Craig Beevers - Word Addict: Secrets of a Scrabble world champion

Contents

One of the most popular games on our colourful little planet. Most have heard of it, many have played it, and few master it. Scrabble is everywhere, whether it be played over a kitchen table, on the latest mobile gadget, or part of a national curriculum.

Scrabble is the toughest all-round game I have ever encountered. There are so many dimensions to it that other games seem linear and boring in comparison. It requires knowledge, an abundance of skill, strategy, risk and reward, luck, and a strong temperament. It is a complete test and a game Im glad to be associated with. I became World Scrabble Champion in 2014 and Im immensely proud of being etched in the games history.

When first playing Scrabble I never really considered just how enriching it is. The words played showcase culture worldwide. A regular player will use the names of Greek letters, currency from every continent, a surprising wealth of old Scottish dialect words, lots of helpful Q-without-U words from Arabic, and a whole host of other weird and wonderful snippets of everything you can think of or has ever been. Not to mention the enjoyment of playing the game and meeting hundreds of different people from all over the globe.

In this book, I want to discuss all of the aspects of the game, as well as explaining the thought processes for a number of real-life game positions. Whilst it generally takes years to develop the word knowledge required to become a top player, anyone can understand the steps that lead to playing a particular move. So I hope that everyone reading can develop an understanding for the game and learn to play like a World Champion.

One of my earliest memories of Scrabble is loading up the cassette on the ZX Sinclair Spectrum 48K and playing against the computer with its gaudy eight-colour display. Before long it would come up with a prompt asking me if I was sure about that word Id just played. Because it couldnt hold all of the words in its puny memory, it politely enquired quite often. At five years old my vocabulary was a bit shaky but I used to give myself the benefit of the doubt. If it wasnt a word it should be anyway, right?

That was back in 1986. According to my partner Karen I still spend too much time on the computer. The instruments may have evolved, but I still love my games. Having spent a lot of my youth with pith-helmeted sabremen, blue hedgehogs, and dark elves whizzing across the screen, I eventually graduated to more cerebral distractions. I got attached to the internet at college and university before wandering to my first Scrabble Club in 2003.

In truth I had been hooked by word games for a while, playing all sorts of them on the web. Scrabble was just the best one. I played my first tournament later that year and made it my goal to win a local one-day event, then a weekend tourney, and so on. Countdown (a words and numbers TV show in the UK) came along four years later. I took time out from Scrabble to concentrate on it and was fortunate enough to win the series.

Recently Ive become increasingly involved with Scrabble associations, their websites, and running or organizing tournaments. I particularly enjoy being part of big events, even when Im not playing. It also feels good contributing to such a wonderful community.

More personally Im a mathematical, scientific sort of guy. I like my technology, but I also like to be outdoors and travel. I enjoy characterful villages and towns over big bustling cities. I grew up in Norton, near Stockton-on-Tees in the northeast of England, with a stint at university in Sheffield. In 2014 I moved to Guisborough, a lovely little town on the outskirts of the North York Moors with my partner Karen and three soppy little dogs, Molly, Benny, and Charlie.

The journey really began when I reached my late teens. I had played Scrabble once in a while during childhood, but it couldnt compete with joystick-waggling on the ZX Sinclair Spectrum, button-bashing on the Sega Mega Drive, and later those countless hours juggling virtual memory in DOS, occasionally interrupted by playing the computer game I was trying to get working. By the late 90s, the internet was starting to take off, and thats when I got into word games.

Dial-up modems were the order of the day. I can still remember the high-pitched tone it generated on attempting to connect to the web, then me holding my breath on whether the attempt was successful or not. I loved playing games online. It certainly wasnt for the faint-hearted, but it never really bothered me. I spent many an hour chatting, playing, and arguing with Americans. I felt those across the Atlantic needed to be enlightened about cricket and rugby much better than that baseball and gridiron malarkey. After racking up hundreds of pounds in phone bills, I went to university in Sheffield and discovered the joys of computer rooms with what was then super-fast internet. I moved from playing a range of games, particularly the card game Spades, to almost exclusively playing quick word games. I mostly played a clone of Scrabble, which had more tiles, a different board, and a love of dishing out Cs, Is, and Gs, which were all worth a measly one point. You also had to place each letter by hand. It was an adrenalin rush to beat people with seconds remaining at the end.

One thing that hasnt changed unfortunately was the level of cheating going on over the internet. It was mostly whats called anagramming: putting a set of letters into a word-finder and playing what comes up. The quick games just made even more obvious the disparity between the obscure finds and the bad moves. Some even went further, having macros to place tiles almost instantly and programs (or bots) that played the game for them. It was a free-for-all. From the chaos emerged a number of players who have gone on to win big titles in the World of Scrabble.

Towards the end of my three-year spell at university I made the decision to look for a Scrabble Club. Being an exceptionally lazy individual, I was fortunate that all the details of a local club were on a website, only one of a handful that were. Im not sure Id have pursued it if Id had to chase up the info. I always wonder how many people there are who would love the club and tournament scene but dont realize what is out there.

One of the issues of playing online was the difference in the dictionary, or word list as its also known. The games Id enjoyed over the internet used an old American word list. The international word list (Collins Official Scrabble Words) is made up of the American one, plus UK sources. I had a good knowledge of the most useful American words, but all the British-only words were new to me. Even more word games are available these days, with a variety of dictionaries in use, although the vast majority of words are common to all of them. So one cold dark night towards the end of winter, I ambled to Sheffield Psalter Scrabble Club, which met every week at a local pub. I didnt have a board but it wasnt a problem as there is always plenty of equipment to go round at clubs and tourneys. So I turned up with my pen and paper (the only essentials as both players need to keep score) with no idea what to expect. After a few timid hellos I sat down and played. There was a nice friendly atmosphere with a whole spectrum of people there from different backgrounds, from young students to pensioners. I won most games, but they were closely fought, competitive matches and I lost a fair few too. I fared reasonably well against everyone at the club except for one player, who beat me every time. In the UK, most Scrabble clubs and tournaments are overseen by the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP), who maintain a website, rules, tournament calendar and publish a magazine, amongst other things youd expect from an association. The player who beat me each time, Lewis Mackay, was one of the top ranked players in the country.