A world of words appreciated by all

Abigail Covington, Earl Hopkins, Tribune News Service

South Philly’s Mark Abadi has had a way with word games since he was old enough to pick up a Scrabble board. By 10, he would complete large-print mini games and crossword puzzles, and started playing Scrabble against his parents. He became what he calls a “word nerd,” obsessing over newly-learned words and trying out new strategies in hotly-contested Scrabble battles at home. “I could never compete with my parents,” he joked. His parents always matched his competitive spirit.

Eventually, he lost interest in the game until, at 15, he found his childhood Scrabble board and began playing again. Only this time, he had spent days studying the Scrabble dictionary, which made him better equipped to out-point his parents. “I looked through the [dictionary] pages, and was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a word? You can play ‘A‘ā’ because it’s a kind of lava? What?’” Abadi, a copy editor at Business Insider, found immediate inspiration reading the 2001 "Word Freak" by Stefan Fatsis, a journalist who explored the underground Scrabble community and became an expert-level player. Soon, he’d follow Fatsis’ footsteps and become a nationally-ranked Scrabble player.

For nearly two decades, Abadi, 35, has competed in tournaments throughout the country. He’s won regional matches and scored top five finishes in world-class competitions, including the North American Scrabble Championship. The Montgomery County native has continued to sharpen his skills by rubbing shoulders with other world-class players, many of who are (like Abadi) members of the local group, the Delco Scrabble Club. “I casually hop on SEPTA and then I’m face-to-face with the best Scrabble players in the country. It’s kind of intimidating,” he said.

‘We’re waiting for you’: The Riddle Village dining room was pindrop quiet on a recent evening, save for the occasional shaking of Scrabble tiles. The Delco Scrabble Club had gathered at the assisted living facility, where one of their oldest members lived, for their weekly meeting. When The Inquirer got there, the members were halfway through their first of five 50-minute games. Will Anderson, a 41-year-old national Scrabble champion, reached into the black drawstring bag suspended above his head and plucked a plastic tile. “We do this as a courtesy to our opponents,” he said, glancing at the bag. “So you aren’t doing any shenanigans when you’re drawing.”

Unlike Abadi, Anderson did not grow up playing Scrabble. He started as an adult, partly to break a "World of Warcraft" addiction. That was in 2009. Since then, he’s won multiple tournaments and become an online Scrabble celebrity of sorts. After building an audience on Twitch, he turned to YouTube, where he currently has 70,000 subscribers and regularly posts “Scrabble History” videos detailing legendary games and players.

“It’s more growth than I ever could have imagined,” Anderson said. His online following even led to his day job as a content producer at Scopely, the mobile gaming company behind the Scrabble app. In Riddle Village, Anderson was playing two games at once because the group had an odd number of players. “We call it good Will and evil Will,” said Samuel Moch, a top-10 player in Pennsylvania, also a club member. “And that’s appropriate because I’m playing good Will and I’m beating him.” Meanwhile, “Evil Will” was facing Jeff Jacobson, a retired tuxedo salesman and another top player in the state, and winning.

Anderson, who lives in Aston, said part of the reason Philadelphia is home to so many strong Scrabble players may simply be its size. “You have a higher chance of these unusual hobbies in urban areas,” he said. Or perhaps, he added, the city’s competitive sports culture spills over into word games. “There could be something to that.” The competitive scene also benefits from the fact that Scrabble is a universally known game. Almost everyone learns it at home, as did several members of the Delco Scrabble Club. They grew up playing with friends and relatives, got so good that nobody around them could beat them, and began looking for tougher opponents. “If you’re that person in your family,” Anderson said, “we’re waiting for you with open arms.”

At the Delco Scrabble Club, it quickly becomes clear that Scrabble has more in common with chess than it does with word games.

“As a tournament player, you realise how deep and how beautiful the strategy of Scrabble is,” Anderson explained. “And in your pursuit of playing better and better, you leave the word game part of it behind and embrace it as a strategy game.”

Often, players don’t even know the definitions of the words they play. Evan Chester, the fifth-best player in Pennsylvania and one of the top 50 players in the country, doesn’t know the definition of unaus, the word he had put down in the Riddle Village game. He knows it because he memorized the dictionary.

“But it’s a very useful and playable word,” said the 22-year-old.

“It’s a two-toed sloth,” said fellow club member, Brendan McClanahan. Other club members, like de facto leader Ed Roth, who has been hosting the club at his house regularly for six years, nodded in agreement.

“Yup, two-toed sloth,” he said as he laid down the word decrial.

Delco to TV: The Delco Scrabble Club will soon draw the attention of national TV audiences. Abadi and Anderson are competing on CW’s "Scrabble" game show, hosted by comedian and former late-night show host Craig Ferguson. Last summer, Abadi submitted an application to audition for the game show. And after meeting with the casting director, was invited to compete in London for the show’s $10,000 prize. Abadi scored a win and will advance to future episodes of the show. “I put my fist up and clapped and everything,” he said. “I was way more peppy than I am in real life, to be honest.”

Anderson, who applied to audition after a show producer reached out to him on YouTube, won’t appear until the tail-end of the season in August. He was equally enthusiastic during his run. “I kicked up the hooting and hollering far beyond my norm,” he said. And while he was nervous in the lead-up to the game, “when it came to actually playing Scrabble,” he said, “the muscle memory kicked in, and it just became fun again.” Anderson and Abadi signed NDAs preventing them from discussing their performance, but both said winning wasn’t their main goal. Abadi wanted to “have fun” and represent the Philly and Scrabble communities well, which he thinks he did. Anderson just hopes his appearance on the show is entertaining for viewers. Through the show, Abadi is hopeful more people are drawn to the iconic board game. It’s not just a “vocabulary contest,” or a “game made for grandparents,” he said, adding there’s “something for everyone to appreciate about it.”