Nick's Café Canadien

It’s that time of the year again. I refer not to my birthday, which I am commemorating throughout the week by watching all five Pixar features back-to-back, but that mid-year mark in late August when the summer movie season is effectively over, and we are halfway from one Oscar season to the next. You can always tell when it hits, because if you go to the cinema in late July and August, all you see are uninspiring trailers for the dud-dumping that goes on in September and early October, one of the two perennial droughts where studios release the films they are not particularly proud to back (the other being late January to early April). Now that the release date lineup for the next few months is falling into place and we are finally seeing trailers for potential contenders, it is high time to finally get excited about movies again. As was the case last year, columnist David Poland is the Oscar heavyweight in the prediction game with his 30 Weeks to Oscar chart, and OscarWatch.com’s Kris Tapley is a pundit to watch.

This is another back-heavy year in the making, because so far, the year has offered practically nothing in the way of Oscar contenders. Remarkably, the three best films I saw this year were all sequels – Kill Bill, Vol. 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Spider-Man 2. I’m not sure if this speaks to the increasing quality of sequels, which is only the case with Spider-Man given that Kill Bill was one movie sliced in half and Azkaban was based on an established marvel of a literary follow-up, or the generally lacklustre performance of original pieces this summer, but what is certain is that none of them are in contention. The only film released this year that may clinch a Best Picture nomination is The Passion of the Christ, and that depends on the extent to which the November-December crop meets expectations. It stands virtually no chance of winning.

Rather than delivering my own predictions about awarding films that are weeks or months away from hitting theatres, I will offer a brief guide to the remaining 2004 releases that I am most anticipating, the ones that I think have the most potential to be permanent five-star additions to my personal hall of fame. These are the ones I will see on the opening weekend, if not the opening day. There are six of them; in order of release, they are:

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (9/17) – This was originally slated for a June release right in the path of Spider-Man 2, and was wisely bumped to September, where it is the only film on the schedule that even remotely piques my interest. I’m unabashedly a sucker for movies that take a genre and explore it to the farthest corners, and Kerry Conran’s special effects extravaganza looks to do just that with the same pulp sci-fi serials of yore that inspired George Lucas. The only thing I am a little concerned about is that everything I’ve seen of the film looks a little soft and feathery, so hopefully the blending between live actors and animated backgrounds is more seamless in the final product. Sequels aside, this year has yet to see a great effects-driven popcorn movie, and Sky Captain may be the one to step up to the plate. The advance screening at Comic-Con reportedly brought down the house. Killer robots, flying aces and 1930s costumes? Just my type.

The Incredibles (11/5) – I have long made it clear, and by “long” I mean since I saw the footage attached to Finding Nemo fifteen months ago, that if at the beginning of the year I was told I could only go to the cinema once until 2005, this superhero blockbuster in the making would unquestionably be the one I chose to watch. Pixar, more than any production studio in history, commands total brand loyalty from this here writer. The studio is five for five when it comes to knocking projects out of the park (or in the case of Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo, well into the stratosphere). Directed by Brad Bird, who worked on The Simpsons and is best known for his wondrous but largely unnoticed The Iron Giant, early word on The Incredibles is that Pixar might have outdone itself again. As a perk, as if it needed any, it will likely sport the first teaser trailers for both Revenge of the Sith and Cars, the biggest blips on my 2005 radar.

Alexander (11/5) – The Incredibles gets opening-day priority, but I will likely also be watching Oliver Stone’s latest on the 5-7 November weekend. It’s been a full nine years since the last truly classic historical hero epic, Braveheart. (I’m ignoring The Lord of the Rings here because while I consider Middle-Earth a part of our history, most do not; Gladiator, while a lot of fun, was itself an entirely fictional piece in a historical setting.) Alexander may be the breakthrough picture that reminds us that the legendary period costume dramas about larger-than-life historical figures never rested on spectacularly bloody battles and casts of thousands, but on a thorough interpretation of what made these people tick, what guided their actions and decisions, and what consequences they had to face. See Lawrence of Arabia for details.

Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (11/26) – I’m a huge admirer of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s previous collaboration with Audrey Tautou, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, and still find it to be one of the most imaginative and endearing comedies in recent memory. Un Long Dimanche (to be released here under the title A Very Long Engagement, I hear) is something completely different, a war bride drama based on a World War I novel, something that on the surface might sound like a familiar premise to those of you who saw last year’s Cold Mountain. This is shaping up to be a must-see, and the chief concern is whether and when the local arthouse screens will pick it up.

The Aviator (12/17) – Martin Scorsese’s second film starring Leonardo DiCaprio (the first being the disappointing Gangs of New York), a biographical picture about aviator and film director Howard Hughes, is considered to be this year’s favourite for Best Picture. Judging from the footage and the pedigree of the people involved, I cannot disagree. The problem is that word on the street indicates it is behind schedule and may be delayed to 2005. DiCaprio convinced me in Catch Me If You Can that paired with the right director, he is a delightful actor to watch. As long as this movie avoids the trap of being two-thirds classic, one-third nosedive as was the case with Gangs, it’s almost guaranteed to be a high-quality masterwork.

The Phantom of the Opera (12/24) – As I have professed on many an occasion, it is important to me on a very personal level that this film be good. But let’s be optimistic for a second: other than the fact that Joel Schumacher’s been a marked man among movie buffs since Batman and Robin, Phantom has yet to raise any early warning alarms, and is actually shaping up to be what I imagined. And this is a case where just being what I imagined is more than sufficient to place it in the pantheon of everlasting classics, as was the case with The Lord of the Rings, the last adaptation I cared about this much. I know I am not alone when it comes to being sentimentally attached to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s finest work, and this is one chandelier nobody wants to see crash to the floor.

In addition to these six, there are a number of upcoming movies that I will probably see, though I do not consider them exciting priorities. As an animation aficionado I cannot miss Shark Tale or The Polar Express, and while I am highly sceptical about both of them in different ways, I will at least see them out of curiosity. I’m hearing good things about Ray, the impeccably timely biography of the late Ray Charles starring Jamie Foxx, who allegedly underwent a procedure that rendered him temporarily blind in order to fit into the role. Being busy over the past few weeks I also have to catch up on the late-summer releases that have garnered some acclaim, among them The Bourne Supremacy, Collateral and Napoleon Dynamite. Garden State has not hit theatres here yet but is set to expand on Friday. Once those are out of the way, I may compose a more comprehensive recap of this year’s summer stable.

Ain’t-It-Cool News has a lot of production art from the post-Chicken Little Walt Disney Feature Animation pipeline – American Dog, A Day With Wilbur Robinson and Rapunzel Unbraided. I heard about these upcoming projects two weeks ago by way of a recent article on one of my daily stops, Jim Hill Media, which was highly critical of the new WDFA policy that prohibits animators from working on a production until it had an approved screenplay, contrary to how animation actually works.

American Dog is from Chris Sanders of the delightful but perhaps slightly overrated Lilo & Stitch, and the preliminary art boasts a charming, edgy aesthetic. Of course, what makes animation great is not the individual frames but how they connect to one another to tell a visual story, so let’s cross our fingers that it all comes together. A Day With Wilbur Robinson, slated for 2006, is an adaptation of William Joyce’s children’s book of the same title, which I have never read, but have heard is fantastic. The story reel, the animation equivalent of the storyboarding and pre-visualization that goes into live-action, is reportedly phenomenal.

The art for 2007′s Rapunzel Unbraided is enchantingly beautiful, but the content itself is a big question mark; I know very little about the film at this stage, but it looks like Disney is trying to pull it closer to the Shrek end of the spectrum like they once tried with the never-made Frog Prince. To which I say, go ahead and make it satirical (The Princess Bride, anyone?) but please, for the love of Mickey Mouse, don’t try to make it all hip and contemporary. PDI’s approach is already showing signs of overstaying its welcome; no need to imitate it further. The Disney reputation was built on timelessness, not the cheap temporal appeal that has reduced many a feature from great to good. Case in point: regardless of whether or not you like the music of Phil Collins, he has absolutely no place in Brother Bear, and I am quite serious when I say that his inclusion takes away from the movie.

I really do hope Disney digs itself out of its hole with these three projects. Hopefully they are as daring and creative as they look, and escape the executive-level mismanagement that has led the Disney brand down a path of decay. Unfortunately, scoring box-office hits with these upcoming features will have the side effect of further convincing Michael Eisner and his cronies that traditional animation is dead, and we may have a long wait ahead of us until Disney returns to its roots.

There are few things the movie industry needs more than a kick in the pants to remind studio execs that 3D computer animation does not a better film make. Or, considering the success of the outstandingly funny Chicken Run and next year’s anticipated hit The Wallace & Gromit Movie: Curse of the Wererabbit, 2D traditional film does not equal a bomb. So maybe the dollar figures say, “Yes it does,” but that is an oversimplification. What we really need are distributors who recognize a great film when they see one and know how to promote it properly, unlike how Warner Brothers completely dropped the ball with The Iron Giant, which will hopefully see a revival as its upcoming DVD re-release rides the hype around The Incredibles. We don’t need people releasing Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki’s seminal masterpiece and the biggest box-office hit in Japanese history, dubbed over in English when foreign films have demonstrated a record of doing better when released properly – that is to say, subtitled. We don’t need more grounds for marketing conspiracy theories like the ones surrounding Home on the Range.

SaveDisney.com‘s feature, “Killing Traditional Animation”, says it better than I do.

While on the subject of Disney films, I want to say a few words about a book that mentions some of them in passing: Dan Brown’s mega-hit novel The Da Vinci Code.

Normally I don’t review the novels I read, and there are a number of reasons for this. Foremost is that if I afforded each and every one of them the analysis I wish I could, I would never get through my extensive reading list. Then there’s the matter of personal pride, in the sense that I do not wish to reveal the full extent of how much I haven’t read. Following that is the fact that I spend most of my time reading established classics instead of current releases, and in most cases have nothing to add to the volume of discourse that already exists around them.

Once in a blue moon, though, I get a little curious about just what it is that has propped up authors like this Dan Brown fellow into the #1 slot of The New York Times for such an extended period of time. Besides, it is always good to get an indication of what it is that the public is consuming at large.

So my question is this: is it just The Da Vinci Code, or is the prose in all contemporary pop literature so juvenile?

I’m not saying Da Vinci is bad – far from it. The plotting is tight, the puzzles are clever, the premises are a conglomeration of outlandish but intriguing theories that run contrary to all conventional wisdom, and are proud of it. It’s just badly written. The two protagonists that carry us through the mystery, symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu, are not characters so much as they are physical manifestations of their respective -ologies. At times, we see every tired prosaic cliché worthy of a loud and sonorous groan – among them, childhood flashbacks and italicized internal monologue up the wazoo. It’s like the entire thing was written with the prospective movie rights in mind, because if anything, The Da Vinci Code feels like a detailed screenplay treatment.

The apologists undoubtedly say, well, plot-driven thrillers don’t need characters, tone and style, or thematic resonance, and only the most pretentiously snobby Ulysses-wielding literati would presume to demand such literary luxuries. Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald and Ian Fleming beg to differ. To name a few.

Full marks for plot construction, though – well, aside from an obvious villain with a concealed identity and a few puzzles that should not have posed our heroes as much trouble as they did. I won’t deny that this is a book that kept me turning the pages to find out what happens next. It’s easy to see why The Da Vinci Code has attracted so much discourse: whether by accident or design, Brown often diverges into passages where he dumps a lot of detailed information geared towards supporting his ideas about revisionism in theological history, and presents them with a non-fictional authority that sends people straight to their search engines in an attempt to separate what is real from what is not.

The downside is that when you do this in front of people who know their stuff, they see right through some of the more frivolous contortions of truth. I’m not referring to the theological debates about the Council of Nicea and the deification of Jesus Christ, but the small things, the details that make the book seem really clever in the eyes of a layman. Observe how in one instance, Brown claims that the Romans referred to the wonders of anagrams as ars magna, the Great Art. Nice try, Mr. Brown. Ars magna is a clever anagram of “anagrams”, but the English word itself was derived from the Greek word anagrammatismos, which lacks the same connection. Such a claim is like saying the Eastwoods dubbed their son Clint deliberately because they could rearrange his name to spell “Old West Action”.

This is also where the Disney connection comes in. Brown has obviously been reading a lot about the surreptitious symbols and malicious metaphors in Walt Disney’s secret destructive agenda, or something to that effect – without much regard for who does what in the development of an animated feature. He claims how Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty is concealed under the name “Rose” as an extension of Disney’s purported agenda to spread the truth about the Holy Grail and goddess worship that lies at the centre of the novel – neglecting to mention, of course, that the name is taken directly from Briar-Rose, Sleeping Beauty’s name in the original text of the Grimm fairy tale. Then he leaps forward to make a connection to the modern era of The Little Mermaid, over which Walt had no direct say, being dead and all. Sometimes it is hard to tell if Brown is intentionally mistaking memetics for conspiracies.

In spite of these misgivings, I do think The Da Vinci Code is worth a read, if only to catch up on the controversial things it has to say. But this may be a case where the movie, currently attached to Ron Howard, may very easily eclipse the book.

On the subject of bestselling literature: J.K. Rowling delivered a reading of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Edinburgh this weekend, and followed it with a question-and-answer session about a number of things, The Half-Blood Prince among them. The book itself is halfway to completion, and Rowling draws attention to some unanswered questions to consider. Very interesting indeed:

There are two questions that I have never been asked but that I should have been asked, if you know what I mean. If you want to speculate on anything, you should speculate on these two things, which will point you in the right direction.

The first question that I have never been asked – it has probably been asked in a chatroom but no one has ever asked me – is, “Why didn’t Voldemort die?” Not, “Why did Harry live?” but, “Why didn’t Voldemort die?” The killing curse rebounded, so he should have died. Why didn’t he? At the end of Goblet of Fire he says that one or more of the steps that he took enabled him to survive. You should be wondering what he did to make sure that he did not die – I will put it that way. I don’t think that it is guessable. It may be – someone could guess it – but you should be asking yourself that question, particularly now that you know about the prophecy. I’d better stop there or I will really incriminate myself.

The other question that I am surprised no one has asked me since Phoenix came out – I thought that people would – is why Dumbledore did not kill or try to kill Voldemort in the scene in the ministry. I know that I am giving a lot away to people who have not read the book. Although Dumbledore gives a kind of reason to Voldemort, it is not the real reason. When I mentioned that question to my husband – I told Neil that I was going to mention it to you – he said that it was because Voldemort knows that there are two more books to come. As you can see, we are on the same literary wavelength. [Laughter]. That is not the answer; Dumbledore knows something slightly more profound than that. If you want to wonder about anything, I would advise you to concentrate on those two questions. That might take you a little bit further.

Now there’s an author of bestselling literature who knows a thing or two about presenting elaborate mysteries under the cloak of witty wordplay and a dramatis personae worth volumes of character analysis.

It just so happens that I leave for a week and come back to discover that my coverage of the LEZ fiasco landed me a link at Crescat Sententia and a resulting surge of hits – which promptly dissipated in short order, presumably because I wasn’t updating, or maybe because the place looked very much like a blog dedicated exclusively to Scrabble. Will Baude writes:

So, the “purity” of the game was being violated a little by the rule, yes, but it is already necessarily violated all the time in semi-friendly play. Just try explaining to your less-Scrabble-savvy friends that, “well, I know it’s not in the “Official” dictionary, but it’s one of a group of semi-secret special words, that…”

Anyway, the list of Scrabble-banned words is here, and it includes such nasty, unspeakable stuff as “POPISH,” “REDNECKS,” “JEW,” “COMSYMP,” “FATSO,” “FART,” and “FRIG” (“FRIG” was presumably banned under some anti-circumvention rationale that will eventually be used to ban “screw”, “F***”, “SH**”, and “$%#!” from broadcast television). If I recall correctly, “frotteur” remains Scrabble-legal, athough the distinction bears out a logic I cannot fathom.

But the very crux of the debate is that for all competitive intents and purposes, the OSPD isn’t the “Official” dictionary. It’s still a misnomer for a book that is specifically labeled in small print as being for “recreational” use, a volume drafted for the sole purpose of not offending the kiddies. Ironic, considering that the prodigies who actually play the game seriously will and do use the expurgated words on a regular basis where they are strategically appropriate. The lexicon for tournament play is, no ifs and no buts, the amalgamation of the OWL (Official Word List) and LWL (Long Word List). This has also been adopted outside of tournament circles where people play the game seriously – the Internet Scrabble Club, for instance, uses the OWL and not the OSPD when you select the North American lexicon.

Now, ordinarily the situation wouldn’t have been as much of a calamity had it worked the same way as a simple challenge. By the telecast rules by which all participants agreed to abide, LEZ would have been treated as a typical nonword. In a tournament match, the window of opportunity to challenge a word off the board follows a specific procedure. Let’s say I play the phoney word FHQWHGADS*. I announce the score, hit the clock to mark the end of my turn, and then my opponent has the opportunity to call “Hold”. This is to signal that he is considering a challenge, and until he has made his decision, I may not draw replacement tiles from the bag. If he challenges, I take my letters back and lose my turn. If he doesn’t, I draw my replacement tiles as soon as he indicates I am no longer on hold, and the word stays on the board in spite of the fact that it is disallowed.

The scenario in Game 3 of the final was somewhat different. Gibson did not call a hold on Wright, who proceeded to draw two tiles in place of his L and Z. Here we diverge from normal challenge rules, because according to the television agreement, an expurgated word such as LEZ could not stay on the board even if no challenge was attempted. Things were further complicated because ESPN’s director on set, under deadline pressure and not involved in the ESPN-NSA negotiations, said he had no problem with LEZ and wanted things to continue running on schedule.

This was no time to debate the merits of the censorship agreement, to which the players had already consigned, and as per regulations, the word was removed. In spite of my misgivings about the principles behind and implementation of the telecast rules, if you set out some rules for yourself you have to follow through, and I believe this was the correct decision. My understanding is that things took as long as they did because there was no procedure to deal with the fact that Trey had already drawn his tiles, and the entire fiasco did not follow challenge procedures. The question at this point was no longer whether or not to remove the word, but whether he should lose his turn or have the opportunity to make another play. The other thing to consider was that by drawing two tiles prior to the ruling, he ascertained knowledge of the unseen tile pool that his opponent did not possess – yet another stumbling block that challenge procedures were designed to overcome.

Some have mentioned a compromise solution for future tournaments, and one that I think is sound: if ESPN’s adherence to FCC broadcast regulations is the real issue, they should be the ones to draft a list of words they consider unacceptable. This is because the list of what is or is not omitted in the OSPD is, in a word, silly. To answer Mr. Baude’s question about the guidelines that scratch out FATSO and inexplicably leave FROTTEUR intact: as far as I am aware, the omissions were determined on the basis of whether or not the words in question had an alternative context or definition not considered vulgar. A famous example mentioned in several books and documentaries on the subject is that TUP (v. to copulate with an ewe) was on the verge of being removed until it was pointed out, as Joe Edley said, that “it refers to the ewe, not a couple of farm boys.”

On another note, check out some of champion Trey Wright’s piano recordings.

This is what happens when you spend an entire week doing nothing but playing Scrabble, writing about Scrabble, and walking the streets of New Orleans thinking about Scrabble – say, looking at a packet of oyster crackers in a seafood restaurant whilst recalling the six anagrams of SALTINE (ELASTIN, ENTAILS, NAILSET, SALIENT, SLAINTE and TENAILS): you overlook major announcements back in the real world from whence you came. What’s the anagram of “Tom Marvolo Riddle”? Ralph Fiennes, it seems. One thing you cannot fault the Harry Potter films for is how it manages to attract the closest thing to a dream cast for each successive instalment, and seeing how Fiennes already played what I consider to be one of the great screen villains as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, it will be interesting to see what he brings to the role. The more films he does that erase the memory of 1998′s unforgivable butchery of The Avengers, wherein he played a far-too-young John Steed, the better.

I will be gone for another week – consider it a holiday from my holiday – but upon my return, expect some follow-ups to things I mentioned briefly in my Scrabble coverage this week. I hope to do a more comprehensive review of Word Wars, as well as talk a bit about the new prototype tournament boards that were distributed on the last day. Of course, one can’t forget about LEZgate, a story that has spread across the Internet thanks to appearing in an Associated Press story that made the front page of Yahoo! News yesterday. In the meantime, Bob Lipton is one of the few experts with much to say off the private tournament players’ mailing list. Those of you who enjoyed the coverage of my spectacular sinking into the bowels of Division 3 earlier this week should read the very best material there is on the tournament, the official tournament website’s own round-by-round commentary, which is an excellent account of some tournament highlights even I didn’t know about.

Remarkably, it’s a few days after the tournament, and stragglers touring the city for a few extra days can still be seen playing a few rounds at night in the hotel lobby downstairs.

Trey Wright is my hero for a number of reasons. Not only is he a phenomenal Scrabble player of a calibre that far exceeds my own, he also holds a profession that is, if not my dream job, at least in the top three (that is to say, pianist). His story over the course of this tournament caught the attention and admiration of players in every division. By the end of the second day, he had only lost one round out of fifteen, two games ahead of the closest competition. He ends up pulling off a sixteen-game winning streak; remember that this is in the same division as a gaggle of former National and World Champions. By that point in time, people could already be seen griping about the newly-introduced format of having the top two finishers in Division 1 play a best-of-five final, and how first place should work the same way as in all the other divisions: awarded to the player with the best record in the main event, which was looking more and more like a runaway clinch.

He slows down a bit in the last few rounds, however, and finishes second with a 23-7 record behind All-Stars champion David Gibson. The two of them played the best-of-five final today, with $10,000 going to the defeated, and $25,000 to the victor. The match was conducted in a private room, displayed on closed-circuit television for a live audience of Scrabble players, and taped for an ESPN special scheduled to debut Sunday, 3 October. A panel of experts (Joel Sherman, Marlon Hill, Robin Pollock Daniel, Chris Cree and André Ornish) provided running commentary as the audience kibitzed the games, cheered, booed, and called out their plays of choice.

Gibson goes down in the first two games. If you want to look at how they turned out in detail, the competition website has a detailed breakdown that you can flip through move by move. Suffice to say, Game 1 is conceded when a tight board prevents a bingo, and never really opens up. Gibson: 328, Wright: 365. Game 2 is a much closer one, with Gibson taking the lead at one point with a beautiful comeback bingo, PERIODiD for 82. The critical turning point is when he then exposes an A while holding the other ones left, with all the U’s already played – a Q-stick situation, only the open A allows Trey to play it off. This already close game really comes down to the wire, and Trey’s control of the last S in the endgame pushes him over with a hook to make URDS and ATOMICS. Gibson: 344, Wright: 355.

Game 3 is where it gets interesting.

Trey takes an early lead with two back-to-back bingos, LAKIEST and cALUTRON. cALUTRON through the L is considered by many to be an inferior play to ARgONAUT or AeRONAUT through the A, which hit two double word scores and do not open the O column for a potential triple-triple, but it pays off in the long run. Gibson captures the triple on the top-right with BOING, and Trey’s definition of the blank as a C (which makes no two-letter words, and thus takes no parallel hooks) defends the entire top left of the board until very late in the game, when Gibson plays TORc.

Despite the thunderous start, though, Gibson works his way up with a few big plays until the game can once again be considered close (he trails 287-304), at which point all hell breaks loose.

A bit of background: as per a controversial settlement that the National Scrabble Association made with ESPN, one of the stipulations agreed upon by participants in the tournament was that should they make the final, certain words they can normally play cannot be shown on television due to broadcast regulations, and thus would become unplayable. (Jen Bond and Ethan Hoddes should remember this well from Round 4 of Waterloo DDT.) Now, ESPN never actually defines what constitutes ‘offensive’, and it is up to the NSA to provide the participants with a more specific guideline as to what cannot be played.

Before I proceed, I should back up even further and gloss over an important historical note. You may have seen a green book entitled The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, Third Edition in your local bookstore. That book, casually referred to as the OSPD3, is actually not the word source that governs the game at the tournament level. The reason is that when the OSPD3 was published back in 1994, 167 words present in prior editions were expurgated on the grounds of being offensive due to a whole chain anti-defamation lobbying in the public and executive decisions over at Hasbro. These were not just your standard four-letter expletives and their various inflections, but also racial slurs like WOP, SPIC and DARKIE. Tournament players were furious, arguing that the contexts and definitions of words have no relevant value to the game, when their use is intrinsically nothing but a mathematical matter of combinatorics. The result was a production of an Official Word List, or OWL, in 1998 – just a list of words without definitions, but including the omissions, and only distributed within the competitive circuit for tournament use.

The NSA’s decision regarding the ESPN agreement was that the disallowed words in the final would be the ones removed from the standard OSPD. That is to say, it doesn’t matter if NIGGERS is the best strategic move – you have to play SERGING, GINGERS or SNIGGER, or the play will be removed from the board as if it were a challenged phony. (This leads to some interesting prohibitions – REDSKINS, for instance, which ESPN certainly has no problem with come every football season.) As an added measure to prevent this from causing too much trouble, players are given the option of consulting a director about whether or not a proposed move is offensive prior to making it, with no penalty.

So there we are back in the audience watching Game 3 on a large projection screen, and Trey is in trouble. His lead is thinning, and he holds BIFLUVZ. So he does what almost any stategically-conscious player in the thirty rounds of the main event would have done in that position: pay LEZ through the trailing E in EERIE, landing the Z on a triple letter score for a quick 32 points, crippling the potential of the right side of the board as a bingo zone and playing off two out of five consonants while keeping his vowels. This is the best play.

The crowd is in an uproar of jeers and boos as they see LEZ, better known as a slang term for ‘lesbian’, removed from the board. Play stops, and an official shows up on screen to explain the ruling to the players. There’s no sound, so all the information the audience has to rely on is what is passed on to the commentators – and it’s not pretty. As it turns out, ESPN decided that they didn’t have a problem with LEZ after all, as they probably interpreted the agreement as referring to the more common four-letter expletives and inflections I mentioned earlier. For a moment, it seemed like the ruling would be reversed.

At this point, everybody in the viewing room is standing and arguing or figuring out what just happened, and then comes the first announcement convening an emergency five-minute meeting of the NSA’s Advisory Board. Moments later, they call in the Rules Committee. Play has been interrupted for a full ten minutes by the time the final decision is handed down: LEZ comes off the board and the players have their clocks turned back, but unlike a regular challenge, Trey does not lose his turn and gets a chance to make another play. He makes GUV for 7 instead, and it leaves the triple word score volatile for the rest of the game.

As if that were not enough excitement for one game, this one is a thrill that remains uncertain and undecided all the way to the last move. With AIO in the bag, Trey holds AENOPST; Gibson, whose turn it is, holds EEERRT? – which could have made several different bingos into TORc had Trey not made an unbelievably effective blocking play with FILO the previous move.

What Gibson does next will undoubtedly be debated for weeks to come by those far more qualified to discuss it than I am, but the consensus is that the best move was RE at 3A, placing the E over the F. This creates a lane for a bingo down the B column beginning with A, E, I or O – while leaving a second lane open on the right side of the board, tacking an S to the end of GUV. Even if Trey plays a bingo himself, he would have to draw the remaining tile out of the bag, and Gibson would have a chance to bingo back and catch up.

But holding three E’s, and with the other E unseen (though the audience knows Trey has it), Gibson plays off two of them with REE at 2A instead. It is just his luck that this hands Trey a bingo lane on a silver platter: TEOPANS at B1 for 76 points, and it’s over. In spite of holding bingo-prone tiles himself, the bag is empty, Trey’s rack is empty, and Gibson cannot make a counterplay. The score is 328-429, and in a thrilling 3-0 series sweep, Trey Wright is crowned the National Scrabble Champion.

Now, don’t get me wrong – David Gibson is one of the best players in the world, and he has the record to show for it – but his experiencing the same problems that slapped me around the whole tournament in the series that counted the most was heartbreaking to watch, and certainly instills a sense of perspective. Closing the board instead of opening for a comeback bingo, letting the opponent play off a stranded Q, emptying the bag and setting up the opponent for a bingo on the out-play – all these things should sound familiar to anyone who has been following the previous posts on my own collapse in Division 3.

The acceptance speeches by the two contestants were tearful, passionate and representative of the love of a game and its players beyond what most people would understand of what is one of the greatest and certainly most overlooked competitive subcultures I’ve seen. I’m proud to belong to this community – now, could I please draw some decent tiles?

You know that part in Spider-Man 2 when Peter Parker loses his super spider-powers? And you know how in a later segment, he soars off a rooftop with unfettered elation that they seem to have returned, only to take a plunge into the parking lot below? That pretty much describes my tournament.

Below are the last six games I played at this year’s Nationals, but they come with the disclaimer that precisely none of them demonstrate how to play the game properly.

Round 24 is with Rose Noel, who points out her name’s unfortunate anagram, “one loser”. Sadly for me, that is not the case:

An early bingo, DeLATED for 71, puts her well in the lead. The lead grows as I squander a few turns struggling to balance my rack by dumping the less desirable tiles, and I still trail by a significant margin even when I come across an opportunity to bingo with INVOICES for 78. I play TIC at M2 to open a bingo lane in an effort to catch up. Here, my opponent makes a mistake: holding AEHRSS? (which makes 30 bingos), she plays HASSlER* down M9 between MIX and PAIN, but I challenge it off. Instead of blocking that lane, however, I give up on trying to find a bingo in DDEIORR (there are none) and block the E-hook over TIC, a far more probable bingo lane. She returns to the position where she tried HASSlER* and as she fails to locate the other bingos that fit (such as bASHERS), she plays off the blank in HAtER. That scores 47 points, and is a game-winning move itself; my remaining plays are fairly weak, and the score is hardly respectable: 297-393.

Round 25 vs. Muriel Sparrow-Reedy:

This is not unlike what happened in Round 23 yesterday. While I spent my time making mediocre balancing plays and exchanging my way out of racks that refused to cooperate (GLNOQRS, for one), Muriel leapt ahead with two big plays: DENTURE for 77, and the bingo-sized SQUaT for 73. She uses the Q, Z, J and X in big plays, and despite ending up with an S and a blank near the end, I am well out of range, and she blocks all the openings she can. Holding AEOSTU? in my last rack, I stare at the row above FLING for a few minutes trying to visualize a bingo that hooks an O over GIVE; there are none. The weak plays near the end of the game leave me in the dust as I go down 281-396.

A three-game slump with scores under 300, at this level of competition, is a catastrophe. Bad luck and bad plays both shoulder the responsibility.

I miss Round 26 due to a bye in my odd-numbered division; in the record, it counts as a 50-point win, though ratings do not take this into account. It is by this happenstance alone that it looks like I score another victory, as my record goes up to a poor 9-17 (-105).

Round 27 is a rematch with Jamila Atcha, against whom I had my sole win on Tuesday:

My opponent plays two common stem bingos (URANiTE and AIGrETS) to my one (SENARII), but at the end of the game, it starts boiling down to the Q again. Unbeknownst to me, she dumps it in the bag in a late exchange; I play it safe, reducing the high-scoring spots for Q plays without making one completely impossible. Sure enough, I pick up the Q, and fail to recover my deficit in the last few plays. It’s an average game but the continuation of a far-less-than-average losing streak, 338-391.

Falling even further down into the bottom tables for the final session, the afternoon begins with Round 28 against Nick Fall:

My first mistake is accepting my opponent’s one bingo, aUREATES* for 66; I knew AUREATE was good, but it does not take an S. I catch up with a phony of my own, AVIDEST* (it should have been DATIVES, or better yet, VISTAED on a double-double) for 82 points. Despite staying close for most of the game, I fall behind when I waste a few turns on low-scoring dumps, like getting rid of my G’s in EGG for 9 points. Meanwhile, he pulls ahead with big plays like rIOJA on a triple for 42, and soars to a much larger margin than could have been envisioned just a few turns earlier. The one saving grace of this matchup was that I did indeed get to play the word NICK. Final score: 304-403.

Round 29 vs. Carla Chase:

I draw power tiles in this game, but at all the wrong times, and hold on to them at the expense of the rest of my rack. Carla pulls ahead with two big consecutive plays, WUTHER on a triple for 54, extended to WUTHERING for another 48. From there, she starts blocking like crazy – wise, as I have a number of stem bingos on my rack, and I eventually end up accumulating both blanks and an S. Somehow, even with a rack that normally guarantees a bingo, she blocks in all the right places, even with very low-scoring moves. We both know that the fate of the game rests on whether or not I can play all seven of my tiles at once, and with two blanks and five one-point tiles on my racks near the end, I could not take advantage of her low-scoring turns to catch up with big plays. The endgame is weak, consisting of many single-digit moves, and I post my lowest score of my appearance at this tournament as I go down yet again, 280-356.

The last match I play is Round 30 with Devonna Gee:

This is the one where things finally come together. I pull ahead with SEEDIeR for 67, and follow it up with VOX for 44 and MAZE for 51, leaving her in the dust. It’s a clearly imbalanced game, but this time, my opponent is the one in the unlucky position, hands tied in every which way with every kind of knot. It’s my one decent game of the day, but with only one bingo on the board, the score remains modest: 363-260. Winning a game, at this point, is a relief.

It shouldn’t have to be. With all the analysis I have afforded the games I’ve played in the past four days, the one conclusion that can be drawn is this: I could be a lot better. Normally, I am – but even then, I can be better still. Sure, a lot of problems can be blamed on the tiles – bad draws for one player, a chain of opportune moments for another; but what makes someone truly an expert is when he is dealt all the wrong letters, and does fancy tricks with them anyway. Aside from the endgame giveaways in three or four of my rounds, most of the twenty games I lost were due to lousy midgame plays and unsuccessful attempts to restore a proper consonant-vowel balance within the seven tiles I hold, sometimes neglecting that balance far more than I can safely do.

Winning the last game, however, did entitle me to pick up and beta-test a new design of a tournament Scrabble board that will likely become the new tournament standard for the next National Championship. But that’s another story for another day.

The big show is tomorrow, when top two Division 1 finishers David Gibson and Trey Wright square off in a best-of-five for the title and a $25,000 paycheque.

So much for getting back on track. The third day of the tournament, Rounds 16 to 23, constituted a disaster on the scale of the first eight rounds, and dismantled any hopes of finishing even in the top half of the division for good. With the last seven rounds to go tomorrow, all I can hope to do is pull off another winning streak to save some face – and for that matter, my rating.

First came Round 16 with Judith Ford:

I get away with a phony on the opening play, NUNU* (as opposed to allowable U-dumps like JUJU, LULU, MUMU and TUTU), but Judith takes an early lead with EXTERNES for 68, which I unsuccessfully challenge. She later told me it was a guess extrapolated from the fact that INTERNES is acceptable. It takes me several turns before I get back on pace with fATIGUE for 67, and I trail her within a recoverable 40 points throughout the midgame. What really kills me in this game is her ENSiGNS through a very difficult position in the N column between ELL and the unchallenged IRIDIA*, subsequently followed by my taking the bottom-right triple word score with HOSE and leaving the one in the A column open for a big insurance play of hers, VATIC for 42. It felt very much like a Requisite Unlucky Game, as I drew only the blank in fATIGUE and an S I blew early with WOOFS to turn over a bad rack, and she made use of the eight power tiles she had. If only I knew. Regardless, this was my biggest loss of the day, 313-403.

Round 17 vs. Robin Torrance:

This one was truly a fight to the finish, possibly lost in a miscalculation but perhaps unwinnable, given the state of things in the endgame. Most of it the round was spent playing catchup to Robin’s 82-point GRADErS, but I pulled in close again with RINGLET for 66 followed by JET on the opened triple for 34. Both of us are close to a game-winning bingo near the end with the S-hook on TOYON, but Robin plays it safe and closes it by dumping TINES. GREEDIER is no bingo, but a play I successively made through TINES to try and draw some high-point tiles now that bingos were out of the picture. XU for 38 was a shocker, but it was really a race to draw the X and play it on the volatile double word score above the U.

With the game sitting at 277-315, the bag empty and holding CEIIKS?, I consider my options. My tracking sheet tells me that Robin holds BEHILSV, I think of ICKIEr down B10, leaving me with an S but opening the triple for a potential parallel counterplay with the H I knew he still had. So instead I go for the higher-scoring ShIRK (36 points), knowing that he would likely play VIE, but calculating that it would not provide him with enough. What I did not consider – in the first of many such endgame oversights today – was that he would also play off the S to make VIES for 30. Because there were plenty of spots left where he could score very well with the H, I had to play off all my tiles; the best play I found was FICE for a measly 12. With a bonus of 16 for BHL on his rack, I lose by a hair, 341-345.

Round 18 is a rematch with Susan Rhea, who ended my winning streak in Round 15 yesterday:

This game is the very definition of what it means to get off to a rough start. My opening draw is the discouraging AEEEIU?. I keep the blank and an E and pass my first turn to toss AEEIO in the bag – only to get EEIIO in return. I toss five again, picking up all consonants. As I was already down by 92 points, I decided to get on the scoreboard with WE, unwisely leaving myself with no vowels but gambling on their abundance given that I just returned so many to the pool. I fight my way through a few vowel-free racks before a lucky draw gives me SURfING for 75, which still left me behind, but put me back in contention. But three turns later, Susan finishes me off with ZINNIA hooked onto AX to make ZAX, a play that lands on a triple for 64 points.

I stare at ETHOSES for a bit, a potential comeback bingo sitting on my rack, but shy away from playing it off because I reason that ETHOS should pluralize to ETHOI* (it doesn’t); checking afterwards, ETHOSES turns out to be good. But she holds the J and the Q in her last rack, and I have a very slim chance of pulling ahead if I can stick her with both – but with two T’s open, I can’t stop her from playing off the Q in QAT. In spite of drawing all four S’s, the only one that sees good use is the one in the bingo I played, and I lose the third straight game of the morning, 318-391.

Round 19 vs. Karen Fishman:

Now, the first three losses I can blame on luck all I want, but there’s no excuse for the blunder I made at the end of this one. I trail for most of the game – she gets off NASTIEST for 60 and AZO for 42; late in the game, I play AIM to take a triple word score before she does, but it’s an incorrect guess, as she slaps an X on a nearby triple-letter for a 50-point XU. But I recuperate right away with TIeRING for 62 with nine tiles in the bag, knowing that while there was a chance I could end up with the Q, I was also as likely to draw a blank. I get the blank, and the bag empties with the Q in her hands, and every A and U on the board. Planning to stick her with the Q and eke out a victory, I play CaN for 28 on the triple up top – but I inexplicably miss the one obvious spot where the Q is playable. She wraps the S and the Q around the U in XU to make SUQ and FATES, and without the Q-stick bonus on my side, I have to concede yet another match. This one is a close shave, 354-371, lost on account of being completely blind.

Round 20 vs. Raymond Slaughter:

The one bingo on the board, REPORtED, falls on my side for 62. Raymond runs dry in the midgame, allowing me to pull ahead to a sizable lead. The endgame is a coffin waiting to be nailed, AANOSU? on my rack and EEIMNSX on his. There is exactly one improbable move I can make, just one, that would give him a shot at rebounding to a win. See it? I sure didn’t. Sure enough, I somehow reason my way to a ridiculous play – NAOs at 4B, hoping to play out with EAU at D6, thinking that the best he would manage is NIX with the X on a triple-letter – not enough. He thinks for a few minutes; my eyes suddenly widen as I realize my mistake – I created the one spot where he could play out with EXAMINES through the A. A second later, he does just that for 88 points, which was soon followed by exclamation marks and silent cries of “Stupid!” and “Pay attention!” scribbled in angry capital letters on the scoresheet with arrows pointing every which way. For the second game in the row I give away an assured victory, 336-354.

My opponent in Round 21 is Jamila Atcha:

This game starts slowly, with tile exchanges on both sides at various points and only one bingo, Jamila’s LEADING for 71. When I start catching up, she pulls ahead again with RANDIES for 69, but I bingo right back with a double-blank rack, SHEarED for 79, taking a 280-262 lead. Then comes something that damn near gives me a heart attack or two: holding ACEHIMR, she lays down CREAMISH* through the S in SHeaRED for a triple-triple and announces the score for that one turn – 221 points. Most living room players don’t score much more than that in an entire game. But I challenge it off, and breathe a huge sigh of relief. I see from her tiles that she could play CASH for a lot of points, so I block with KIST for 39. Neither of us saw the legitimate bingo she had going through a triple word score, CHIMERAS, which would have sealed a three-bingo win for her as well, though not by so incredible a difference. She never fully recovers from the turn she lost on the CREAMISH* gamble, and four consecutive plays each over 30 points put me way ahead. I end my six-game losing streak with my first win of the day, 435-360.

Round 22 vs. Jeff Myers:

An early blank bingo apiece (my INSTANTs on a double-double for 78, his TEXtILE for 70) leave the game almost even. I fall behind when I try a phony, PICTS*, on the triple in the bottom right – Jeff took it instead with HIRED after he challenged it off. He pulls further ahead with GEEZ and DEAFER back-to-back, both for 42, and not even sticking him with the Q can save the game for me. No winning streak for me this time, as I lose 351-387.

The last game of the day was Round 23 with Betty Cornelison:

This is the tightest board I have played in the tournament, with no bingos on either side. As the stepladder formation from the centre to the bottom left demonstrates, it was an extremely closed board with the occasional weak single-digit play on the part of either player. Without any bingo lanes, the S’s and blanks are not a factor in this game. Unfortunately, Betty draws the Z, X, J and Q, all of which she uses to make strong plays, such as ZINC for 47 and SOX for 40. The other six power tiles fall on my side, but four of them only come at the end; my final rack is RSSOE??, which makes no less than 164 different bingos. But with no place to play – DUO, RUT and QAT sealed off the board – I had to dump ROSE for 36 and SuQ for 11, which left me with my lowest score after 23 rounds: as 293-330 defeat.

After three days of play, I now sit at a devastating 8-15 (+56) record, ranked 158th in the 169-strong Division 3. The top players in the division are already well over 15 wins, so I have no hope of catching them at this point. Bad luck can only be blamed for so much; it was endgame stupidity that pulled me back down today, and there are many hard lessons to be learned here. Next: the exciting conclusion as I play Rounds 24-30 to wrap up my participation in the 2004 Nationals.