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Tournament SCRABBLE® play in Canada and the United States is administered by NASPA and its Tournament Committee. All questions about tournaments should be sent to that committee’s mailing list.
Tournaments are organized by NASPA-sanctioned Directors and listed on our calendar. You must be a NASPA member to play in a NASPA event. All players are expected to know and follow the Official Tournament Rules.
First-time tournament players may buy either a full NASPA membership or a trial six-month membership (US$15) through their tournament organizer. If they opt for a trial membership, they have the option to extend it to a full membership by sending in an additional $15 at any time during the six-month trial period.
Score sheets and other player forms are available for download from the Player Resources page.
Directors: As players want to register for your tournament, you will need to check the Membership Database to be sure their NASPA membership is current.
Directors endeavor to accommodate players with special needs.
Tournament results and ratings will be posted at the NASPA website and later at cross-tables.com. The first step to viewing results is to consult the monthly list of tournament results.
You can also find tournament statistics at cross-tables.com.
Directors: Submit tournament results to NASPA
In order to direct a tournament, you must be a NASPA member and certified as a director. For more information about and for directors, please see our Directors page.
Most tournaments are open to all and fully rated by the NASPA; these are referred to as Open Rated Tournaments (ORT). However, there are also a few other tournament types that are sanctioned and rated. See table below (excerpted from the Director's Manual and expanded) to compare them:
| Open Rated Tournament (ORT) | Local Club Tournament (LCT) | Team Challenges or Championships (TCC) | |
| Advance Notice | 8 Weeks | None required | None Required (for now) |
| Tournament calendar listing | Listed on NASPA calendar | Not listed on calendar | Not listed on calendar |
| Rating Method | fully rated | 1/3 rated | fully rated |
| How Often? | No other multi-day tournaments occurring within two weekends and 200 miles of your proposed tournament (a one-day tournament can be separated by just one week from a multi-day tournament).
No other one-day tournament on same day within 200 miles. Exception: for multi-day events, if the organizers of the conflicting tournaments are agreeable, NASPA can sanction both. |
At most, once per month. | [TBA] |
| How Many games? | At least 4 games | At least 3 games | At least 4 games |
| How Many players? | At least 4 players in each division, at least 2 rated players in each division | ||
| Membership requirements | All players must be current NASPA members | ||
| Player restrictions | [none] | [none] | Entry restricted by club/region (for team challenge) or region/rating (for championship). |
| Participation Fee | $.50 per player per game | ||
| Examples | National Scrabble Championship, most tournaments | One-day tournament that is created on short notice | Portland-Seattle Interclub Challenge, Texas State Championship, Can-Am, Kingston Cup |
NASPA maintains its calendar of sanctioned tournaments as an information resource for its members. You may use the Tournament Listing Form to gather information about your tournament for sanctioning. Registered directors must apply to the Tournament Committee to add fully rated tournaments to the calendar by emailing the committee mailing list, provided the following conditions are met:
Exception: for multi-day events, if the organizers of the conflicting tournaments are agreeable, NASPA can sanction both.
Local Club Tournaments (LCT), which are 1/3-rated, do not require advance sanctioning and are not listed in the calendar. LCT's have the same Player Participation fee as sanctioned Open Rated Tournaments.
All tournament players, whether a newbie or someone with a rating who hasn't joined NASPA yet, must join NASPA in order to play in your tournament. Here are some scenarios that might apply to your tournament:
1. You are gathering entries for your tournament and you look on cross-tables to see if they are members. Cross-tables says "check with NASPA". You check on the NASPA member database, accessible by clicking on "Member Search" on the sidebar. If they have a member number in the NASPA database, they are good to go. Occasionally a membership does not show up on Cross-tables right away but will already be listed on the NASPA database.
2. You are gathering entries for your tournament and you agree to let someone join NASPA at the door. If you know ahead of time that one or more people are going to do this, send the names to Mad Palazzo or John Chew and let them know your situation. They will give the prospective players a temporary membership with a very short expiration date. After you have sent the money, the correct expiration date will be listed. Be sure to send the appropriate contact information for the member files, either by email or mail including information on the Membership Application Form.
3. You are checking in players the day of the tournament and you have a walk-in who is not a member.
Check to make sure that all of your players are listed on the NASPA site as members. Rating data will not be accepted if any players are not members. Since however we are not yet set up to accept membership payments online, if you need to pay for memberships to get your tournament rated, please send a list of members with contact information to John Chew who will bill your director account and activate the memberships. If you have players who say they have recently mailed membership checks to NASPA, we will put those on your account so that your event can be rated, then remove the charge when their payment is received.
By "director account" that simply means there will be a list of directors and what they owe for the new members and your "account balance" will go away once you have paid. This does not go on your credit card when you submit your results.
You also have the option of authorizing the membership monies to be charged to your credit card.
4. A tournament entrant says he has joined NASPA. Ask what his membership number is. If it starts with AA followed by 6 digits, you're fairly sure he joined NASPA and not the NSA. Occasionally people join the NSA thinking that it will entitle them to play in NASPA-rated tournaments.
Major events, such as national championships, are webcast on this website, and web coverage is archived in perpetuity.
Web coverage typically consists of standings updates continuously throughout an event, commentary about the event’s highlights, photos and interactive games where you can follow along at the top board in real time.
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