scrabble babble…
August 24th, 2005
A Beautiful Endgame
Results of the 2005 National Scrabble Championship, where the final rounds pitted an American mortgage underwriter and a Thai student.
Panupol demurs when asked how much he studies word lists. Two or three hours a week, he says. But the other day, as Panupol stayed perched atop the leader board, I asked his Thai teammate Pakorn Nemitrmansuk, a 30-year-old architect, how much Panupol really studies. “All day and all night,” Pakorn said, laughing. (Pakorn finished 25th in division one. Another Thai, Komol Panyasoponlert, a student, was eighth.)
The most-relevant question for the Thai players might be: Why? But the answer is probably no different than for any top American expert. They love games, they love strategy, they love solving puzzles, they want to be the best. “Part of it is rote memorization — there’s a lot of that,” says Sam Kantimathi, an expert player from El Dorado Hills, Calif., who has traveled to Thailand nine times to play Scrabble. “But they also have an obsession.”
So true. Sniff, I’m gonna miss playing Scrabble at work.
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