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Back to 2005 Canadian National SCRABBLE® Championship Live Coverage

2005 Canadian National SCRABBLE® Championship Commentary: Round 3

Congratulations to the first-ever two-time Canadian Champion, Adam Logan!

Go to: Registration, 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, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3, Final Round 4, After the Finals.

Round 3

I see a finished game with no one around the board. By the paperwork I see that Christopher Sykes (Cambridge ON) has defeated Maxim Panitch (Toronto ON), 438-346. I see NONVOTE* (which George MacAulay (Saskatoon SK) sees as he walks by and says "phoney" and points), PREHEAt, INsTATE, and DIGRESS.

Two more annotators have joined the ranks. We've now got Pat Larash, Kate Boys, Gregg Foster, Kristen Chew, and event alternate, John Stardom, working on the games. These five are rotating in to annotate boards 1 and 2. Since two of the annotators have close ties to the top boards, they are sometimes opting to cover board 3 so that Kate may avoid annotating games with her husband, David Boys (Dorval QC), and Pat can avoid games that her partner, Adam Logan (United Kingdom) plays at. Neither of these annotators would do anything the least bit untoward, but I admire their diligence and sense of propriety.

And, to make the mix even a bit more "special," John Chew is requesting that board 1 annotators try using laptops instead of paper to record game information. His hope is that eventually annotators might be able to post the game "as it happens" directly to the internet and not go through a later stage of having someone compile the game and post it to the net (as is done now). The board 1 annotators have to be sure to sit completely shielded so that no information can be conveyed about where the typist is typing, etc. So far, we are learning a lot about what we can do to make it work better. By the end of this event, we hope to know more concretely about the future of such an undertaking. Ever on the cutting edge, that John Chew!

So, as I'm milling around the room, Craig Rowland (Mississauga ON) comes up and asks me if I'd heard of his round 2 game. If I had, I couldn't remember, so I asked him to launch into the tale. And, with Craig, his games are tales. He remembers nearly every play, every score, every nuance, without notes! In this round 2 game, he opened versus Jeffrey Parsons (Logy Bay NL) with EXORDIA for 96. I asked if it was a good game and he said that his giant lead was whittled away by Jeff, which caused tension. This tension was made all the worse by Craig's clock, which was down to 15 seconds when the game ended. In his second to last full rack, Craig was forced to dump the Q by playing QUEY. His last rack was KDVTNNB and he managed to only get stuck with the V. Jeff's last rack was SCORIAS*, which in his manicness, Craig feared was playable and acceptable. In the end, Craig won, 425-411, but he was slightly unhappy that of the game's four Ls, he had 3 and was never able to hook onto his first play and get down EXORDIAL.

I hear the dulcent call of "director" from all the way across the room. John Chew, tie flapping over his shoulder, ran to the table in question. Zev Kaufman (Toronto ON) and Andrew Golding (Verdun QC) had a situation on their hands. Andrew, having tracked the game to an empty tile bag, decided to give the bag a shake to make sure of this. Well, wouldn't you know? A tile flew out and Andrew saw it. They called over the director because it was Andrew's turn and by having knowledge of the last tile, he could potentially play differently. John, with rule book in hand, ruled it to be an overdraw and had Andrew mix the new tile in with his 7 tiles on his rack. Zev then got to select three tiles and decide which one would go into the bag. One of the tiles Zev choose was an S. So, it went into the bag directly. Wouldn't you know, Zev had mistracked, too, and didn't see that by taking away this S, he was actually giving Andrew the bingo, REGULAR. It turns out that this play didn't change the game result, Zev still won, 443-387, but it sure made a dent in the spread. Imagine Andrew's score minus that bingo!

As the players head out for lunch, I'm told that Adam Logan (United Kingdom), Joel Wapnick (Montréal QC), Dean Saldanha (Richmond BC), Emanuel Chicoine (Montreal QC), Glenn Mosher (Toronto ON), and Shaun Goatcher (Mississauga ON) are all undefeated. Here's to a lunch of champions!

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