David, fourth.

• There were all sorts of great plays throughout the day, and not just from the players at the top of the standings. In just my brief perusal of everyone else's games, here's a small sampling of the fun stuff I came across. See if you can anagram these: David bingoed out to win a game with (D)A(N)RICONE, a nine through the disconnected D and N. Chris Grubb also dropped a cool disconnected nine of A(E)SPX(N)ONI. Josh Sokol extended RAP to make the 10-letter LOI(RAP)SITE. Ryan Fischer played GNYCAO(E)N. Zach Dang turned UITA into (UITA)ABDEL. Everywhere you looked, there were awesome words being played for big scores.

• Another highlight of this tournament: Getting to broadcast Clabbers play on Twitch for the first time. In addition to the stream that I did for the CoCo channel, Josh and David were also streaming the tournament simultaneously on their own Twitch accounts, which meant that about half of all tournament games were being broadcast live. This is a cool thing! Streaming is the future of Scrabble content (or really, any gaming content for that matter), so it's always great to have as many of our games streamed as possible.

All in all, this was a great tournament, and I think I can speak for Pete and myself both when I say we're thrilled with how the event turned out. (And not just because we won. Although, let's be honest, that's part of it.) Thanks to everyone who turned out and played on Saturday, and cheers to everyone who watched and chatted on Twitch as well - it was fun getting to interact with all of you. Kudos also to the Woogles team for creating an easy and convenient way to play Clabbers online.

This is a weird time for the CoCo, and for tournament Scrabble overall. Everyone's itching to return to live tournaments once it's safe to do so, and we get that. We'll have some announcements for you soon on what that return will look like. But in the meantime, it's still really enjoyable to get together with all of you and play online. It's been a fun 2021 so far - including this tournament, the Summer Preview a few weeks ago, and BlitzChamps before that. We look forward to seeing you all in person again soon, but until that day comes, feel free to look back on the results of 2021's tournaments so far.

(Oh, and by the way: The answers to your quiz questions above are ORDINANCE, EXPANSION, POLARITIES, CYANOGEN, and AUDITABLE.)