From: Jim Geary <jaygee@primenet.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 18:02:35 -0700 (MST)
Subject: JG on DC
Message-id: <Pine.BSI.3.96.971204175908.12322A-100000@usr07.primenet.com>

TThe trip started ominously enough. The night before my flight, I dropped in on a new casino outside of Phoenix that just opened up that week. Got in a good game and didn't leave til 1am. Flight the next morning was at 6:45am, and I'd yet to pack anything. Three hours of sleep later, all was going smoothly, til I got on the freeway. Where does traffic come from at 5:45? Make it to the airport at 6:25 and am told by skycap that I'm history. Go straight to counter and am put on as standby on the next 7 (all completely booked) flights. Go to the airport bookshop and buy a paperback for the looming long day. Get back to the gate area and am on page 2 when I realize I've read this book before. Shrug. Glad I'm in such great mental state for the big tourney. Lucky for me, I had a rare instance of shedding good vibes to the clerk when I bought the book and was able to get my money back.

More good news as I get on the first flight to Cleveland instead of my original intermediary point, Houston. Do a quick turnaround there and actually end up in DC 30 minutes EARLIER than I would have had I made my originally scheduled flight. I'm hoping I can make this the leitmotif for the week: play bad, draw well.

Plane trip to Cleveland was uneventful as I reviewed OSW eights and cranked to BBC-Zep on the earphones. Second leg I was fortunate enough to have a salesman sitting next to me who spent the entire flight trying to sell me a $16 bottle ("at cost"!) of gasoline additive guaranteed to increase my mileage by 25%. Just the break I needed, as I narrowly avoid supplementing my 3 hours sleep.

The cab trip from the airport to the hotel was great. There's nothing in Phoenix to compare to the trees changing colors in the late afternoon in DC. Throw in driving by the Washington monument, Lincoln Memorial, etc and I felt like I had stepped onto another planet.

The Mayflower is a beautiful hotel. The NSA has done a great job the last four years with the venues for the premier tourneys, but this was a cut above. One of the little factoids omitted from Scrabble News about the Mayflower was that room 812 was Senator John F Kennedy's personal playpen in the late 50s. (I'm not making this up, Jane is all over this kinda stuff.) History buff that I am, I made prior arrangements and got said room.

Got one team game in with some WestUSA v EastUSA players. They stumbled into a miracle out in two completely ruining a nicely played game by the good guys. That ran into the reception and it was downstairs we went. The reception was ideal: free booze, short speeches and lots of spinach pastries. Dropped the little tidbit about room 812 on a few of the ladies present, but apparently many of them there were unbelievably in attendance with their husbands and eschewed the chance to be part of an historical recreation. Tried to get Mark Nyman to trade shots of American whiskey with me, but he said wait til Monday. The party was starting to look like a complete bust until I was introduced to a few of the media types. I promptly went into my Scrabble for sociopaths monologue and was pleasantly rewarded by the sight and sound of pens working in overdrive. Afterwards, went to a local AM radio station with Matt Graham and Marlon Hill at Matt's invitation and rocked the airwaves with tales of simulations and censorship. After all five listeners called in, our work was done and we jaked. Had no trouble falling asleep that night!

Waking up the next day wasn't hard at all. I was amped. As Charlie announced the first round pairings he stumbled on my opponent's name. Yes! My game plan was to avoid players whose first language was English. So far, so good. As we were exchanging information, he says, "oh American; you guys are the champs." You know it mack daddy. The shortsighted-ness of this plan was quickly revealed to me as I got drubbed. Uhoh. These guys are tough! One "color" story for that game: my opponent was wearing headphones with music while we played. I kinda had a problem with that (especially when he started singing along), but by the time I realized I had a problem I was down 100 points. I certainly didn't want to look pissy, so I just took my beating like a man. One of the directors said something to him afterwards (without my prompting), and that was that. Next two rounds same story. Playing players I had never heard of and getting killed. By lunchtime, I felt like Woody Allen in Love and Death -- "well, at least it didn't rain." I quickly learned in the first game that free challenges changes things at the most basic level of the game. Whereas in penalty challenges if I'm not 100% sure of a word, I often throw it down and put the ball in their court, this can't be done at the WSC. After this, I found myself questioning every play. Not the way I'm used to commanding the board.

I started drawing like a human being in the afternoon and climbed my way out of the deep end. By the end of the day, I was in the middle of the pack and optimistic (though perhaps not as cocky) as ever. I lost the first game the next morning, but then went on a streak winning 7 out of the next 8 to position myself at 10-6. The most interesting game I had was with Jere Mead. With three in the bag and me losing, I made a desperate 5-tile play PITCHED slotting a P at e-1, praying for a possible out in one pick, keeping GT while looking at Jere having seven of AELNORRSUU. Amazingly, I grabbed the ENO and had outplays in 4 different spots (TOEING, GOTTEN, COGENT thru PITCH, and TONGUE elsewhere). It took me a couple of minutes to realize my good fortune. By the time I had, Jere laid down SUTURAL thru the T in PITCHED, blocking all 4 spots simultaneously! Now I did something really dumb. I didn't even hold on SUTURAL. I'm pretty sure it's a word, but I never adjusted to the mentality of challenging anything short of CAT and DOG. Anyway, I played PONG up top (too scared to play PENGO) and won by 2. A very fortunate win, and what I hoped would be the theme for the rest of the day.

At this point I had played exactly one American, two Canadians, and zero Britainers. My goal before the tournament was to just finish with a winning record, so it looked like I was going to be happy. It was even conceivable at this point that if I were to win 4 or 5 of 5, that I'd be in the final. And just treading water might be good for some money. First game after lunch, I drew bad and didn't play so well either. Well, looks like I won't be in the final. Let's just play well and make a good showing. I got killed the next two games as well. My penultimate game was with Naween Fernando, who isn't old but is tough. I got up a little, he came back. Late I had the rack DEEPSU? with an S-hook at 15c. I saw SPEEDUP, but was only 90% sure so played SUPERED for six less points but still a virtual bingo lead. With even a slight penalty challenge, I lay down SPEEDUP. He got a big play on a six-tile overlap and then pulled the Z out of the bag, while I was sitting on CGILNTU. bleh. I was feeling my lack of SOWPODS experience in that ending, but I still think I saw more than him. Unfortunately, the Z was too much, and I lost by one point. Bummer. Losing this game put me out of the money and I don't think I was completely mentally on top of the last game. I still had to win that elusive 11th game to break .500, and this was the last chance. I was paired against Albert Hahn, who although rated 200 points below me OSPD, had drubbed me in a previous round showing off a fair amount of British, so I had no illusions. The game went horribly, I learned a new phony (the wrong way), and I finished 10-11. :~(

The winner of the final game got the set. The loser got two sets.

Just kidding. One anonymous player from Canada gave her set to one of the third-world players, and saw it on the secondary market not more than ten minutes later. That's cool. I certainly don't take it for granted the tremendous effort and expense some of the representatives incurred to get there. Anything to help is fine with me. I wish I had done that. I ended up lugging my board thru the hotel, onto the taxi, into the airport only to be told that 1) I had to check it, and 2) it would certainly get lost. The lady who was telling me this asked me if I had anything to do with the big Scrab Confab. I said yes, and asked her if she played. She said she did all the time on an old set (hint, hint?), and the deluxe set was hers. I wonder how much stuff she scores thus.

After the finals Monday, Matt, BrianC, Mark Nyman, David Boys and I played some low-stakes games in the hotel bar and drank beer. After Brian and David departed, M,M and I played anagrams, which Mark Nyman mopped up. I was probably exhausted, but Mark was just too tough, getting a couple OSPD-only words faster than us. After Matt left for his train, I went with Mark to Planet Hollywood to drink and swap anagrams. A dream date. He was joining the British team who graciously invited me to dinner with them. I was very glad to spend some time with them, as I had hoped to broaden my horizons and our sister nation's players had been staying at a different hotel during the tournament. I had this preconceived notion of the Brits tucked away in their little island playing OSW, and ignorant of things in American. This was blown away at the onset as David "Nar" Webb introduced himself to me and said, "Jim, pleasure to meet you, I have some questions about your web page." !!!!!! These guys ARE BOOKED UP. I think they lived OSPD for the last year or so; they were getting my puzzles that had OSPD-only answers quickly. These guys (and gals, sorry) are all way smart and great anagrammers and tough. I'm really surprised at how well the Americans did after meeting all the Britainers. These guys are also a lot more geographically compatible than there American counterparts, and plan to continue the work til 99. Hopefully, the top Americans can maintain focus as well.

But back to the tourney. Despite my huge disappointment at how I'd done, I was absolutely delighted that Matt and Joel made it to the finals. The games were well played given the tremendous pressure that must have been on the participants. Some have argued in these pages that the lack of OSW knowledge didn't hurt the American players as evidenced by their showing in the top 4 spots, but I'd have to say that this is not so. Had Matt known a common British word (BOWNED), he would've won game 2, going up 2-0 and putting tremendous pressure on GIJ. I'd say not winning the World Championship would be an example of being hurt by being an OSPD-only player. Just because the beneficiary was a fellow American, people shouldn't overlook the gravity of what occurred and why it did. My opinion on the folly of dictionary balkanization has been stated here before, so I won't beat anyone over the head, but people should realize that the World Championship may have been determined by a player knowing/not knowing a "foreign" five.

Meeting all the players from other countries was great. Playing contestants from Kenya, Israel, New Zealand, Malaysia.. it was like stamp collecting human beings. It was truly a pleasure meeting all the players from around the world who share our interest. I'll avoid taking the chance at forgetting to name someone by not naming anyone. Everybody who worked there did a great job as well. Nothing but good things to say about everyone and everything.

Sunday night, Jane and I went out to dinner where for an hour, she was a spectator to my emotional gamut: melancholy, resignedness, anger, regret, more anger, disbelief and finally resolve. Resolve. I resolve to bust ass for the next 8 months to win Chicago.

Jim Geary
jaygee at primenet dot com
http://www.primenet.com/~jaygee/