Thinking Cap Studio

20 October 2021

2021 Scrabble Tournament
for Beginners Southeast Asia

some reflections

2019: 140 players, 36 schools, 1 country

2020: 385 players, 105 schools, 3 countries

2021: 495 players, 144 schools, 4 countries

2022: who knows?!

It’s quite rare for us to have the opportunity to run the same event for consecutive years. We’ve run campaigns for the same product over years, but those always have different concepts and new directions. The Scrabble Tournament for Beginners has been our first chance to really dig in and work incrementally to improve with each of its iterations.

When we started building the tournament, while all of us had played Scrabble before, none of us were super clear on all the rules. It took many hours of deep study and reading the WESPA rulebook to even begin understanding the subtleties of tournament play.

Now, any of us could probably answer a casual question or two about how tournament Scrabble works. But we couldn’t have gotten here alone.

At the beginning, in 2019, we got in touch with the Malaysian Scrabble Association who pointed us in the direction of Vannitha Balasingam and Ganesh Asirvatham, who at the time were Malaysian No. 1 Scrabble player and World No. 1 Scrabble player respectively. Those two taught us so much about the game and are the reason we were able to get up to speed so quickly. They proofread our materials and served as Tournament Directors for our on-ground qualifying rounds and the Finals. It was this foundational understanding that allowed us to move forth with confidence that the quality we were delivering could stand toe to toe with other Scrabble Tournaments in the region.

Su and me at the 2019 Interschool National Scrabble Tournament
before the world changed forever.

Unlike many of the other tournaments in the region, however, we were developing an event and syllabus (of sorts) for complete Scrabble newbies. Mattel was looking for something that would introduce more kids to the game through tournament play - giving them a larger goal to work towards and to increase the stakes a little past that of a friendly set of games. Each year, we update the rules and tournament mechanics to tie any loose ends we noticed during the last.

The team with our faithful Tournament Director, Ganesh Asirvatham, after the back-to-back weekend of semi-finals and finals in September 2020. Masks off just for the photo.

And while the tournament structure remains largely the same, we get to watch the little faces of our players change. The tournament is designed for kids aged 10 - 12 years old (with a couple of feisty nine-year-olds who squeezed themselves in during earlier years). I don’t know if it’s just me, or if the whole team also finds themselves reliving those years of their lives. A qualifying round is pretty long (4.5 hours); the finals are even longer (8 hours) - and for that day, we’re the only source of entertainment. So we chat with them in between games, we play the music they request (all radio edits, of course), and we desperately try not to get caught not being hip with the lingo. It’s so strange to think of myself as “Miss Amanda” or “teacher” even on just the tournament weekends. Speaking of teachers, it truly is a treat to spend time with the dedicated educators who make time on their days off to sit in the Zoom rooms with us.

A sneak peek into one of our many briefing sessions.

There’s a funny thing that can happen when you run an event year after year.

It’s a quiet feeling -
and it’s one that is very easy to mistake for confidence.

It happens when you go through the motions of sending the same type of emails, putting together the same kind of registration kit, or when you’re reciting the tournament rules from memory. (I can’t count the number of Scrabble-related dreams I’ve had.) It’s a sense of complacence that sneaks up on you, and it’s that feeling that makes you frustrated when you have to answer the same question for what feels like the 100th time or irritated when your very clear explanation requires further clarification.

But when I take a step back from it all and try to remember what it was like when we were fumbling through the explanation of the point of the blank tiles, it suddenly becomes clear how far we have come. Watching the kids’ faces light up as they figure out the game and the shine in their eyes as they talk about how they clinched or lost a game by just a few points - it’s a really special moment to share and if you’re stuck being all cynical, you’ll miss it for sure.

I dunno how many more years we’re going to have a chance to do this, but for as long as we’re entrusted with it, I think we’re going to have a good time.

-
Amanda Shiew

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