The 28th Brand’s
Crossword Game
King’s Cup
July 11–14, 2013

Go to: Commentary Games ALTERNATE GAMES LINK Players tsh Reports Scoreboard Standings Photos Prizes

Back to 2013 King's Cup Live Coverage

2013 King's Cup Commentary: Round 8

[ ]

Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Round 28, Round 29, Final Round 1, Final Round 2.


The first interesting rules adjudication of the day came in a game between Sandy Nang (USA) and Tony Hunt (AUS), where an S was knocked off the bottom right corner of the board, subsequently found on the table and erroneously returned to the bag. When the players noticed, one S was on the board (elsewhere), one player had one S and the other player had the other two Ses.

I could not return an S from the bag to the board, as there were none. I explained in as hypothetical terms as I could that it would be inappropriate even for me to look in the bag for it, as it would give an indication as to whether or not one player might have all the remaining Ses.

I was therefore faced with the choices of replacing the S as a 101st tile taken from a different set, or doing as an unpublished draft of the 2013 NASPA Rules propose and leaving the corner TWS empty and available for either player to reuse. The high value of the premium square and the fact that both players could make use of it underlined the difficulty with the latter choice. A player could deliberately remove a tile from a premium square with the intent of replaying it, evoking the ancient Tyler bug and violating the principle that a wrongdoer should not profit from their actions. But a director couldn't rule based on the possiblity of such profit without revealing information about the players' racks to each other. It seems safest to me in this case just to replace the tile and proceed with 101 tiles, but I look forward to the discussion that will ensue.

Immediately after that adjudication, we had a table failure, sending a full board of tiles to the floor. Thankfully, the board was full, and the game in question had been finished.

Then right after that, I was called over by two players who had discovered that they had neglected to replace two stray tiles when they had dropped the bag on the floor. There were three tiles left in the bag, not the five that there were supposed to be, and to complicate matters a little, one of them had made a tracking error. I counted the tiles myself to make sure which two of the three possible candidates needed to be put back in the bag, confirmed that they were the ones that onlookers had found nearby on the floor, and restored them to the bag.

The last round of the day is always fun.

Shahzaib Khatri (PAK) ends the day with the highest win of the event so far, 586-329 vs. Abdullah Abbasi (PAK). Both are younger players from the Pakistani school Scrabble system; Abdullah looks like he's about 12.

Nigel Richards (NZL) beats Marlon Prudencio (PHL) 488-442 to finish a perfect day, 8-0 +378. One game behind him are Siu Hean Cheah (SGP), Helen Gipson (Sco) and Taewan Sutthasin (THA).


© 2012 Thailand Crossword A-math and Kumkom Association. All rights reserved.

To report technical difficulties in reading this page, please contact webmaster John Chew at: poslfit@gmail.com