The Word’s the Thing at Scrabble Contest

From first-time competitors to some of the biggest names in the game, 90 Scrabble players from six states were in Orange County over the weekend for a two-day tournament.

“Many players started at home with their parents, or in college, but it’s the competition that really gets them into the game,” said Gina Du Mez, organizer of the event Saturday and Sunday at the Atrium Marquis Hotel in Irvine.

“People travel all over the country to get to tournaments. We definitely become addicted,” said Du Mez, a director of the New York-based National Scrabble Assn., which boasts more than 10,000 members.

An estimated 33 million Americans play the trademarked game, in which letter tiles are given numerical values and used to form interlocking words.

At the weekend tournament, there were divisions for beginners, intermediates and experts. Seven games were played the first day and six the second, with top prizes going to those with the most wins and highest cumulative scores.

First place in the expert division and the top prize, $400, went to John Hart of Portland, Ore.

Capturing second in the division was one of the game’s celebrities, Mark Lansberg of Laguna Hills, who is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for scoring the most points in a tournament Scrabble game, 770.

The highest single-game scorer of the tournament was Gayle Wolford of Oregon, with 521 points.

Said Du Mez: “If you can score 450, that’s really good.”

Some of the more interesting--and accepted--words, which required rulings from the tournament judges, were “deuterium,” a hydrogen isotope used in nuclear reactors, and “serrula,” a kind of tooth used by spiders for chewing.

“We don’t have to know the definitions, as long as it’s in the dictionary,” Du Mez said. “Normally, we used the official Scrabble dictionary, but the judges had to go to Webster’s Fifth Edition for some of these.”

Also participating in the competition was Alan Stern of Los Angeles, who is listed in the Guinness book because he was Lansberg’s opponent in the record-breaking game. Their combined score of 1,108 is also a record for tournament play.

Stern provided one of the weekend’s lighter moments when he mentioned to friends that he had “gotten murdered” in a previous game. And when he returned to the competition, yellow police tape surrounded Stern’s Scrabble board, and his hands were drawn in chalk outlines.

For information about local Scrabble clubs and other upcoming tournaments, call (714) 586-2378.