MISSING PERSONS
It seems there may be some familiar faces absent from the World Championships in Las Vegas in November. A former World Champion, a high flying Brit and a Kiwi mega-star are all destined to be unable to qualify for this years tournament.
Here are the figures on how many rated tournament games each of the top rated players in the UK played during the year 2000.
| Player |
Games |
| Brett Smitheram |
62 |
| David Webb |
71 |
| Andrew Fisher |
78 |
| Andrew Perry |
95 |
| Allan Simmons |
67 |
| Gareth Williams |
116 |
| Andrew Davis |
86 |
| Andrew Cook |
87 |
| David Acton |
122 |
| John Grayson |
62 |
| Russell Byers |
70 |
| Helen Gipson |
87 |
| Femi Awowade |
135 |
| Phil Appleby |
89 |
1993 World Champion Mark Nyman and top player Clive Spate did not play 60 games in the year (with a minimum of 20 in the last six months of the year) so they will not be considered for the UK WSC team unless Mattel are dishing out any wild cards.
Another notable player who may be missing from the WSC2001 is New Zealand star Nigel Richards. Nigel is currently not meeting the qualification criteria since he has been living and playing in Malaysia for some time. Nigel has to go back to New Zealand if he wants to qualify and he is virtually part of the Malaysian landscape now, so this seems unlikely.
With the US Qualification tournament on June 8-10 in Bedford, TX we may discover some more big-name absentees soon.
*****
KENYAN WSC QUALIFICATION
Its crunch time in the Kenyan WSC Qualifcation race. The Kenyans do not have a Scrabble ratings system and run a series of six tournaments to determine the entrants for the World Championship. A player's best three ranks over the six events are totalled and compared, with lower obviously being better.
There are 4 qualification places for Kenya. With only one tournament left Manase Otieno has virtually joined Omullo and Gongolo for a World Championship place. The 4th remaining slot currently held by Litunya is still open and will be hotly contested by the players ranked 5-9. The rest have already bowed out will merely be spoilers in the final match.
Top ten as per positions attained in best 3 tournaments
| # |
Name |
Best |
2nd Best |
3rd Best |
Total of Best 3 |
| 1 |
Omullo Dennis |
1 |
2 |
2 |
5 |
| 2 |
Gongolo Michael |
1 |
1 |
4 |
6 |
| 3 |
Manase Otieno |
2 |
2 |
6 |
10 |
| 4 |
Litunya Patrick |
3 |
5 |
5 |
13 |
| 5 |
Mwangi Willy |
3 |
4 |
7 |
14 |
| 6 |
Macharia Kimani |
1 |
8 |
8 |
17 |
| 7 |
Akinyi Odinga |
3 |
7 |
9 |
19 |
| 8 |
Assesa Dickson |
4 |
7 |
8 |
19 |
| 9 |
Manyasa Joash |
2 |
8 |
11 |
21 |
| 10 |
Njoroge Stanley |
1 |
4 |
19 |
24 |
*****
TOURNAMENT WITH A TWIST
A novel twist on Scrabble provided the fun behind a fundraiser for the Ozarks Literacy Council. The MSO's "maze man", John Knoderer, was on hand as a judge at the "Scrabble Challenge 2001" in Springfield, Missouri.
In the Scrabble Challenge, groups of people cooperate around Scrabble Boards and compete to find the best possible board as a team. Each table starts with the same word on the board and EVERY TILE face up on the table. In other words, if they started with "READING" on the board, they had 93 tiles on their "rack."
Every table had exactly 30 minutes to fill the board by making valid words, one move at a time, using any tiles of their choice from the pool on the table. One word had to be placed, written down and scored before the next word could be placed. When the emcee called STOP, all placement stopped, and any leftover tiles were deducted from the total score.
Teamwork in the Scrabble Challenge as the MSO judge looks on
Since this was a fundraiser event, there was another neat feature - any tile except J, Q, X and Z could be purchased for $2 each. If a group wanted one of the four premium letters, they could ask that their desired letter be auctioned off. The letter Z was purchased for $26 by the team that eventually won the first round.
The Mazemaster on the spot reports that the event was more fun than he imagined possible, and he plans to import it and make it a regular fixture in his local area.
The Round 1 winners scored 1247 with the high word OXYGENIC for 230 points.
*****
NOTABLE PERFORMANCES
Canada:
The weather was warming up for the Calgary Spring Tournament, AB on 24/25 March. However, in the tournament room some players were already hot hot hot! Nobody more so than Allan Simon. After months of sitting as top-rated in the second division and a few stalled attempts in division 1 in mini-tournaments, he finally broke through in the biggest way possible. Allan was the lowest rated in the division but had the tournament won with one round to spare! He deserves it too. The rating system had really not helped him until this point. His new rating will more accurately reflect his ability!
The top 3:
| Calgary AB, 24-25 March |
| 1 |
Allan Simon |
11/14 |
+525 |
| 2 |
Jeff Fleetham |
10/14 |
+456 |
| 3 |
George MacAulay |
9/14 |
+425 |
High Game - Albert Hahn 526
High Word - Bill Payne, HABITUES for 149 and Jeff Fleetham, PROFITED for 149
South Africa:
Well done to Pearl Seitz in Cape Town for winning the gruelling 23 game West Cape Round Robin tournament on 24/25 March 2001. She won with an excellent 18/23 and a huge spread of 1931. Pearl also scored the high word, GRANITES for 144.
The South African ratings system assigns an expected wins figure to each player based upon the strength of the field. Pearl was assigned an expected wins total of 18.2 as the field did not contain top Cape Names like Lanre, Neville and Gerald. So Pearl actually slipped 2 rating points after this exceptional performance. Some players have proposed adding points for position - so if a player came first out of 23, you should get 23 extra rating points.
The top 3:
| West Cape Round Robin, 24-25 March |
| 1 |
Pearl Seitz |
18/23 |
+1931 |
| 2 |
Carol Parker |
18/23 |
+989 |
| 3 |
Debbe Hossy |
16/23 |
+1130 |
High Game - Jean Verster 608
High Word - Pearl Seitz, GRANITES for 144
Australia:
Congratulations to Karen Richards for her 2nd place, 10 out of 14 in the South Australia Championship on 24/25 March 2001. She led the tournament after the first day with a fantastic 7/8 performance but veteran Bob Jackman's experience won through to give him the top spot in Section A.
The top 3:
| South Australian Championship, 24-25 March |
| 1 |
Bob Jackman |
11/14 |
+947 |
| 2 |
Karen Richards |
10/14 |
+211 |
| 3 |
Geoff Wright |
9/14 |
+602 |
High Game - Carmel Dodd 546
High Word - Beryl Bourne, REINVADE for 149
UK:
In the Lothian Tournament, Scotland, at the end of February, Neil Scott won Division A. This made Neil's record 1,2,1,1 for consecutive tournaments. Not bad for a player not considered a "high flyer". These performances sent his rating soaring up to 182, breaking into the UK's top 30.
*****
NOW YOU SEE IT.. NOW YOU DONT!
The following rules stumper occured on Monday 19th March at the Mohawk Valley club, NY:
The word AYE is on the board, with the E on a TWS. Player A puts down WINTERED through the E, but inexplicably thinks better of the play before hitting his clock and takes it back, including the E! Now he has eight letters in his rack and uses some of them to play a non-bingo elsewhere on the board.
Player B then makes a fairly high-scoring non-bingo by adding her own E to the AY on the board (tripling two words). At that point Player A realized that there had been an E there before, and with the director's help realized that he had taken it off and played his last play with eight letters in his rack.
The director just fished another E out of the bag and put it after the AY, making Player B play someplace else but not penalizing Player A. There is an argument that the director should have found a way to penalize Player A, even though Player B had hit her clock before his mistake was discovered. Since Player A's original hand (DEINRTW) was known, can one make him withdraw his play and lose his turn, keeping that hand? One might think so, since it's a correctable error, even if Player B never noticed it.
How would you rule on this one?
*****
ALISTAIR STEWART NOT KING OF THE BOARD
On the Monday afternoon UK television quiz show King of the Castle (aired 19th March 2001), host Alistair Stewart asked the question: "In what game does ZINKIFY score 158 and ZEPHYRS get you 152?" The contestant stayed mute for the duration when Alistair voiced the answer: "Scrabble".
Alistair or his writers seem to have got their maths a little wrong as neither ZIN(C)KIFY nor ZEPHYRS score 158 or 152 as either 4-timers or 9-timers or any other timers!
Unless you know different!!
*****
GAS LEAK AT DURHAM?
Peter Finley, director at the Durham Tournament 24/25 March 2001, reported a strange complaint at the close of play on Day One:
"there's too much farting at the back"
Curry shops and real ale houses in the Durham locale are being investigated.
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