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CNSC 2008 Commentary: Before the Tournament

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Go to: Before the Tournament, 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, Award Ceremony, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3, Final Round 4, Final Round 5, After the Tournament.

Ontario's Provincial capitol, Toronto, is hosting this year's Canadian National SCRABBLE Championship (CNSC). As in years past, the 50 top-rated players in Canada have been invited to take part in the 6th biennial SCRABBLE fete.

Players from as far East as Newfoundland and as far West as Vancouver are slated to play. A few stateside expats are coming, too!

Though a keen eye picked up an ice floe or two floating on the Great Lakes, it is indeed Spring in Toronto. Daffodil and tulip shoots are showing and a crocus or two have been spotted dotting the city's small garden patches.

This year's venue is at One King West at the corner of King and Yonge Streets. Originally an old Dominion Building (complete with daily tours of the bank's original vault which features a 3-ton door!), the CNSC shares the 12th floor with the famous Ontario Club, an exclusive, member's only engineers' club. Our games will be played in the Austin Gallery.

The gallery's rectangular playing room has an arched sky-high ceiling and features a mezzanine of sorts that encircles the room on three sides; a gallery from which onlookers can watch the players in their element: hunched over SCRABBLE boards!

The CNSC is the crown jewel in a virtual week of events related to SCRABBLE this week in Toronto, how fitting for the game we love's diamond 60th annivery year.

Last night, the 3rd, was SCRABBLE Night In Canada (SNIC), which was organised in support of Frontier College, Canada's oldest literacy charity. On this, their fourth year hosting an SNIC, 40 corporate teams of four participated and the event raised more than $200,000, mostly by buying in at $5000 per team. What made this event so fun was that players could buy advice from expert attendees, Evan Berofsky (Thornhill ON), Fern Lindzon, Zev Kaufman (Toronto ON) or Robin Pollock Daniel (Toronto ON) for $60-$80 (depending on how late in game), or from Joel Wapnick (Montreal QC) for about twice as much. The money is raised to support the college's programmes. The event's overall individual winner was Kyle McGuffin from MTS Allstream- The Innovators.

Today, the 4th, will feature a 7-game early bird event and the first 3 games of the main event. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday will be full of games with an award ceremony on Sunday evening, save for the two finalists will be competing on Monday in a best of five final to crown this year's CNSC Champion!

On Monday evening, Vivienne Muhling, longtime Toronto club member, will host the annual SCRABBLE With The Stars event, in support of Performing Arts Lodge, a residence for members of Canada's entertainment community. The catch there is that each table has on Canadian "star" and three paying guests. Among this year's celebrites are Margaret Atwood and Colin Mochrie.

Today's Early Bird has 28 players, all here on time and ready to go. John Chew and the event assistant director, Mad Palazzo, arrived just after 7am to make sure the facility was ready for the event. Sure enough, a few tables and tablecloth setups later, we were ready to zoom. Amazingly, many players arrived early, during setup, for a 9:15am start.

This seven-game early bird was the perfect opportunity for players who didn't qualify for the Nationals itself to play. Chris Lipe, who has been aggitating for special consideration to play in the CNSC, has had to settle for the Early Bird only, due to his American citizenship. And, as if 18 Main Event games are not enough, three CNSC players are also doing the EB: Jeff Parsons (Logy Bay NL), Ross Brown (Kanata ON), and Mark Edelson (Toronto ON).

In an ongoing effort to curry favor with John, Chris Lipe offered up his laptop for adjudications this morning as Trevor Sealy was a bit late in arriving with the two he offered for the event.

Mad Palazzo, ever her helpful self, is busily helping Hasbro Canada's Marissa Pedatella and Michelle Sinclair stuff contestant goody bags in a side room off the Gallery.

Though it is rainy and cold out today, I'm told it will be much sunnier for the rest of the weekend. However, it is just perfect weather to sit inside and play SCRABBLE for hours.

We have our first visitor, a player who found out about the CNSC from an online SCRABBLE site. A smile going from one side of his face to the other, he confesses that he loves SCRABBLE and plays it every day. He is currently sitting at the table of an in-progress game and he is riveted to the rack, the plays, the timber of the game. I predict a burgeoning tournament player is in our midsts!

The Early Bird unfolded with nary a hitch. Not one complaint or director call (okay, two calls: one about a tile that fell out of the bag and antoher to tell the Internet Reporter to stop talking so loudly during game play to reporters from the National Post. I'm told it is very hard to get good help these days....).

John, a "new toy" guy from way back when, introduced yet another new toy today during the Early Bird: A flat screen 22-inch monitor that displays his interpetation of a live wall chart that changes as each game is typed into TSH on the main machine! This screen is the new water cooler of event, with players clustered all around it. This is presenting problems such as, it works okay for 28, but how will it work for 50? And then, what is he going to do at the touranment later this month outside of Boston: run 4 of these machines? So, we ruminate this development and start wishing for wide screen flat displays of giant proportions at playing venues near and far. I imagine them like airport arrival and departure screens, flashing useful data updated all the time. And, before long, we'll all be carrying our very own personal computers, too!

Our staff for the event is lean. John Chew, director; Mad Palazzo, assistant director; Gary Sagawa, date entry; Sherrie Saint John, Internet verbiage; and a stable of annotators. I think I've met almost a dozen people willing to be event annotators here! It is fabulous. Among the names that have been tossed around: Gregg Foster, Brenda Megannety, Chris Lipe, Andy Saunders, Eugene D'eon, and more will be made apparent as we go. Our net connection is a bit spotty here, so it appears that right now only one game will be annotated live, but we'll try to put the other ones up, too.

This Early Bird tournament held two berths to the CNSC itself. One was slated to go to the best performing youth under 18 and the best performing adult. As it turns out, there were three players under 18 and they came in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd from bottom! The Early Bird winner, Geoffrey Newman (Brampton ON), is our under 18 contestant and third place finisher, Fraser Simpson (Toronto ON), earned the adult berth into the event. In some ways, the results took John by surprise. The second place finisher, Arie Sinke, is, as it turns out, unable to attend the CNSC for religious reasons (unable to play on the Sabbath).

Players arrived so early today, in happy anticipation of the main event, so we started a full 15 minutes early! How about that. Brief announcements were made welcoming the players and contratulating the two players who qualified for the CNSC with their performance in today's Early Bird. And then they were off!

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