From: jac@doe.carleton.ca (James A. Cherry)
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 11:46:39 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Joel on "Good Morning America"
Message-id: <199711261646.QAA07543@paraguay.doe.carleton.ca>
Here's a transcript of Joel Sherman's appearance on "Good Morning America" on ABC, Tue Nov 25 1997, 08:45EST. These are three of Joel's fifteen minutes of fame, I guess.
[Shot of regular Scrabble board spelling out GOOD i7 MORNING 8h AMERICA l4]
CHARLIE: At the World Scrabble Championships this past weekend in Washington, D.C., competitors from 36 countries were wrestling with words like YAUPER$ and GUAIAC while competing for the title and the $25,000 first prize. In the end, it came down to two Americans -- New Yorkers, in fact --
[while Charlie continues talking, close-up of Joel's hand in the final
game on a T on his rack]
[overhead shot of board with Joel placing the T to spell TA]
[Joel hits his clock, Matt dumps STL on the board]
[shot of Joel writing the score, Matt reaching over to shake his hand]
-- and one two-point word, TA. I mean, that finished it up, but there were a lot of other there words that were key. There's actually the winning board; we have a copy of the winning board here. The world champion is Joel Sherman. He is with us now. Congratulations to you.
JOEL: Thank you, Charlie.
CHARLIE: I'm looking at the board, words like GLOZE -- I mean, I don't know that word, I have no idea. Do you have to know the definitions of these words, or do you just remember --
JOEL: Actually, it's more important just to know they exist. At the very top levels, you have to know the existence of thousands of thousands of words. There's almost 100,000 that really you have to absorb.
CHARLIE: What if somebody puts down a word and you don't think it's real?
[overhead shot of final board at Mayflower]
JOEL: You can challenge it, and if it's not real, then the word judge will look it up in the official Scrabble dictionary, and if it's no good, the player loses a turn, takes his letters back.
CHARLIE: Joel, there's a little thing in the paper every day called Jumble --
JOEL: Mm hmm?
CHARLIE: -- with four-letter and five-letter words that I have to wrestle with. You just look at that thing and you see 'em, right?
JOEL: Yes, I can do that mentally. I don't even have to write them out. [Charlie smiles incredulously] I've been doing that thing since I was a kid.
CHARLIE: It's a different turn of mind. And I thought I'd test Joel.
JOEL: Mm hmm.
CHARLIE: And so we wrote three combinations of letters up here with seven-letter words.
[points to paper on easel with NNGMRIO, RWHTEAE, SMRCAAE]
And I said to him, "You know, this may take some time, so you can take an advance look at these" -- I wrote them during the commercial. And he said, "Oh no, you don't need to give me any time, I already know them." [Joel chuckles] You just looked at these, and you knew what the words were?
JOEL: Yes.
CHARLIE: This first word is...?
JOEL: Top one is MORNING, of course.
CHARLIE: Important to us on this show. And this one is...?
JOEL: The second one has two words in it: it's WEATHER, of course --
CHARLIE: First [unclear], right.
JOEL: -- and it also is WREATHE, for the Christmas holiday coming up.
CHARLIE: [laughs] We just knew WEATHER, but he picked up the extra word. And this one...?
JOEL: And the bottom one is CAMERAS. [chuckles]
CHARLIE: [genuinely incredulous] How do you do that? How do you do that? [laughing is heard off-camera]
JOEL: It's...somehow, in my mind, I can just see the letters circling and suddenly falling into place.
CHARLIE: Now, if you put a seven-letter word down, then you get a big fifty-point bonus, right?
JOEL: Yes, that's correct.
CHARLIE: But I notice there aren't too many seven-letter words on here, a couple. Is it rare that you actually get to do that in a high-level game?
[overhead shot of winning board at the Mayflower]
JOEL: Well...we tend to average close to two times a game per player.
CHARLIE: Really?
JOEL: Yeah.
[back to studio]
CHARLIE: And is there...do you play strategy? In other words, do you not only have to think of a word -- like, I'm just trying to think of three-letter words that I can put on, sometimes four-letter words -- but, uh, I'm just trying to think of that -- but do you also, when you're playing at the top level, have to think defensively, where there might be a place --
JOEL: Absolutely.
CHARLIE: -- that your opponent might be going toward?
JOEL: Sometimes there are definitely times when you would want to do that. The darker-colored squares on the board, we call them "premium squares" --
CHARLIE: Right.
JOEL: -- that triple letters or triple words can be very hot spots if you have a tile like a J or an X or a Z that scores a lot of points at once. Then, you're talking about getting it three times, possibly --
CHARLIE: Right.
JOEL: -- or if you can play it in two directions, forming a cross word --
CHARLIE: Right.
JOEL: -- then it could even be six times the value of that big tile.
CHARLIE: So you try to block your opponent from getting those premium squares?
JOEL: Yes, definitely.
CHARLIE: Heh. [shakes Joel's hand] Well, congratulations to you. I think it's terrific. I think it's terrific that he went to the thing. I'm absolutely amazed -- I write these things down, he looks at them...piece of cake for him. Joel Sherman, congratulations.
JOEL: Thank you, Charlie.
CHARLIE: Enjoy. We take a break; when we come back, Garth Brooks takes you for a spin in his Cowboy Cadillac.