…with Gary Moss

There is a biblical story about a time when all mankind communicated with the same language. There was an enormous harmony, a time when all individuals understood one another. In the bible’s story things changed when ‘Man’ undertook a project to build an enormous tower, as high as the heavens, in tribute to Man, overlooking God. As a result, God used powers to change the languages of Man, creating confusion among the builders, to interfere with the construction of the tower, and then disbursed groups of peoples to far away, remote regions of Earth. ( I never could imagine why anyone would voluntarily choose to live above the Arctic Circle.)

It is my theory that Alfred Mosher Butt, the invention of Scrabble, and then the NSA were all instruments in Man’s attempt, be it thousands of years later, to resurrect a uniformity and conformity, to imitate how it must have been before the Tower Of Babel. It was the NSA that called for a single dictionary as the ‘Official Word List’ to be used among players. Then players like Michael Baron produced books and systems which encouraged word mavens to get on the same page. The word committee saw fit to include foreign words (taco) and ancient words (crwth) on the ‘official word list’ to provide a splash of familiarity to those potential players, scattered around the planet. Like a magnet attracts iron shavings, scrabble attracted etymologists, idiot savants, and others seeking The Word. Scrabble has grown swiftly in popularity around the globe. Cells of players from Israel to Thailand not only play in English, with words from the OWL2, but excell and win regional and national championships.

And all the while God’s agents (angels) have been watching, concerned that Man’s self-righteous flaw might reproduce the same conditions that led to the construction of the original Tower. Hence, angels, disguised in the form of scrabble players, have taken actions to assure an imbalance within the world of scrabble. The NSA, for instance, succumbed to financial woes and divested itself of the adult scrabble players’ association. The newly emerging NASPA faces many challenges from within, as well as competing, scavenging wannabes in the form of competing associations. The chasm between the OWL2 and the COLLINS has players around the world speaking different languages, proselytizing each the other, with little hope of any uniformity any time soon.

And all the while, individuals players from Hong Kong to Fish Hoek, South Africa continue to scrabble til they babble.