A Wisconsin Yankee in Walt Disney's Court

I had to meet a connecting flight in Atlanta to get to the National Scrabble Championship– surprisingly there aren’t a lot of direct flights to Dayton, Ohio. When a guy sat down next to me to wait for the plane while furiously studying a hand-written notebook of 7-letter words, it wasn’t hard to figure out where he was heading. After an introduction and some small talk we looked around and saw plenty of others with word lists or electronic dictionaries all around us– I guess nobody else had much of a reason to go to Dayton.
The city is kind of run-down with nothing much going on downtown and empty buildings everywhere. But it’s still fairly busy, and they’re putting in an effort with new streets and a trolley system going in, a riverfront park that seemed nice (at night, anyway) and a hipster uptown area with restaurants and small shops. The old buildings, classy and kitschy both, give the place an old-fashioned feel that many cities of that size have lost. I wanted to spend some time taking pictures of them , but didn’t have a chance. You’ll have to take my word that the Price department store building, apparently still open for business, is a rust-stained thing of beauty, enough to make the nostalgia hound inside me weep.
I arrived with a suitcase full of my Tilecan bags and Tilecouch racks, the Tilecans mostly only finished the night before (and given a minor design change that solved a production problem). One set of racks came out of the mold as I left for the airport, around the clock production running all week to get out as many as I could. I actually had to sit in the hotel room and trim thread and rubber off the respective items. Remind me not to pack a surgical scalpel next time, or maybe to pack some Band-Aids.
I was given a table during the tournament to sell my goods, before, between, and after games. I’d had a surprising response to my initial post and about half my stock was pre-orders, and it kept me busy tracking everyone down and selling the rest. I went home with only one rack (brown isn’t as popular as I’d hoped) and not even a Tilecan for myself. I did work a deal for a board with Sam of SamTimer fame and a deal for a clock with Gene of Adjucator 3000 fame. And all the other dealers were nice as well, including Mary of tilebag fame who took me out with her clubmates once or twice. All these people have last names that even Scrabble players can’t remember right, coincidentally.
I can blame the distraction of preparing my products and selling them for my mediocre performance play-wise, I suppose, but it’s still frustrating. I had a lot of games with luck going my way, some I had no chance in, but a few losses, in any one of which had I done the smart thing or reacted better it would have put me in the top 10 and I’d have been satisfied. I didn’t challenge a few stupid words, or didn’t yell “hold” quickly enough, or tried a phony word myself when I didn’t need to. In one I opened up the board to avoid a stalemate that might’ve come down to who had the least points on their rack, and of course lost. I think it’s a good sign that the far majority of my losses were to players that finished below me, and I had pretty close losses with the top 2 players (and only lost to the winner of my division because of an unlikely Q being the last letter in the bag). I still can’t deal with supposedly weaker players that clog up the board.
I met up with my buddy from the airport in round 17, and had one of my best games of the week, making the comments and the photo page. Games like that, down to the wire and wide open, are by far the most fun. Another highlight was hearing the story from someone at lunch about learning the word SEAWANT the day before and playing it that day… and I played it the next day myself, as did another player who was there. I’m sure I’ve seen it before but wouldn’t have remembered it or seen it on my rack if it hadn’t come up. A neat coincidence. Sadly, nothing much else too impressive came up, looking over my score sheets. Not a single play over 90 points. Ugh.
My other excitement of the week came when someone had a seizure and had to be hauled away. I heard about it a little later and asked an official who it was, and he told me it was my elderly roommate Stu Goldman! He’d just been given a plaque for playing over 5,000 tournament games, and I feared he’d given up the ghost. A little fact checking showed it to be someone else, though, who recovered and came back to play later that day. He and the guy who was mugged one night are doing fine, or as well as can be expected, I guess.
My products were a success and I made a lot of new connections and friends so overall the trip was worthwhile. It felt good to see people using my bags and racks. Maybe I deserved to lose ratings points (I haven’t had the gumption to check how many) because of my weak word knowledge. Oh well. One of these days I’ll get it right.
One note to Dayton businesses– maybe you could be a little more prepared (I’m talking to you, Subway-with-2-guys-working-the-lunch-hour) or step things up a little. I was a little pissed that the smelly hotel that should be grateful for being filled up maybe the only time all year gave a woman a pissy “The shuttle to the airport is a privilege, not a right” speech on check-out day. You couldn’t run them twice an hour? Or have someone drive the manager’s SUV? You have to talk to someone like that after 5 nights as a paying guest? Jerks.