Word warriors: Greenwich the scene of Scrabble battle

GreenwichTime.com: Word warriors: Greenwich the scene of Scrabble battle
The Hyatt Regency's Riverside Ballroom, normally the setting for festive gatherings, was as quiet as a tomb on Saturday morning. The only sounds in the large Old Greenwich hotel space were the soft murmur of voices announcing scores and the seemingly constant jingling of tiles.

At one point, someone broke the near-silence with a loud "Great game!" but was immediately shushed by half the room.

And you thought your family's Scrabble matches were intense.

This weekend, the family-friendly word game was almost unrecognizable as the Hyatt hosted the Old Greenwich Scrabble tournament, a first-time Greenwich event that drew 64 competitors from all over the Northeast playing for cash prizes. They were joined by 10 separate competitors for the simultaneous Newcomers tournament, which was intended to introduce amateur players to the world of tournament Scrabble.

How pressure-packed is the competition between the veteran players? Let's just say organizers probably could have used a few of the hotel's "Do not disturb" signs to shield laser-focused players.

"The one thing about spectating is that it's a privilege," tournament organizer Cornelia Guest said of non-players getting close to view matches. "Sometimes they'll shoo you away -- it bothers them."

Unlike regular play, tournament Scrabble is a one-on-one game in which opponents play with a timer that allots 25 minutes of play to both players. This tournament features 16 rounds of play, meaning more than 500 separate games of Scrabble will be played over the course of the three-day event that concludes Sunday. With the recent end of two annual tournaments held in nearby Stamford, Guest hoped the Greenwich event would pull in those participants in lower Fairfield County who would have normally competed in Stamford. Participation was high Saturday, and was certainly not limited to Fairfield County residents; competitors came from all over the Northeast, from Boston to Philadelphia, and one player even traveled from Texas.

Elena Abrahams, of Old Greenwich, was the lone Greenwich resident competing in the main tournament. Not yet a seasoned player, the tournament is her first competitive Scrabble experience. Despite her amateur status, Abrahams was holding up pretty well against her opposition.

"The people here are pretty much at my level," Abrahams said.

While new to tournament Scrabble, she is no stranger to the game; for many years, she has played fairly competitive games of Scrabble with a group of friends.

But while Abrahams has the experience and practice to become a decent tournament player, she does not plan to take the next step in the typical Scrabble regimen: study.

"A lot of it is practice," Guest said of becoming an expert Scrabble player. But studying is also necessary, she explained. "You need to know your two- and three-letter words."

Other tournament players like Adam Ginzberg, of Philadelphia, echoed that advice, also citing the importance of memorizing not only two- and three-letter words -- like "xu," an aluminum coin and monetary unit of Vietnam, and "myc," a gene that transforms a normal cell into a cancerous cell, and "eek," the sound of a squeak of fear -- but also four- and five-letter words if one wishes to become a better player.

When Ginzberg started playing tournaments with a friend a few years ago, he was unsatisfied with his poor results, but knew that there were steps that could be taken to improve his game.

"We started getting motivated to do better," he said. Ginzberg's study regimen has since expanded from shorter words to the longer, so-called "bingo" words of seven or eight letters, which allow players to clear their slate and add an extra 50 points to the word score. These longer words are often the key to a tournament player's success.

"But more than half the words I play I don't know," he said, acknowledging one of tournament Scrabble's great curiosities. At a certain point, the meaning of Scrabble words no longer matters for good Scrabble players; the mere fact of their existence is enough.

"It really is irrelevant," said Joe Edley, of Port Jefferson, N.Y., on players knowing the meanings of longer words. "I don't want to clutter my brain."

Edley's advice is not be taken lightly by other players; in Scrabble circles, he is something of a legend.

Currently, Edley is the only three-time National Scrabble champion, having won in 1980, 1992 and 2000. He is also one of few people to achieve the unique feat of memorizing the Scrabble dictionary.

"I was always good at games," Edley said. "So when the Scrabble dictionary came out, I thought I could be the best."