In a Word, Scrabble Fans Play for the Love of the Game
My one shining moment in Scrabble history was being stuck with a dreadful number of “A’s” and “Ls” and coming up with parallel. Short-lived glory: My wife immediately turned it into parallelogram--with a double-word score.
The National Scrabble Assn. ranks players on a sliding scale of up to 2,100 points. Experts are 1,800 and up, good players are in the 1,200 to 1,500 range. I doubt my game is past triple digits.
But I set out this week to watch a Scrabble club in action, to see how the champions do it. It turns out that you don’t have to be an expert to play in public. Players range from Gary Moss of Newport Beach, who lectures and has written books on the subject, to newcomers off the street.
When I first began to inquire about Scrabble clubs, I was told that I had to meet Penny Baker. She runs Club No. 34 based in Huntington Beach, touted as the oldest Scrabble club in Southern California. It’s been going 30 years. Baker also runs tournaments and organizes Scrabble parties on cruise ships to places such as Hawaii and Alaska. The next one is to Cabo San Lucas in October.
“I got started because I had a touch of dyslexia, and I thought this might help,” she told me. “Now I’m hooked.”
It’s easy to see why Baker, 68, of Laguna Hills, is so popular with her players. Club night this week fell on St. Patrick’s Day. She showed up dressed in green, with a green four-leaf clover painted between her eyes.
Her club meets each Tuesday at the International House of Pancakes on Beach Boulevard. Players do battle one-on-one, grouped by their level of expertise, so you won’t have to take on Gary Moss, who also plays there, on your first hand.
But even the average players take it seriously. They bring their Scrabble boards on little swivels, so you can face the words when it’s your turn. (At home, I always wind up with the seat where I’m looking at the board upside down.) At the end of the night, they wrap up their boards in expensive covers, the same way Pete Sampras might do with his most coveted tennis racquets. Baker settles any disputes with a computer that fits in the palm of her hand. It has all the accepted Scrabble words.
Not much talk goes on during the matches, but it’s friendly competition, less intense than, say, a chess match.
Dora Ruelle, who has been playing for 17 years, told me that’s why she got involved, the combination of seriousness and fun is just right for her. She must love it; she drives to Huntington Beach from Riverside every Tuesday to play.
Ruelle said she began playing because English is a second language for her--she’s a native of Argentina. She thought Scrabble could help her improve her English vocabulary. But once that was mastered, she was having too much fun to quit.
“I like to play tournaments, but I’ve been running bad lately, not playing my tiles like I should,” she said. “So I’ll just play on Tuesday nights until I get my game going again.”
Tuesday is a big Scrabble day for many in this club. They start at noon at the recreation center at the Landmark Adult Community in Huntington Beach. The Landmark club is run by Helen Tieger, who lives there.
“We play for four hours, then a bunch of us go out to eat, then we come over to [Penny Baker’s club] to play all evening,” Tieger said. Then on Thursday nights, they all play at a club in Long Beach.
The newest local club, also in Huntington Beach, is the Talullah Blank Head Club. (Two of the 100 tiles in Scrabble are blank; if you don’t remember Talullah Bankhead, ask someone older in your family.)
Scrabble player Robert Peters of Huntington Beach is convinced that a lot of bridge players are converting to Scrabble because they find it more stimulating. It’s certainly not very expensive. Baker charges just $2 for an evening of Scrabble, which amounts to four games. There is no initiation fee for joining the club.
One newcomer Tuesday night asked as the evening wound up if there were any criteria for becoming a member.
“Just one,” Paul Trachtenberg of Huntington Beach, one of the better players, told her: “You just have to love the game.”
Here’s One You Can Deduct: April 15 has never been a big deal to me, since my wife cannot stand doing the taxes at the eleventh hour. But apparently it’s pressure time for some folks.
So much so, in fact, that the La Habra Chess Club is about to embark on a tournament it titles “Not a Taxing Experience.” It begins Friday, April 17, and will run for six successive Friday evenings at the Veterans Memorial Hall in La Habra’s civic center complex.
Novice chess players welcome. Call (562) 691-2393 for advanced registration.
Becky’s Babe? Some readers know I can’t pass up a good love story, even when it’s about unrequited love. Even for buffalo.
Finding the right mate has been a problem for Becky, the Orange County Fairgrounds’ Centennial Farms buffalo. She’s one of the last four buffalo from the old Buffalo Ranch in South County. Not that she hasn’t had any shortage of suitors. After all, at 1,000 pounds and just 9 years old, she’s considered quite a looker in her field.
But Becky rejected all bulls with an interest in her at the Harris Ranch in Coalinga, where she was sent to be bred. Maybe none can live up to her last great love, the bull who gave her Tatonka, her only calf, who is now on the rodeo circuit.
Now Becky has a new setting for love--Rancho Mission Viejo in San Juan Capistrano. The bull sent there on a blind date with her is named Harvey Wallbanger. He’s a featured rodeo act. Fairgrounds folks have sent the word: Becky seems to like him. But no calf so far.
Wrap-Up: Should you have an interest in learning more about Scrabble clubs, you can call Penny Baker at (714) 380-1764. Baker says she will even go to people’s homes to help them improve their Scrabble.
“We just want to let more people know what a great game it is,” she said.
Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com