Monday, May 4, 2009

Charleston, WV Tourney in a Nutshell

Just a short, initial post while I am still in Charleston about this past weekend's tourney here. Four of us from the Lexington Scrabble Club (NASPA Club No. 637) attended the tournament, and here is a photo of us at its conclusion, thanks to photographer Peggy from Columbia, SC --


The Lexington contingent at the May 2009 Charleston, WV tournament
Eric, Margaret, John, Tyler

Club member Will sent us all an e-mail pre-tourney wishing us luck and telling us to bring home ratings' points. Well, three of the four of us took him to heart -- Eric, Margaret, and Tyler are all returning with higher ratings -- and Tyler is doing it really big time! They are projected to have rating increases of 50, 20, and 107 points, respectively -- with Tyler breaking the 1500 mark!!!

Tyler won his division, 11-1 (+993), winning the first place prize of $325.

And although I didn't have a ratings' increase, I had a great time and did better, playing up again this year (4-8, -700) than I did playing up last year (2-10, -736), and there's always next year, right?

Complete results were up already last night on the host club's website.

Many, many thanks from all of us to Brad Mills, director of the Kanawha Valley Scrabble Club, for organizing and directing a really fine and fun tournament again this year. The new venue was great, and very positively received by those attending, 60 players in the main event this year. Special personal thanks to local club member Lisa, who very kindly arranged for my Sunday afternoon at Charleston's Clay Center of the Arts and Sciences of West Virginia, which I thoroughly enjoyed visiting for the first time. What a great complex! The movie on Hurricane Katrina in the center's planetarium/cinema, projected on the domed ceiling, was awesome and moving, and the special exhibition of movie and television costumes (including Margaret Hamilton's witch hat from The Wizard of Oz, Harrison Ford's leather jacket and whip from The Raiders of the Lost Ark, Darth Vader's outfit from Star Wars, and Star Trek costumes, among others) was great fun to see.

More text and more photos when I get back to Versailles! Still have to pack up and check out.

And club tonight back home, too! :-)

7 comments:

Andy W. said...

Thanks for your quick reporting John! I was anxious to see that Lexington club was well represented. Sounds like a great time....

Brad Mills said...

John, had I known you were still in town, I'd have invited you to lunch with Martha and me.

Always a pleasure to see the Lexington crew, and looking forward to when our paths next cross.

Cheryl said...

Kanawha Valley club? bigger than just Charleston?

Scrabble Question! said...

I have a scrabble question that i can't seem to find the answer from other blogs regarding challenges:

When a player challenges - does the challenge pertain to new word created only or does include a secondary word that was created when someone added an "S". For example:

- HINDU was created by player 1. No challenge from others.
- The 2nd player creates WARBLES with the S adding into HINDUS.
- Player 1 challenges WARBLES...and it is a word.
- PLAYER 3 wants to check to see if HINDUS is a word and it is not, but a formal challenge isn't raised by Player 3. Player 3 uses the opportunity from Player 1's challenge to check and brings up that HINDUS is not a word.
The debate is - when you challenge, do you challenge the word or the whole turn?
Thanks for any help! I'll check this blog periodically for an answer...

Wendy said...

For Scrabble Question:
Whenever you make a challenge, it is for the entire play, not just a specific word. You challenge all words that were made in that play. Technically, when you verify the words, the judge will NOT announce which words are correct or incorrect, rather announce that the play is either
"acceptable" (meaning all words are valid) or "not acceptable"(meaning 1 or more of the words is not valid).

This is interesting because sometimes a player will play something and it's challenged off, but because they aren't told which word is invalid, they may think that word A is the bad word, so they play word B again somewhere else on the board.

John M. Spangler said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John M. Spangler said...

A clarification or two on Wendy's answer.

Wendy is, I feel sure, responding on the basis of existing club and tournament rules for the North American Scrabble Players Association. Those rules are based on TWO-PLAYER games (not the situation posited here where there are at least three players playing). It is not exactly correct to say that ALL the words formed in a play are included in a challenge under NASPA rules -- only those words listed on the challenge slip are included in a challenge. So all the words formed in a play COULD be challenged but are not automatically included in a challenge UNLESS they are listed on the challenge slip.

This, however, is a parlor Scrabble situation. As far as I know, there aren't any formal established rules for parlor Scrabble beyond those given with the Scrabble game. So I don't think you will find any authoritative binding answer to your question, ScrabbleQuestion! You do indicate that Player 3 did not make a "formal" challenge to HINDUS -- that being the case, he or she should't be checking on it in a dictionary during a game, I would say.

(REPOSTED TO CORRECT A TYPO.)