…with Gary Moss

Archive for July, 2010

If you haven’t noticed, the game of scrabble is anything but a ‘straight road’. And maybe that’s why it has so much appeal to millions of people. It takes a combination of luck and skill to earn your way to the highest levels in among the ranks.

Some people (usually those who rarely draw the blanks and Ss) complain that the winners are just luckier at picking the tiles. But seasoned players know the TRUTH: The more you know, the luckier you become.

People (especially those who are new to competitive scrabble) ask me, “Where does an aspiring maven begin to learn the many facets of the game of scrabble?”

There is no quick and easy answer. Multi-taskers and quick-learners will find greater success than others. However, everyone can become a better player than they are today, if they will seriously make a commitment to follow guidelines that I have designed in SCRABBLE 101.
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Those of you who have only played scrabble at home, using only common words from everyday conversations, have been playing ‘straight road scrabble’.

When one attends a club or tournament they will see all of those ‘common’ words used, but in addition, they will encounter other letter combinations that will make one take pause to consider whether it is a ‘legal word’ or not.

Did you know that in addition to common American-English-Words, there are many words from other lands in the OWL2 (Official Word List – 2nd Edition)?

Which of these words are legal to play? _____eau _____shagger _____orangier _____spitoon _____slipout _____overrank _____usufruct _____crypting _____yokemate _____da

In order to win at scrabble in the competitive arena, one has get off the straight road, deke and weave. One has to throw out a believable phoney now and then to keep the opposition on their toes and second guessing. Going hand-in-hand with that phoney, one should also play some obscure words that you have researched and dug up in the dictionary. It could be something as simple as ‘dugs’ or as strange and ‘sferics’. When you can do that you will make your opponents whimper like a little baby; then you will be king.

None of my children are avid scrabble players. That’s okay. My dad played Pinochle and my mom still plays Maj Jong and I never became a devotee of either of those games.

Ever since I became a ‘scrabble freak,’ playing as often as I do and taking on the role of a scrabble club and tournament director, I always imagined that I would find a life partner who shared my passion for the game and we’d bingo off into the sunset. And even though the game brought me together with dear people, my illusion was just an illusion.

Each and every one of us is different and yet, each and every one of us is alike. We each have our preferences, we all have our strengths and frailties. Some of us like red, while others prefer blue; and even though I abhor canned tuna fish, it remains a leading staple food around the globe.

As parents, we sometimes have visions with very specific goals for our children. Some parents adopt severe regimens, holding their children’s feet to the fire, pushing their children to become a success in a given field. And often, in spite of a successful ‘end result,’ people like Andre Agassi share their unhappiness as a result of being pushed.

In my opinion, too many parents, take the other extreme. Those folks provide little to no direction, expecting schools and teachers and life experiences to lead their children to some positive result.

The best answer most likely lies somewhere in the middle, serving up choices to the kids and imploring the youngsters to choose.

You can lead a horse to water, but . . . . . . . . .

And all the while that we parents are attempting to transform our child into a plumber or teacher or doctor, they will be best served when we also make certain that they are steeped in ‘real life’ lessons about day to day living. They will most often subtly pick up on lessons about character and relationships by watching the examples that we set for them, by the way in which we live our lives and interact with people.

It might be nice to share a competitive game of scrabble with my son or my daughters, but that would steal time aways from the hugging and kibitzing and learning about their passions.

And just like a game of SCRABBLE, LIFE is a game too. Some days you get every vowel in the bag. You get the ‘Old McDonald Rack’ of e-i-e-i-o; you always have 5 or more vowels on every rack. On days like those you had better know the ‘HEAVY WITH VOWELS LIST‘ and the ’5-Vowel-8s’ (words like ‘aboideau’).

Then there are the days when you think that the isn’t a single vowel in the bag. You experience racks like v-w-c-d-f-h-r. It makes one feel like screaming, “Why me?” On those days you have to know words like ‘tsktsks’ and ‘crwth’.

No, it is not something that happens just to you. All of us who have played long enough, know that we all experience both of those kinds of days.

The GOOD NEWS is that we also have many other days when every racks seems to fall into align a bingo, in the order that we draw the tiles out of the bag. There are days when we get racks like A-E-I-N-S-T-(?), containing 69 potential 7-Letter-Words and 247 8-Letter-Words through various open tiles through lanes that may exist on the board. Hmm, which bingo should you play?

And isn’t it the same in life too? We all have our challenges and struggles: health; finances; happiness. At times we may feel helpless and hopeless.

And then, sometimes miraculous occurs when one least expects it, the sun shines on our lives, even on the cloudiest day. Everything is different, and yet, everything is basically the same.

La Chaim

Did you know that more than a few people choose to read the last chapter of a book first and then go to the beginning? That seems pretty strange to me. When I know how things will end I lose interest in the beginning of the story.

Did you know that many sports enthusiasts who cannot be there to watch an event live, will tape the event and watch it later on at their convenience? I really screwed up more than once when the NBA Finals were being played at the same time as Club #350 held a session. When I announced the final score of the game a basketball fan at the club (who was taping the game, to watch later) almost threw his scrabble board at me. He no longer attends CLub #350 during the NBA Finals.

I hate going into a movie late. I like to see everything from the beginning, including the previews. If I arrive late I’d just as soon go home and come back at some other time.

In the early 1990s I was producing scrabble tournaments in southern Michigan. I remember a very knowledgeable pharmacist from Chicago who played in a few of my events. Now and then he was able to wow me and others with a word from his pharmacy jargon. But other than that he struggled. Most pharmacological words are unfriendly to the game of scrabble: they are too long; they include letters that are of a low probability.

When it comes to being a good-to-great scrabble player, most of us have to begin at the beginning.” ~ Gary Moss

Beginning at the beginning means mastering the basics: 2-Letter Words; The Rules of the Game; Basic Strategy. (For starters)

Beginning at the beginning means admitting and understanding you don’t know what you don’t know.

Beginning at the beginning means being open to looking at things differently.

If you are one who frequently says, “but, I do it this way”, you are in deep trouble.

Playing competitive scrabble is an adventure with words. It is not for the timid. It can add so much more than merely vocabulary to a life.

Check out what every ‘newbie’ should know. CLICK HERE

Building on ‘good fortune’ is like building on ‘sand’. One minute you have a magnificent sand castle, the next minute a wave can wash it away.

Even novice scrabble players can get the tiles to play an impressive word or achieve an impressive win, but without a word arsenal and employing winning strategies, the novice will struggle to withstand the challenges provided by the players who know the 2s and 3s and high-probability-stems.

Ask ten different club scrabble players what to do to build your scrabble playing expertise and you will most likely get ten different answers.

Experience has taught me that just because a person is an ‘expert’ in their field, it doesn’t mean that they have the talent to teach others. Example: There is a high rated player (who shall remain nameless) who attends clubs where I have attended. This player means to be helpful. This player likely to glam onto newbies, hoping to recruit them to become regulars. BUT, the amount of information provided to the newbie in a single session is enough to make them feel inadequate and want to get up from the table and run away.

Experience has allowed me to witness other newbies walk into a club and gravitate to the weakest players. This type of newbie asks for advice from people who may not know the ‘best’ answers. It is sort of like asking a good cook how to solve a quadratic equation.

Like the guy on TV who sells Fram Oil Filters says, “Pay me now or pay me later.”

I am an educator by profession (M.A. and B.S. in Education ((Wayne State University)).
I am a scrabble director, sanctioned by NASPA (North American Scrabble Players Association).
I have directed more than 250 sanctioned tournaments and 2,500 club session (1989-present).

Take my online class SCRABBLE 101 and I will guide you from wherever you are to the greater success that lives within you. CLICK HERE! NOW!
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Like the 3rd Little Pig, I only build with bricks, providing the strongest foundation possible.

If you are not paying attention to where you are playing your word, if you dare to underestimate your opponent’s ability, if you come to the table unprepared for competition . . . . . . you will ‘bear-ly’ last a minute.

I am not at all suggesting that you stay away from the competitive scrabble scene ‘until you are ready’. When people judge their own readiness to compete, they judge themselves harshly.

Whenever we begin a new activity we need to expect a learning curve, to get up to speed. Just because you have been winning at scrabble among your family and friends, don’t be naive; competitive club and tournament scrabble is a whole different animal.

THE GOOD NEWS IS that anyone can become a good-to-great competitive scrabble mavin with a little-to-a-lot of study and focus. Your biggest challenge will be to have thick enough skin to withstand the initial shock that for right now you are a small fish in the sea. The grizzly bear will initially eat you up. If you become a regular player and work at improving, I suggest that you get a long belt. You will soon learn the trick of winning and plant a notch on your belt for every mavin whom you defeat and leave in the dust, sobbing.

If you love competition, learning, and playing with words . . . . you’ll love this form of the game.

One great tool that I have created for novice competitive scrabble players is The Bookmark Series. Each laminated bookmark contains a stem and some of the words that will cross your path frequently. To score big and win often, you MUST know these words and the system that helps you identify them on your rack. CLICK HERE

A little knowledge can be dangerous and self defeating, especially when playing scrabble Take the letters ‘I’, ‘N’, ‘G’, for instance. The average person, who has a 6th grade reading level, knows that there a lot of words that end with the suffix ‘ING’. Novice scrabble players will frequently identify those tiles on their rack and waste turn after turn, hoping to play that combination on a word.

Gary’s RULE #19: Do not fall in love with any of your tiles.

‘ING’ could be a great find, allowing you to extend a verb, already on the board, to a DWS or a TWS. But, do not sit with tiles for any extended period. They can tie you down.

What would you do if you had 3 esses on your rack at the same time?

Too much good stuff is BAD STUFF. (DO NOT exchange and put esses back into the tile bag. You don’t want your opponent to draw them. WASTE ONE OR TWO of them on a single play and hope to balance your rack when you replenish your tiles.)

The ‘Q’, ‘Z’, ‘X’, and ‘J’ have a special appeal to players because the hold the highest value among the tiles in the bag. Don’t waste several turns trying to achieve the perfect play. Take a good score and keep the game moving.

Some players waste way too much time trying to decide what to play where. Become a faster thinker. Don’t allow the game to slow on your turns. Remember: when your clock is running your opponent is enjoying ‘FREE’ thinking time.

Some players never look at a word list from one week to the next. The better and best players spend a few minute every day with some word list. Even as little as 5 minutes every day will make a difference in you word power.

Novice players are usually less apt to trade tiles when they have a bad rack, for fear of earning ‘zero points’ on a given turn. Better players know that winning the game is related to having balanced racks during the game.

When you trade tiles, what do you trade? There is a correct trade and an incorrect trade. Do you know how to determine the correct trade? That is one of 35 different lessons that I teach in my online scrabble class, SCRABBLE 101. CLICK HERE

I’m sitting at Bruegger’s Bagels writing my blog. An older 70ish man and woman walk in; there are only 2 people ahead of them in line (at other times the line stretches way out the door), The man is salivating for a good bagel; he stops and looks at the menus and signs high above and behind the cashier. The woman walks to the end of the short line; another patron enters the store and gets in line behind her. The service here is fast and efficient. The old man stands, still reading the menus. It is now the old lady’s turn to order. The old man isn’t ready. The patron behind the lady moves up in line because the lady is not ready to order. The old lady becomes huffy; she announces loudly, “We lost our place in line.” Now there isn’t a line at all. She walks up to the old man and signals that she is upset and wants to leave. I sit here wondering, ‘how could anyone want to hang around a person like that?’ (And yet, maybe she’d rather have a chocolate donut instead of a bagel.)

Ask some people, at random, if they ever heard about scrabble and many will think that it is nothing more that a children’s game, played with family at home on holidays or wiling away leisure time on vacation.

Those folks obviously don’t have a clue about my world of scrabble.

Scrabble is a bag of 100 tiles that can be aligned and realigned to form more than 155,000 different (legal) words; scrabble is a game that is every bit as challenging as chess and go and bridge. Every scrabble game is different; every opponent has a different skill set. Anyone can take up the game and move up in the ranks, if they apply themselves.

Many people look at the words played during a club scrabble session, and not knowing some of the words will say, “Those aren’t real words.” Those folks are the kind that believe that anything that they do not know is not real. How foolish! In the computer age, when we can search for endless information about the countless things that we do not know, how can so many people be so oppositional?

Some people, during their development and education, learned to see things from a particular perspective. Their learned behavior often inhibits those individuals from seeing outside their box. If you ‘BELIEVE’ that you are a ‘BAD SPELLER,’ you are a bad speller, as a result of your own belief. If you ‘BELIEVE’ that people of ‘YOUR RELIGION’ are superior to all others, you will treat others accordingly, as inferior. It is not good or bad; it just is that way.

I have met many people who could become great scrabble players. And I know that I cannot turn someone into a great and dedicated scrabble mavin. But, I can help any wannabe become better today than they were yesterday, and promise them that I can coach them to become even better tomorrow.

In spite of what we think and feel, we each have complete control over the way we perceive things. Even when we have teachers showing us ‘The Way’, we have the power to follow their teachings, or modify their messages, or we can tune them out completely. Why else did I flunk Biology I, at the hands of Mrs. Middleton, three times. I was more interested in running the show as a leader in the synagogue youth group; I let my public school studies slide. If Mrs. Middleton had captured my interest and turned my head to science, or if I chose science over socializing, who knows, I may have become the one to discover the cure for athlete’s foot or I might have mutated a gene to allow mankind to grow an additional prehensile digit, next to the thumb.

You can be and do almost anything you want to be or do.

‘Common Courtesy’ is a term that I’ve always linked to ‘good manners’. But as life has evolved here in the USA, in the circle where I travel most, I’ve noticed that the common courtesies that were instilled in me, from parents and teachers, have fallen on deaf ears of many of the people whom I encounter.

The act of ‘sighing deeply’ is a common occurrence when one is disappointed or nervous. It happens all the time during highly contested scrabble games. But why don’t the sighers turn their heads or sigh into a napkin? Instead, totally engrossed in their own little world, they sigh straight across the scrabble board, into the face of their opponent.

According to the PWCG (People Who Count Germs), the #3 place that germs are found after bathrooms and kitchen counter tops is scrabble tile bags. When is the last time you washed your tile bag and tiles? For most people, the answer is NEVER. I hesitate to share this diddy because it is gross. I have witness more than a few players sneeze into their hands and seconds later dip those hands into tile bags to replenish tiles on their racks. What were they thinking? Obviously, they were not thinking.

A few other common offenses:
• heavy perfume
• coughing straight ahead
• bringing drinks to the table and then spilling
• whining
• spraying others when you speak
• abusive language (when spoken; words on the board are okay)
• suggestive language (when spoken; words on the board are okay)
• celebrating obnoxiously after beating your opponent
• patronizing
• women wearing low cut tops to distract male opponents
• peeking in the bag when drawing tiles

What is the first thing you should do when your opponent plays a word that looks suspicious to you?

What remedy do you have when your opponent plays so quickly that you feel that you don’t have enough time to focus on their play before they have replenished the tiles on their rack?

Say, “HOLD”.

Don’t hesitate and think about it! Shout HOLD!

When a players says HOLD, their opponent is being told to ‘FREEZE’ or ‘PAUSE’; do not proceed, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The clock of the person issuing the ‘HOLD’ is running during the entire holding period. The holding period giver the person time to consider challenging, without a commitment to challenge the play. Some people who say HOLD take a long time to make their ultimate decision. If the ‘holder’ takes more than a minute to make a decision, the other player (after a minute) may draw tiles but MUST KEEP THEM SEPARATED ON THE RACK, just incase there is a challenge and they need to be returned to the tile bag.

Once a player completes their turn, records their score, and draws even a single tile out of the tile bag, it is too late to say HOLD or CHALLENGE.

Some players have been accused of ‘FAST BAGGING’. That is when a player purposefully plays fast to confuse their opponent or slip a phoney onto the board.

If you simply say HOLD quickly. you can put a stop to these tactics.

In the OFFICIAL RULES, Page. 12 (Ending The Game), Section III, B it states:
When making a play to go out, you must neutralize the clock, NOT start your opponent’s clock.. . . . . . . . . Once you neutralize the clock, your opponent has five seconds to voice “hold” or “challenge.” If he/she does not, the game ends.

Always say HOLD quickly. Unfortunately, the director is usually not there watching your game. Whether or not five seconds has elapsed is an argumentative issue between the two players. Always say HOLD quickly, to protect your interests.

Do you want to become the best scrabble player on your block? The best in your circle of family and friends? The best in your club?

I can help you make it happen. Enroll in my online class, SCRABBLE 101. I show you the secrets of the experts.