Recapping Saturday's Seattle 1-day tournament

It's always a pleasure for Jennifer and me to host Scrabblers at our home in Northeast Seattle. Whether they come from just across town or from the opposite side of the country, we welcome them all with open arms just the same - the more, the merrier. And it's especially nice to have people over during these early autumn weeks. It gets a little crisp outside in late September, but it's still nice enough that players can enjoy a meal or a Scrabble game outside on the back porch.

So this weekend was the perfect time to host a 1-day. Ten players, from as far away as Maryland and as close by as West Seattle, converged upon our home to duke it out over our dining room table for six games. Many games were played, much bread was broken (literally even), and a great deal of fun was had.

Ultimately, we came away with a winner, and it was Alec Sjöholm, who just couldn't be stopped. I myself did my best to stop him, but it wasn't meant to be - Alec was an undefeated 5-0 heading into the final round, and I was second at 4-1 with a good spread, but Alec completed the undefeated tournament in dominant fashion, putting up a 521-367 victory without breaking a sweat. The outcome was basically never in doubt after Alec landed QUAVERED for 113 on move 5. Chris Grubb bested Bharath Balakrishnan in the battle for second place, so the final standings were Alec first, Chris second, me third, and Bharath winning the class prize.

With all that said, there were many other winners from Saturday worth mentioning. For starters, we had two winners for our theme word prize - we offered up $20 for the best fall-themed word, and the competition was fierce to win the cash. Well, sort of fierce anyway. Jennifer entered FAW as her submission, explaining that it means "to fall" - the only problem was, this wasn't true. A FAW is actually a gypsy. Bharath submitted AERATION, with the explanatory note next to it of "for lawns, etc" - this sadly didn't gain much traction. Eventually the voting audience settled on two submissions they liked - Eric Fox's play of CALENDAR, and Chris's FROST. Two more winners! Eric and Chris split the $20.

Another winner was Peter Armstrong, who took home a whopping $1 for being the most mediocre performer in the field (3-3, -23). Don't spend it all in one place, Pete.

Perhaps the biggest winner on the weekend, honestly, was Bharath, but it was for reasons that had nothing to do with his actual Scrabble play. Bharath saved us from a bizarre crisis in round 3. Here's what happened: Midway through their game, Jennifer and Eric had about 50 tiles on the board, and it was Jennifer to move. She pondered her options for a bit, then casually picked up the bag to feel how full it still was. To her horror, she discovered it was almost empty! There were in fact just 3 tiles in the bag. They must have been missing dozens of tiles! They had no idea where they were. A group of us searched the house - every floor, every closet, everywhere. The rest of the set was nowhere to be found.

But here's where Bharath saved the day: He offered to reconstruct the tile set, tracking what letters had already been played and counting off which tiles were needed to complete the set of 100. He then found another tile set, picked out exactly the required letters (about 30 in all, he said), and combined them with the existing bag so the set would be complete. Jennifer and Eric then completed the game with a tile set that was half red letters on white backgrounds, half gray on black. What a ridiculous final board! You don't see that every day, do you?

In the end, though, all of us were winners. We all got to enjoy a nice autumn Saturday together, we all shared some meals and enjoyed each other's company, and we all got to play a full six games of Scrabble, with no byes. Special thanks to Gunther Jacobi, whose last-minute entry saved us from being odd!

(We also all got to bond together over making fun of Whole Foods' terrible corn tortillas. Why did they all completely fall apart after simply warming up in the oven for a few minutes? They ended up with more holes in them than Swiss cheese. Tortillas aren't supposed to do that. Fix this immediately, Bezos.)

Anyway, this was a fun tournament. There were many winners all around. We already can't wait to host a rowdy cohort of Scrabblers again next time - we anticipate plenty more winning then, too. Until then...