Scrabble Club 56 in NYC

08/13/2026

Session report for Thurs. Aug. 6, 2026...

30 competed in 3 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Kurt Davies 4-0 +607, 2nd Jeremy Frank 3-1 +219, 3rd Jeremy Hall 3-1 +173 in Expert division; 1st John Gaines 4-0 +323, 2nd Andrea Wang 3-1 +192 in Intermediate; and 1st Barbra Cosentino 3-1 +228, 2nd Jean Lithgow 3-1 +197 in Extreme Enthusiast. Kurt's offense was not quite as high as Bryan's last week, but his margin was higher because his defense was astonishing: his opponents only averaged 307 against him!

Pleasing bingos included: YAHRZEIT and HAYWIRE (6 letters are common to this pair!) by Kurt; SUPERBER, BEAUTIFY, REDEEMER, WHATSIS (also good are WHATSIT, WHOSIS and WHOOSIS, all pluralize), and MAULINGS by J. Frank; NUMERALS for a triple-triple and NEUMATIC (be alert for the P- front hook) by Bob Kerr; PERICARPS and INSHRINED by Andy Kravis; and LITERATI (watch out for -M end hook), SELADANG (also spelt SALADANG) and CLODPOLE (also spelt CLODPOLL and CLODPATE, all nouns) by Bryan Richgruber. Dep't. of Near Redundancy Department: J. Frank bingoed with ADULATE and Andrea Wang bingoed with ADULATED; Wang also bingoed with NAMASTE and Kravis bingoed with NAMASTES (neither has additional anagrams.)

Kurt Davies has another one-day open (one division) tourney at his storefront office just off Washington Square Park on Saturday, Aug. 22, still plenty of room left with a capacity of 28 players. Entrants list and flyer here:
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16993
Judy Cole has a group of one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday, August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

Stefan Fatsis posted a transcript of an interview with recent SPC finalists Orry Swift and Mack Meller, in which they break down the best-of-five final match and in particular, the last game in depth, here:
https://defector.com/two-scrabble-superstars-explain-their-unbelievable-championship-match?fbclid=IwY2xjawTp6tZwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR5PQntm4iThoQqJ_pe1Nrk-hvlO3X5L8aBScWbQBP1IgYmp1eZBya_oK9i6-g_aem_3lfNwW_f_kgJzAfO0DXl4Q

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CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — In the quarter-century that I’ve been playing and writing about Scrabble—a game in which greatness requires that rare matrix of biological gift, yeoman preparation, preternatural vision, marathon endurance, and blind luck—I’ve never witnessed anything as shocking and p...

08/06/2026

Session report for Thurs. July 30, 2026...

28 competed in 3 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Bryan Richgruber 4-0 +423, 2nd Lynn Cushman 3-1 +129 in Expert division; 1st Chidi Bosah 3-1 +172, 2nd Michael Edwards 3-1 +162 in Intermediate; and 1st Jim Piazza 3.5-0.5 +232, 2nd Chukwuemeka Bosah (Chidi's dad!) 3.5-0.5 +97 in Extreme Enthusiast. Bryan had another of his massive offense nights, with a low score of 462, high of 549, and average of 486.5, bolstered by 12 bingos.

Pleasing bingos included: BURSITIS, REDEFIED, TROCARs (ana. simple, figure it out; also spelt TROCHARs), USANCEs (ana. UNCASEs; also spelt USAUNCEs), TRUSTILY and NIDERING (n. also spelt NIDDERING) by Bryan; TERTIALs SANTERIA (ana. ANTISERA,
ARTESIAN, RATANIES and SEATRAIN) and SHRAPNEL by Lynn; UNRULIER by Michael; DIOXANE (also spelt DIOXAN) by Jeremy Frank; RAFTABLE (only front hook is D-) and FRUITAGE (ana. FIGURATE adj., no hook) by Kurt Davies; VICEROY and FARDELS by Fay Halberstam; MERCURIC by Jay Levin; CRIMSONS by Heidi Kujac; EPHEDRIN (hooks are -E and -S; EPHEDRINS ana. INSPHERED and PHRENSIED) by Marc Calza; and LOBBYIST by Larry Sherman.

Judy Cole has a group of one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday, August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

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SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

07/30/2026

Session report for Thurs. July 23, 2026...

22 competed in 3 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Kurt Davies 3-1 +385, 2nd Byran Richgruber 3-1 +164 in Expert division; 1st Raquelle Azran 4-0 +274, 2nd Fay Halberstam 3-1 +272 in Intermediate; and 1st Jean Lithgow 4-0 +132, 2nd Niki Matsoukas in Extreme Enthusiast.

Pleasing bingos included: CONCAVEs (regular verb!), EXPLORERS, KETAINE (adj. only!), EXPLORERS and UNYEANED by Kurt; VAWARDS (VAWARD is noun -S, but very similar VANWARD is adverb only, no -s), OTTAVAS, TRAUCHLE (vb.) and DISPIRIT by Bryan; RATTAILS and SCOTTIES for a triple-triple by Raquelle; HEDDLEs (n.) by Fay; DEEWANs (also spelt DEWANs and DIWANs), OOMIACs (OOMIAKs, OOMIACKs, UMIACs, UMIACKs, UMIAKs and UMIAQs are the rest of the valid spellings) and VESICANT (n.) by Bob Kerr; ORRERIES by Alex Dering; and MYSTICS by Lainey Berel.

Judy Cole has a group of one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday, August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

The most consistently successful National Championships performer I am aware of is our own Kevin Ng. Since beginning his tournament career in 2017, he has played in 7 of those events, and his win/loss records have been 19-12 4 times and 18-13 3 times! He gained rating points in all of them, and earned cash in 4.

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SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

07/23/2026

Report for the week following Thurs. July 16, 2026...

**************** Scrabble Players Championship *******

See Mack draw. See Mack play. See Mack bingo early and often. See Mack eschew QUITE for 50 in favor of QUAI for 36. See Mack do the math and accept phony bingo by Orry Swift and bingo out to win by 5 points as a result of having chosen QUAI. Huge congrats to our club alumnus Mack Meller on winning his 2nd North American Championship in 3 years in a barnburner of a final match and final single deciding game! Virginian Josh Castellano also won his 2nd in 3 years in the CSW division, and also in a tightly contested 5-game final. Both matches started with one player winning the first two games and the other winning the next two; Josh completed the comeback against Austin Shin, while Mack stopped Orry from doing the same.

Here are all the current and occasional and former attendees of our club who cashed or had otherwise noteworthy efforts in the grueling 31-round NASPA tournament of the year in Cedar Rapids:
NWL
Division 1: Mack Meller 20-8 +1,526 in the preliminary rounds and 3-2 in the final match for $10K; Joe Edley 13th overall, no cash but took the Seniors Trophy for the division
Div. 2: Frank Tangredi 5th overall 19.5-11.5 +933 plus the Seniors Trophy; Andy Kravis 2nd in Class C 16-15 +725; and Katie Edwards elected to play up a division and did not cash but did win more than half her games and gained 101 rating points to 1448.
Div. 3: Kevin Ng 10th overall and 1st in Class B with 19-12 +129

CSW
Div. 2 Terry Kang 2nd place! 24-7 +1,756

Watch the exciting best of 5 final match in the NWL Division 1, with great commentary by Josh Sokol, Morris Greenberg and Chloe Fatsis here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC-e2HikEZU
Updated ratings for all divisions on cross-tables.com here:
NWL https://www.cross-tables.com/tourney.php?tourneyid=13260&div=
CSW https://www.cross-tables.com/tourney.php?tourneyid=13261

Judy Cole has a group of one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday, August 30. https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

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SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

07/15/2026

Session report for Thurs. July 9, 2026 and other business...

*************** SCHEDULE ALERT ********************

Our regular club session for this week, TOMORROW, July 16, IS CANCELLED!!! The air quality forecast for the next couple of days, due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires, is in the "hazardous" range, and with my chronic asthma, I don't dare come out of my house until it returns to normal on the weekend. And I would not want most of you to risk it either. We should be able to return to regular club activity next week.

**************** Scrabble Players Championship *******

The following regular or occasional or former attendees of Club #56 will be among 287 players competing in 6 divisions of this year's event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, starting this coming Saturday morning, July 18, and running 31 rounds into Wednesday morning:

NWL
Division 1: Mack Meller, Joe Edley, Lisa Odom, Ken Rubin, Eric and Noah Goldstein, Sam Kaplan
Div. 2: Stefan Fatsis, Frank Tangredi, Howard Pistol, Jay Levin, Andrea Michaels, Andy Kravis, Paul Avrin, Josh Pepper, Katie Edwards
Div. 3: Kevin Ng, Heidi Kujac, Andrea Wang, Jack Lechner, Ted Gest, Jackie Heller
Div. 4: Mike Donegan, Ida Shapiro

CSW
Div. 1 Jason Keller, Tim Weiss
Div. 2 Terry Kang

We wish them all to draw well, play well and have a ton of fun. And then return home safe, tired and satisfied.

Expect to find streaming video of games from both lexicons with super-expert commentary so you can watch your friends and heroes here: https://www.youtube.com//streams
NWL: Josh Sokol, Matt Canik, Kenji Matsumoto, Will Anderson, and Morris Greenberg
CSW: Jesse Matthews, Robin Po***ck Daniel, Toh Weibin, Rob Robinsky and more
Links to the stream and the standings will be available on the front page at cross-tables.com on the morning the tourney begins.

*********************** Our results last week ************

25 competed in 3 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Bryan Richgruber 3-1 +263, 2nd Jeremy Hall 3-1 +154 in Expert division; 1st Paul Avrin 4-0 +132, 2nd Andy Kravis 3-1 +484 in Intermediate; and 1st Alex Dering 4-0 +250, 2nd Niki Matsoukas 3-1 +167 in Extreme Enthusiast.

Pleasing bingos included: DISTORTERS (singular anagrams to TORRIDEST) and TARZANS by Bryan; RURALITY by Andy; BLITZING by Alex; UNDREAMT (adj. only, as is -MED, don't try it as a verb!) by David Firstman; and GERONTIC by Kevin Ng.

Judy Cole has a group of one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday, August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

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SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

07/08/2026

Session report for Thurs. July 2, 2026 and other business...

20 competed in 2 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Jeremy Hall 3-1 +295, 2nd Lynn Cushman 3-1 +250, 3rd Jay Levin 3-1 +157 in Expert division; and 1st Michael Edwards 4-0 +669, 2nd Andrea Wang 3-1 +150 in Intermediate. Michael had a huge run of offense, averaging 481 points per game, with a low of 426, high of 553 and a 2nd game over 500.

Pleasing bingos included: WOOZIER, QUARTILE (ana. REQUITAL) and ADJUSTER (ana. obvious) by J. Hall; the new ARTSIES+ (ana. SATIRES) and FALCATE (-D is only hook) by Lynn; CAUTIOUS and GRIMACED (ana. DECIGRAM) for a triple-triple by Jay; JALOUSIE (n. -S and -D only as adj.) and DINGBAT by Michael; TARTLETs (ana. TATTLERs) and CAYENNES by Andrea; TSOORIS (also spelt TSORES, TSORIS, TSURIS, TSOURIS, TZURIS, and TSORRISS; all of them pluralize by adding -ES) and DEMISING for a triple-triple by Kristian Dietz; INSWATHE (the pattern ?NSWATHE is completed by all of E, I and U) by Bryan Richgruber; PREGAMED (yup, it's a verb!, definition is not what most of us might guess) by Kevin Ng; BEWEEPS and YEOMANRY (YEOMANLY also good) by Josh Knapp; and PIEROGI (also spelt PIROG, PIROGI, PEROGI, PEROGIE, PEROGY, PYROGY and PYROHY, you'll have to look up all the plurals yourselves or this note will go on all day) by Ellen Fishbein. Last week I noted the play of OENOLOGY by Fay Halberstam, but forgot to include the biggest reason it is interesting: it takes a P- front hook!; with or without the P, the first O is also optional.

Judy Cole has a group of one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday, August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

Please join us for more unrated logotherapy on 55th St. in 23 hours.

SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

07/02/2026

Session report for Thurs. June 25, 2026 and other business...

22 competed in 3 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Kurt Davies 4-0 +296, 2nd David Firstman 3-1 +219 in Expert division; 1st Kevin Ng 4-0 +378, 2nd Michael Edwards 3-1 +238 in Intermediate; and 1st Alex Dering 4-0 +431, 2nd Sofie Wasserman-Smith 3-1 +286 in Extreme Enthusiast.

Pleasing bingos included: SOUVENIR by Kurt; OENOLOGY by Fay Halberstam. There were plenty more bingos played, but none of the rest were of much interest.

********* SCHEDULE ALERT, (WEATHER RELATED) ******

I am currently expecting to run our regularly scheduled session tomorrow, in spite of predicted high temperatures. Appropriate dress should be lightweight and light colored loose short sleeves, and carry a sweater in case of surprisingly effective air conditioning in transit or our playing venue. BUT... IFF there is a BLACKOUT in
Manhattan, and/or Bronx or other boroughs you may live in, that runs into at least 1pm, or begins betw. 1 and 4pm, you may assume we will not be meeting, either because our venue will be unavailable or uncomfortable or because I cannot do my afternoon preparations to go out, or do not have functioning transit to get me there. The Sherman household does not possess mobile phones, and my laptop has a busted battery and only runs while plugged into house current, so during a blackout, we would have no way of sending a last minute cancellation notice; therefore, this is your advance notice, just in case.

****************************************************************

Judy Cole has put a group of new one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

Please join us for more unrated logotherapy on 55th St. in 22 hours.

SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

06/25/2026

Session report for Thurs. June 18, 2026 and other business...

19 competed in 2 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st (for the third straight week) Jeremy Hall 4-0 +364, 2nd (for the second straight week) Josh Knapp 3-1 +67 in Expert division; and 1st Michael Edwards 3-1 +367, 2nd Chidi Bosah 3-1 +320 in Intermediate.

Pleasing bingos included: NUTMEATS by Josh K.; TOSTADA (also spelt TOSTADO, both pluralize only -S) by Chidi; ARTIGIs (also spelt ATIGIs) and VEEPEES by Kurt Davies; and NONPARTY noun, MISLIKES, TETRAGON and DUCHIES by Lynn Cushman.

Judy Cole has put a group of new one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. The next will be a one-day on Sunday August 30.
https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16940

Please join us for more unrated logotherapy on 55th St. in 21 hours.

SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community

06/22/2026

SamTimerdotcom, never one to be outdone by the generosity of certain NASPA officers, has just gifted our club with 3 new boards and tile sets, one new clock, and a big bunch of racks, both simple plastic and fancier wood. Thank you, Sam. Y'all can stop now, we're running out of storage space at the club for all the stuff we have.

06/18/2026

Session report for Thurs. June 11, 2026 and other business...

29 competed in 3 divisions. Prizewinners were 1st Jeremy Hall 4-0 +595, 2nd Josh Knapp 3-1 +233, 3rd Seth Weinstein 3-1 +194 in Expert division; 1st Katie Edwards 4-0 +342, 2nd Andrea Wang 3-1 +255 in Intermediate; and 1st Niki Matsoukas 4-0 +329, 2nd Edward Moran 3-1 +82 in Extreme Enthusiast.

Pleasing bingos included: ESCALLOP (ana. COLLAPSE) by J. Hall; ALOPECIA and MINGLERs (ana. GREMLINs) for a triple-triple by Katie; AERIALLY, BENTHONs and CSARDAS (sticky -S, as is alternate spelling CZARDAS, both pluralize adding -ES) by Bryan Richgruber; HOOSGOWs (also spelt HOOSEGOWs) by Dan Wachtell; and WAINSCOT (vb., one or two T's are okay when adding -ED or -ING) by Jay Levin.

Judy Cole has put a group of new one-day and two-day tourneys on the calendar to be played at our club venue. And there is still room in the one-day 8-round open tourney being run by Kurt Davies at his storefront NYU office near Washington Sq. Pk. this coming Saturday, June 20. $100 entry fee, one division with class prizes; snacks and bevvies will *not* be provided but those are easily obtained nearby. Wegman's across street from Astor Pl. subway station has decent prepackaged sushi among other goodies. If you want to play, please let Kurt know "like" tonight! Capacity is 28 players. Entrants list and flyer can be found
here: https://www.cross-tables.com/entrants.php?u=16887

Please join us for more unrated logotherapy on 55th St. in 22 hours.

SCRABBLE® tournaments, statistics, and community