When I was living in
I didn’t really believe them until I saw Word Wars—a documentary that followed four people on a quest to win the National Scrabble Tournament. I wanted to see if the rumors I’d heard about Crazy Scrabble People were true. And they are—some of these people are insane. (I say “insane” in the nicest possible way, with the utmost respect and awe for their skill and dedication to the game.) The grand prize winner that year was a huge dork. He wore suspenders and guzzled Maalox to combat stomach acid: he said that if he didn’t, he would burp-up the acid into his mouth. He would look at his seven tiles and picture them floating around in front of him, twisting and turning until they settled into the right combination. He ended up winning $25,000 and appeared on the Today show.
I know there are infinite ways to make words out of seven random tiles, but it’s hard to really understand it until you see the crazy words these Scrabble professionals come up with. I heard a phrase echoed that my aunt and her friend told me whenever I asked for the definition of a word that I wasn’t familiar with: “Definitions are useless.” Most of these people don’t care what the word means, they just care that it is a word and that it can be used to get as many points as possible. To excel in this game, you have to be willing to look up and remember a huge amount of very uncommonly-used words.
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Wow. I didn’t know about the insanity of professional Scrabble players (scrabblers?). I’m sure that anything taken to an extreme can be bad, but this seems like it should be such a wholesome experience. Fascinating stuff.
And all the Q words that don’t require a U!
btw, how do you like one L? you should know that the best portrayal of the first year of law school ever is the movie “legally blond.” ok, i haven’t read or seen any others (i have a policy against law-related books/films/tv) but i’m telling you legally blond is eerily, and hilariously, accurate.
oops, sorry. i didn’t realize i could comment under “currently listening.”
Hi Zan! I read a book on the Scrabble obsessed…was it ‘Word Freak’? OMG, these people are brilliant…and insane (once again, meant in the kindest possible way…with a few notable exceptions!! But read the book, you’ll see!!
. The best of them memorize lists of thousands of words…thousands of 5 letter words, 6 letters words, and the gigantically important 7 letter words! It was humbling…and the best thing about reading the book?? You learn all kinds of neat, nearly unknown words to use against anyone foolish enough to play a ‘friendly’ little game with you. I believe my best tip was that ‘QA’ is an exceptable word in Scrabble…it allows you to use that pesky (to us civilians, I mean) Q without having U…priceless!! 
Scrabble is no longer our modest little game from childhood…where 4 or 5 letters words used to make us so proud of ourselves!! 
I saw that a couple years ago and it blew my mind. Who knew?
QA?? I’ve got to remember that one!!
Oh no, I just remembered something!! It’s not ‘qa’ that is a fine Scrabble word, it’s ‘qat’, which is a type of evergreen bush. Zandria, please pass this along to Elissa….I would feel sooo guilty if she used qa and was challend, and lost! Please let her know qat is aces, though, and is a commonly used Scrabble-tournament word!!
QI is a word, not QA!!! And it was a huge controversy when it was added to the Tournament Word List (the ‘dictionary’ used in the US). It’s been in the SOWPODS (’dictionary’ used just about everywhere else) for a long time.
I ran across this while searching around. ‘QI’ is, indeed, a word.
But ‘QA’ (as well as ‘ZA’ and ‘ZZZ’) are being added to the official dictionary. So, you were simply a bit ahead of the rest of the scrabble playing world in your suggestion!
Wait. No. I’m wrong. It is QI that has recently been officially recognized, not QA. Doh!