From: Graeme Thomas <graeme@graemet.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 00:36:53 +0000
Subject: Sunday Times article
Message-id: <3Tp2DYBlWWu0Ew+X@graemet.demon.co.uk>

At the 1997 WSC there was a reporter, Tim Rayment, for the _Sunday Times_ present during the whole event. His article was published today, Sunday 11th January. It's too long to give in full, but here are a few highlights. It opens:

Modesty would stop him saying this - modesty and the fear that you might laugh - but there are people to whom Mark Nyman is a god. There he goes, they murmur, possibly the best that ever lived, the greatest all-rounder is one of the most competitive pursuits on earth. He is handsome and passionate, although he hides his fervour under a surface of balance and calm. He is glamorous, with a life outside his sport, and a good job in television. He is British. Despite all this, you have never heard of him.

There are some nice word pictures: guess who this is:

And ? ?, one of the greats, whose whole being suggests that someone or something has left him crushed - he looks like an imploded Woody Allen - but who, when it comes to coping with a fistful of vowels and finding tripple-word scores, can marshal his letters with the best of them.

There's a section on the game's future:

But it has a problem. "It's played by old people or boring nobodies who have not got a life," says a source at Mattel, the game's maker. One measure of an occupations's glamour is the ardour of its followers: Scrabble has only one groupie in Britain, and although her T-shirt reads "I love a night on the tiles", players such as Nyman tend to flee from her. To take the game seriously - to read the dictionary in bed, the thing for which children tease eloquent peers - you must live furtively, and with only one groupie to choose from, a Scrabbler's sex life is not improved.

So the game's hopes rest on the championship producing an interesting winner, someone who will encourage the world to give Scrabble respect in the next millennium. Eyes rest on Robin Pollock Daniel, an articulate, top-ranking Canadian, the most beautiful woman in the room. Or Matt Graham, a young American stand-up comic; he would look good for the image, as would Britain's Nyman, or victory by any of the Africans in the tournament.

It's possible that I am being obtuse, but I believe that the reporter has spotted one more British groupie than I thought existed. Speculation has been rife in the UK-Scrabble mailing list as to this person's identity.

The article then goes on to give some idea of the atmosphere in the WSC, with otherwise sane people driven to distraction by minor flaws in their play. Then comes some excitement:

Suddenly a fight looms. Matt Graham, the stand-up comic who is now competing for the lead, stalks out in a rage because Joe Edley, said to be the most detested player in Scrabble, has distracted him by muttering. Strangers give me outraged assurances that Edley is known to talk during a game. Back in the playing room, the offender's body language is a marvel: he sits tensely at the Scrabble table, coiled tight in a way that suggests he knows he has no friends, yet cannot help entrenching his unpopularity further. The championship is too important to him: given a choice between gaining a psychological advantage - he admits talking - and being detested a little less, he would rather everyone seethed.

There's some stuff about the winner:

Winning would mean more to [Sherman] than to anyone. "I know I have certain handicaps in terms of finding a mate," he says, "in that for one thing I don't drive, so it's difficult for me to get around and visit people. And also I'm not in a very good physical condition."

"I mean, if you look at me, I am just of average build. I'm not overweight, but I have very poor muscle tone. I am asthmatic, and I have allergies which cause asthma attacks, and I have the bad stomach, so there are a lot of physical reasons for a woman to be turned off my me!" He laughs gently. "I just hope, if I can gain some notoriety through this game and accomplish a few things - and I think I am still reasonably attractive, just looking at me - that there is still some possibility of attracting a mate."

The final summing up contains an interesting paragraph:

Something interesting happens to perspective over a few airless days watching Scrabble. People who might seem odd become normal human beings with hopes and hurts just like any of us. Then, when it's over and the television networks arrive to interview the winner, you look again. The broadcasters are beautifully groomed. Suddenly you see the Scrabble players as the reporters do.

Anyways, that's just a flavour of the whole thing. To see more, buy the paper.