…with Gary Moss

Archive for July, 2009

I was always taught that to ‘push others around’ or to ‘be pushed around’ was wrong. That is 100% true when we’re talking about people.

But, when it comes to playing scrabble, in order to find the words that are hiding in plain sight on your rack, you’d do best if you kept up pushing the tiles around.

We all develop our own method of looking for and identifying words from the tiles on our racks. There is not one ‘right way’ of doing this. There are even some players who insist that they can do best by simply arranging the tiles alphabetically and then giving them a long hard stare. (That method is called alphagramming.) The system that works best for you, is always the ‘right’ system.

I’ve watched many a player move the tiles around on their racks frantically. I always wonder what they are thinking. Is there a method to the way that they shift the tiles back and forth?

When I move my tiles I begin by identifying prefixes and suffixes: ing; ed; re; un. I look for extensions: out; over; dom; non. My eyes flit back and forth from my rack to the board, looking for places to fit the words that I notice.

What baffles me are the players who spends too much time finding a word, only to learn that the word doesn’t play on the board. That’s insane.

In club and tournament scrabble, players are limited to 25 minutes for their portion of the game, before they are penalized points for overtime. Some players display no sense of time awareness. Yesterday, I watched my opponent squander 12 minutes looking for a bingo, and then she never found it. Even if she had found a bingo and scored 80+ points, she would have won the battle but lost the war.

When teaching others how to become more effective scrabble players, I encourage ‘fast thinking.’ You know best how you go through your life. You know best about what your relationship is with ‘time’. To be an effective scrabble player you have to quicken your pace.

You don’t have to play faster; you do have to get more thinking done in every minute.

Here’s an exercise to build your speed.
Take the word ‘accomplishment’ (or any word of your choice). Set a timer for 10 minutes. Get a pen and paper. Start the timer. Now write as long a list as you can, of all the words (2 letters long or longer) made from only the letters in the word ‘accomplishment’. When 10 minutes have passed, STOP! How many words did you find and write down?

How many possible words do you think there were?

Would you believe three thousand thirty-three?

What was the longest word that you found? Did you see chemicals or technical?

The skills that I build and encourage in wannabe scrabble champions are wrapped around seeing words and the scrabble board differently, thinking faster, and developing new perspectives beginning with: Pushing Around.

My daughter Stacy was a 1st Grade student, in public school, in 1978 when we first noticed that she was having great difficulty reading. In 1978 I was the Headmaster and owner of Bloomfield Nursery School and Kindergarten, in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Being a knowledgeable educator and a concerned parent, my wife and I were first to sign up for parent teacher conferences that fall. The teacher’s assessment was bleak. She painted a picture of a child with a very low IQ and little hope. It didn’t add up in our minds, to the Stacy that we knew; but, we were the parents and very bias. Stacy remained in public school for the entire year and we witnessed no change.

The Montessori Schools were growing dynamically on the educational scene at that time. Associates urged us to enroll Stacy at the local Montessori. We knew the owners; they had a sterling reputation. So Stacy was enrolled and attended Montessori in the fall of 1979. When Stacy displayed the same learning problems at Montessori, their answer was repetition. Do the assignment again and again and again until you mastered it. While that approach may work well for 70% of the population, Stacy was a 30-percentor. No cigar!

It was a cold, snowy, February Sunday morning in Michigan. My favorite program of the week was called SUNDAY MORNING, hosted by Charles Kuralt. This TV magazine style show highlighted a variety of unique projects, programs, and individuals from coast to coast. On that morning, Kuralt was featuring The Gow School in Rochester, New York and the breakthroughs they were making with children who had ‘dyslexia‘. Within a few minutes of watching the program it was clear to me that Stacy most likely had the same condition. Research tells us that more than 80% of people with dyslexia are males. Learning about dyslexia and its causes and cure was still in it’s infancy.

Stacy was lucky to have two educators for parents, who didn’t buy the simpler explanation of a frustrated classroom teacher (and who happened to own a school.)

That same February morning, when Charles Kuralt signed off, I was on the telephone calling the Gow School. The next morning, Monday, at 9 AM I was in Rochester, NY, on the campus of the Gow School, observing the children, the teachers, and learning about the technologies used to teach dyslexics how to achieve in a school environment.

The following morning, Tuesday, I was at the office of The Bloomfield Eccentric newspaper, placing an open letter to its readership. My ad read: “If school is failing your child, come to my meeting to learn about an alternative.” I knew in my heart that others besides dyslexics were being tossed aside.

Thirty families showed up at my meeting in March; twenty-seven families left deposit money. I promised them that my school, The Moss School, grades K – 8, would open the following September. And it did.

Stacy and most of the students went on to successful school careers and graduated college. Stacy still lives with dyslexia. She became an Art teacher and now is a successful, recognized artist and mother. See her work, CLICK HERE.

Scrabble players excel when they look at the board differently too. That is one of the many skills that you will learn if you enroll into Scrabble 101.

Everyone seems to be searching for happiness.

Here is a list of some of the places that people tell me they have looked, in order to find happiness:

Other people, a soulmate
Work, feeling proud and fulfilled
Family, a warm snug connectedness
Home, the perfect location
Recreation, exhilaration and freedom
Charity, making a difference
Religion, a higher purpose

Some say they found it once, but lost it; some say it comes and goes in mysterious ways; some say that life sings when they have it; some say that life is drudgery without it.

Some remember it as ‘the good old days’; for others it occurred all at once on a single day (when their first child was born); one man described happiness as his first visit to a circus at the age of 5; a woman became emotional recounting her first view of The Grand Canyon and her hike to its bottom.

Some defined happiness as a taste: chocolate chip cookies; grandma’s chicken soup; the first lick of an ice cream cone on a hot summer day; hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire; two straws, one soda, and a special friend.

One thing I’ve learned is that happiness is available in unlimited quantities for each of us. Its seed lives within us all. It expresses itself when we invite it to be a part of our most common of days. It hides away when we suppress it.

For me, happiness appears every time I bring out a scrabble board and have a scrabble friend or an interested student to play with. It’s that easy.

Where do you find happiness?

At first, you might think that you are going insane, but you will know that you are on the right path to becoming a scrabble aficionado when you find yourself dreaming about words.

I recall the first time that it happened to me. I had been playing club scrabble, very seriously, for about 6 months. I had been frantically studying, several hours each week, trying to become good enough to beat some of the heavy hitters at the Livonia, Michigan club. My biggest stumbling block was not knowing any of the strange words that THEY played. Once, at club, I had the tiles: ‘A’ ‘E’ ‘I’ ‘L’ ‘N’ ‘O’ ‘S’ When I rearranged them and played ’sealion’, I was quickly challenged off the board. (I could swear that ’sealion was a real word. I remembered seeing the ’sealion’ exhibit the last time I had visited Sea World.) At the end of the game THEY told me that the legal word on that rack was ‘nerolis’. Who knew?

So on this night I was in the most comfortable state of sleep. The dream was about me involved in a scrabble game. My opponent had just played a word ‘aboiteau’, and I thought that he were just funning with me. I yelled, “CHALLENGE!” My yell was so loud that it woke me from my sound sleep. I woke up, very disoriented. Unlike other times, the dream was vivid in my mind. I turned on the lamp on my bedside table, got my bearings, and headed straight for my scrabble dictionary. Whereas most of my dreams fade away as my head gets farther from my pillow, this time it was firmly planted in my memory. I located the OWL and frantically thumbed through the dictionary until I found the entry: ‘aboiteau’. Then I remembered that one of the club gurus, Rodney, had played that word against me at club last week; I didn’t challenge it, assuming that it was acceptable, but I had never done my homework and looked it up after the game, to validate its correctness. Now I knew.

I wrote down the word, certain that I wouldn’t remember a thing about this event or the dream when I awoke, later in the morning.

But I did remember, a few hours later. When I shared my tale with other players in the days and weeks to come, I learned that I was not the only person who dreams about words. Actually, it is fairly common among scrabble players.

Since that time I have always kept a pad of paper, pen, and a scrabble dictionary on my bedside table, right next to the lamp.

You really want to know the ‘mysterious answers’ that elude most players who want to play like David Gibson, Brian Cappelletto, and Dave Wiegand?

Actually, the formula to be right up there with them is rather easy.

W = At+S+Ap+S+R+S+D+S+Ap+R x 365.25

( Attitude, Study, Application, Study, Review, Study, Devotion, Study, Aptitude, Review )

A good beginning is SCRABBLE 101 or its equivalent.

These three champions and about 500 wannabes will be competing at the 2009 National Scrabble Tournament being held in Dayton, Ohio beginning Saturday, August 1.

If you begin studying today you could be ready to play in one of the minor divisions, just in time for the 2010 National Scrabble Tournament, next summer.

Begin by playing at a local tournament and earn a rating number, based on your results. If in southern California check out my tournament schedule. First time tournament players (fresh meat) are always welcome.

When we talk about CONTROL and SCRABBLE in the same sentence it doesn’t completely make sense. That’s because the is a luck factor of as much as 30%, due mostly to the random tiles that each player draws from the tile bag. Luck again, related to drawing of tiles, decides who goes first, and that too has a point advantage.

But there are many parts of the game where each player has the same opportunity as their opponents. It is in these areas where we each have the same opportunity to take control, by the actions we employ, way before the first tile is seen.

Yesterday I attended a lovely Scrabble Event at the new home of player from a local club. The guests were mostly club players and ranged widely in their scrabble playing experience. Even as we walked into the home, those of us carrying our custom scrabble gear, intimidated some of the newbies. I heard the voice of someone utter, “What have I gotten myself into?”

When I first began to play on the competitive scene, I looked forward to playing the experts. What better way to play and learn at the same time? Most of the time I would lose, but I always felt like a winner because of the things I had learned.

When we decide that we are going to become a regular member of the scrabble community, we have full control about how we go about learning the game and expanding our word knowledge.

We have the power to chose to go about the learning process in a thoughtful, programmed process -or- to learn by the seat of our pants.

The ’seat-of-the-pants’ learners expose themselves (very punny) in most every game they play. They may know some great words, but the way that they place them on the board provides huge advantages to their opponents, for comeback plays.

The ’seat-of-the-pants’ learners think that the whole game is about the words alone, and don’t pay close attention to ‘hot spots’; they rarely ‘track’, and when they do they don’t really know how to use the information effectively.

The ’seat-of-the-pants’ learners don’t understand when to exchange tiles to improve their racks and often spend too many turns playing off the wrong tiles, usually be left with just another ugly, unplayable mess.

The ’seat-of-the-pants’ learners watch their knowledgeable opponents score high points and play bingos, then whine and think that ‘THEY’ have all the luck.

The More You Know, They Luckier You Become.

The ’seat-of-the-pants’ learners will never admit that they have never taken the initiative to do the things required to gain control.

Having greater control does not mean that you are assured to win every game or even most games. It does mean that you are in a better position to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

If you want some help from me, creating your personal plan to take control, call. Operators are waiting: 949.510.1673

You create your thoughts.
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Your thoughts create your intentions.
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Your intentions create your reality.
Simple, isn’t it ?

It was the winter of 1987. I was a single. It must have been fate that the person who places ads in the Southfield Eccentric Newspaper goofed and put a listing for a SCRABBLE EVENT in The Singles Column. It was my intention to meet someone who would have a meaningful impact on the rest of my life.

Surprise on me ! The impact on my life did not come from somebody I encountered; it came from something I encountered: Competitive Scrabble. And I’ve been hooked ever since.

Once I saw all of those custom scrabble boards with all those unfamiliar words, once I saw all those people competing and scoring more points in a single turn than I normally scored in several turns, I had new thoughts about learning how to play like they played.

Which gave birth to a new set of intentions . . . .

Which begat my new reality . . . .

And ever since that time, all I’ve thought about are hot spots and bingos, anagramming words and category sets, high probability stems and tracking, and strategies and the official rules of the game.

It is no fluke that I have become proficient at playing scrabble, teaching scrabble, and developing scrabble learning tools.

When anyone spends the major part of each day, in each week, in each year for 20+ years they become pretty good at their trade whether they are a mechanic, a chef, or a scrabble aficionado.

If you are thinking about making your presents felt on the scrabble scene, think of me, and my online class: Scrabble 101.

I can’t tell you why, but when I’m searching for words to play during a typical scrabble game, it is not uncommon for me to find a compound word. Last night at Club #350 I played ‘beachboy’. I got a snicker from my opponent who then challenged the play. The word was adjudicated as acceptable. Another of my proud moments was when I played ‘menswear’ for a triple/triple, through the ’s’ and earned 213 points on the play.

Compound words are played frequently; words that begin with ‘over’ or ‘out’ are especially common.

Like everything else, finding compound words has everything to do with how you look at things. But you have to be careful because some words that seem to make sense are not in the OWL2.

Take the word ‘news’; when I see it I go beyond and think ‘newsboy’, ‘newspaper’, newsroom’, ‘newsclip’. 3 of those 4 words are acceptable, the other is not in the OWL2, the last one.

To my thinking it’s good. But there is never an argument with the word judge. The Official Word List always has the last word.

Consider the word ‘pig’. Which of these are acceptable compound words? ‘pigskin’ ‘pigstick’ ‘pigtail’ ‘pigweed’ ‘pignut’

They are all in the OWL2.

I was coaching a novice player yesterday and was reading her thoughts as she stared at each rack, searching for a word to play. (It is a bit intimidating when your teacher is sitting on your shoulder.) But like most new players, she usually settled for some small common word.

You may argue that it is a good beginning. But I suggest that it is developing a bad habit that will have her stuck at a low level of play for a long time. You may end up playing a small word, but to play well you have to begin by looking for the better play.

Compound words are just one way to have longer words that score more points. To see them, you have to be looking for them.

This is just one of many things that my students learn when they enroll in my online scrabble class, SCRABBLE 101. People who take this class always move up in the ranks. Are you ready to take the challenge? August enrollment is open. CLICK HERE.

Have you said the words, “I can’t” recently? If you have been self-sabotaging, you have been participating in a self destructive conspiracy against yourself. If you don’t know this already, you deserve to know this: people who argue for their own limitations receive limitations.

The process of self-imposed limitations normally occurs at the end of childhood. If your behavior reflects this at times, The GOOD NEWS is that you are normal; he BAD NEWS is that normal sucks in this regard.

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Lucky for mankind that some people are able to continue being childlike well beyond ages 8, 18, and 88. Their curiosity, optimism, and fearlessness allows them to do things and go places where others fear to tread. For them, it is not even seen as pushing the envelope; they are not confined to any envelope. They really believed their loving parents who taught them ‘You Can Be Anything You Want To Be‘. They are still living that philosophy.

The scary perceptions in life grab us, shake us, scare us, raise doubt in us, test our resolve, make us want to climb under the covers to hide and sleep. That’s what life does, sometimes.

And while some hide, because of some imagined perception, others are singing and dancing in the streets, going to the beach, and sipping life’s delights.

There are no ‘real’ limitations. You can be anything that you want to be.

Live, Love, Laugh, BINGO.

And that’s where it all begins.

Why do some dreams actualize while so many others fall by the wayside?

Intention and Distraction contribute greatly to the process. And it is all your choice.

We each have much more ability and capacity than we could ever imagine. Most of us think of ourselves as mortals and want to be one of the guys. The few who have truly followed their dreams and have become unique and special have often paid dearly due to the celebrity and obsession that comes accompanies achievement.

Distractions, like the obligations of day to day living, keeps most in check, from following their dreams. Earning a living, ones’ role in a family, government policies, meeting the expectations of others, falling in love, accidents, and poor health are a few of the distractions that can be what stops us. And still, across this great land of ours, late at night, there are inventors tinkering on projects in their garages and basements; there are thinkers pounding on keyboards and searching the internet, all pursuing their dreams, on a part time basis.

Forty years ago we sent three men to the Moon. How did we do that? It happened, due to our intention and determination. We are all gods. We can do most anything.

We can eradicate disease; we can spit the atom; we can survive at the South Pole and we can colonize Mars. Mankind can convert the wind and the seas into pure energy; we can convert sewage into drinking water. What else can you dream that we can do?

It seems so trivial now to suggest that people could become experts at playing the game of scrabble. And it all begins with intention. The same components that took man to the moon are required to play a triple/triple on a scrabble board.

Hold fast to your dreams. When you dream it, when you believe it, when you pursue it, you will have the power to achieve IT.