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Back to 2005 Canadian National SCRABBLE® Championship Live Coverage

2005 Canadian National SCRABBLE® Championship Commentary: Round 9

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 9

Things are smoking in downtown Toronto!

CNSC co-director Mad Palazzo, acknowledging how hard it is to muscle around the venue, has given up her spiked heels for tennis shoes. Fans will be glad to know, though, that she is still wearing her mini skirts!

SportsNet couldn't get enough of co-director John Chew, so they came back for another day of interviews. They had John outside the playing room, near the player wall chart. This interview was more serious than most as they had his microphone snaking up inside his shirt (appropriately enough, last CNSC's event T-shirt!) and they asked John to talk about a lot of things. At one point, when I walked by, John was talking about his 40th birthday party where 40 players played 40 games. Adam Logan (United Kingdom) won that day's event, which led John to talk about Adam's extraordinary end game finesse. Later, I heard John talking about how players qualified for this event based on rating.

This kid is just so classy.... Dean Saldanha (Richmond BC) fell hard to Adam Logan (United Kingdom) on the stage at table 1 this round, 602-229. Dean, however, was smiling and positively jubilant at the opportunity to play the game in the first place. Adam's bingos were CABINETS for 86, UNFOILED for 64 (challenged unsuccessfully by Dean), GOURAMIS for 78, and CANTRAIP for 70. Toward the end of the game, Dean tried the 149-point, triple-triple GLEGGERS* through a G, but Adam called it off. In after-game chat, Dean intimated that he may do graduate work in the Toronto area and if so, he'll get more of a chance to play with the country's top players more often.

Evan Berofsky (Thornhill ON) admits to being tough on the ladies today. He had a monster game versus Fran Silver (Cote Saint-Luc QC) in round 8, which he won, 594-248. This round, he settled for creaming Fern Lindzon (Toronto ON), 449-309. He tells me he got down the natural IGNITERS for 62 through the G and OROTUND for 64, then he got a blank. Unable to bingo, he held onto the blank and in his next pull, got the other blank and the Z. Two of these gems went into DAZzLE to the triple for 75 points. He ended up not bingoing with the last blank, but the game went his way nonetheless!

I walk by Trevor Sealy (Oshawa ON) and he said, "I got kicked in the head." I look over and Heather McCall (Toronto ON) is grinning. She won their game, 438-309. I see Trevor's PARITIES through the R for 70 and Heather's lovely PACkRATS through the C for 94 points.

David Boys (Dorval QC) dispensed with the two top dogs this morning, defeating Adam Logan (United Kingdom) at table 1 in round 8 and Joel Wapnick (Montréal QC) this round, 477-389. His game already pulled up and tiles into the bag, Dave pulled me aside to tell me that he opened with a British-only NATTERY* (This means that the word isn't acceptable for play in North America, but is acceptable in the SCRABBLE^® dictionary used in England and the rest of the world. Players, like Dave, who play in both arenas sometimes have what is termed "dictionary confusion" as they know the word is "good," but they can't remember in which dictionary) for 78 points and the play stayed on the board unchallenged. Later, he played COITalLY for 78 and REDIALS for 81. He jokingly says that he "likes a CNSC where he gets all the good tiles." He admits to having 15 of the 18 blanks so far in this championship (if things were more equal, he'd have seen 9 by now).

An interesting game at table 2 this round where Tony Leah (Ajax ON) deafeated Craig Rowland (Mississauga ON), 479-428, despite being stuck with the Q (meaning, he lost 20 points on spread). Tony played CISTERNA, ACTINIaE, and WORSENeD along the triple. Craig got down ATTIRED and the fabulous BIVOUAC for a 56-point double-double. Tony opened with ZORIS and Craig was in disbelief that his rack's drek could yield such a beautiful, high-scoring play in in response. The most remarkable thing about this game, though, is it was played with 101 tiles. An extra blue B crept into their bag and all games must be finished with the tiles as they were when the game started, so they proceeded apace with THREE Bs!

Forgive my tardiness in crediting annotator Rebecca Sobel for service beyond the call of duty. Last night, her laptop opened to the NSA web site coverage of the CNSC, Rebecca noticed that the photos from yesterday were uncaptioned. I had planned to do them in the evening as I often do (time not being ever-present during the games, I often catch up with captions a bit later). She offered to try to do some captioning. John agreed that she could try. Well, try she did. She captioned all the photos that were up except for the games (which she had no way of knowing since that was in my notes). So, thanks Rebecca for your volunteer efforts!

Today we are lucky enough to have Kate Boys, Pat Larash, John Stardom, Kristen Chew, Su Edwards, and Rebecca Sobel on annotation. We are greatly appreciative of their efforts to provide us with details of games as they unfold. If you ever get a chance to check out the newest annotation sheets, do so. They now have all sorts of details like clock usage, etc. Thanks to Kate Boys for the design and efforts and coordinating the annotators for this event. It is worth noting that Kate's efforts during this hot event are all the more admirable considering she and Dave are expecting their first baby in September!

Also, kudos to Laura Desiato, daughter to Salvatore Desiato (Toronto ON) for her efforts as a runner today. Mad Palazzo has things running so smoothly that poor Laura isn't busy enough, but we'll work on that!

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