SPC Welcome Dinner

The 2022 Scrabble Players Championship (SPC) will include a Welcome Dinner on Friday night at 7 PM in the Stadium Ballroom.

Registration

You can register for the Welcome Dinner when you register for the SPC. The cost is $25.00.

If you did not sign up for the dinner when you registered, contact us here, and we'll be happy to add you.

Annual Awards

We will announce the winners of annual awards, including Person of the Year, the David Gibson Player of the Year, and other tournament performance awards.

Guest Speaker

Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster Editor At Large, will be joining us at the Friday night Welcome Dinner. Peter has written definitions for many of Merriam-Webster’s dictionaries, is active as a blogger, podcaster, and speaker on language, and has served as pronouncer for spelling bees worldwide. He was named among TIME’s 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013.

Peter will be speaking on the following topic:

The Invention of the Modern American Dictionary

Noah Webster’s revolutionary 1806 publication A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary, and his subsequent work were showing their age and shortcomings by the mid-nineteenth century, when competition from the excellent dictionary of Joseph Worcester drove the publishers to a moment of truth — and of disruption.

The decisions they subsequently made set the course for the company’s editorial and business policies to this day. This change from the idiosyncratic work of an individual to the organized effort of a team was an important and influential moment in the development of modern lexicography, and it is best understood alongside the business strategies that were its motivation.

Webster’s work, the details of the "War of the Dictionaries," and the teamwork resulting in the landmark edition of 1864 will all be discussed.