When we first announced the CoCo's founding three months ago, we had no idea that we'd be here today. And by "here," I mean cooped up in our respective homes, isolated from one another, with no way of meeting over the board. But what is life if not unpredictable?

We may have never seen this coming, but in a way, it's been fun adjusting on the fly and drawing up a plan B. This weekend, you saw that plan B in action. On Saturday we ran our first ever Computer Users' Remote Event (CURE), and we're happy to report it was quite successful. We virtually hosted 24 players for a day of great competition and camaraderie, and in the end we crowned our first online Scrabble tournament champion - the indomitable (except when he's playing phony twos) Joshua V. Castellano.

Running this event was a lot of fun. Jennifer was excited to build and pilot a digital results submission platform that automates the data entry and enables immediate live results. We promoted the event on our social media channels and interacted with observers; we ran a virtual players' lounge where players could hang out and video chat between games, and we streamed some of the games live on Twitch. It was a blast getting to jump around from game to game, commentating on whatever matchups looked interesting at any given moment. Some of the day's highlights included:

• Getting to see the good, the bad and the ugly parts of Josh's performance. His marquee moments included both a sick nine in his win over Sam Rosin (PRECEDENT through ED, using a blank) and multiple hilarious phonies in a loss to Rasheed Balogun (VAUGH* and WA*). You love/hate to see it.

• Some cool word-finding moments from Geoff Thevenot, as one would expect - we watched him plunk down bingos like POSTGAME against Bill Rexhausen, DIGNITY against Barry French, and perhaps most ridiculously, a natural BAKEOFF right out of the bag to steal a win away from Matthew O'Connor. Unreal.

• A couple of intense nail-biters - we saw close endgames in which Bill beat Zachary Dang by just 2 points, and Barry beat Terry Kang Rau by 1.

• Jesse Day had the high game for the tournament - he landed MYLONITE for 102 on his first turn against Steve Perry, then ran up four more bingos on him to finish with a 650. (He probably had a lot of pent-up rage to unleash at the time, as he'd just suffered a 528-281 pummeling from his arch rival, Cesar Del Solar, in the previous round.)

There were many, many others that I'm sadly forgetting at the moment. You guys were really a joy to watch.

All in all, this was a really great way to spend a Saturday cooped up at home. Jennifer and I are both glad you all were so responsive to the idea of a virtual tournament - and on such short notice, too. We're glad the day went (mostly) smoothly, though we admit we're still learning how to run events like this, and there are surely still kinks to work out. We are most definitely open to feedback on how we can make these events better.

This was a really encouraging weekend, though. Our first online tourney was a blast, and we're looking forward to seeing more events like this. And by no means is this a market we're monopolizing - the ever-creative Ben Schoenbrun has already run one online tournament and has a second in the works, and Matthew O'Connor is rolling one out as well.

As for us, we'll probably announce another CURE sometime soon. Stay tuned on that. Until then, everyone stay safe out there! And by "out there," I mean inside, in your respective homes. Let's keep that curve flat and our Scrabble tournaments - for now, anyway - virtual.