Everyone in the lounge at Noyes Community and Recreation Center was silent. All eyes focused on one person and nobody so much as flinched as they waited for his next move. In one slow, confident motion, the player picked up his pieces and placed them down in front of everyone. “P-I-M-P,” the wooden letters spelled out. As laughter crashed through the stillness, Mori Bellamy ’09, vice president of Cornell’s Scrabble Club, counted up his points and recorded his total on the scoreboard.
“We don’t take ourselves too seriously,” explained Treasurer Jenna Walker ’10 as she recalled that the mission of the club is simply, “to have people enjoy Scrabble.”
The Scrabble Club, which is in its first semester of existence, is a place for friends to get together, hang out and have fun — while testing their knowledge of the English language. Walker also notes that the club’s get-togethers are a great way to procrastinate.
Both Walker and Alex Ainslie ’10, one of the first members of the club, agree that they have learned a lot about Scrabble strategy and vocabulary through their participation in the Scrabble Club. Ainslie explained that Bellamy and Dani Rubinstein ’09, the Club’s president, have been teaching the other members a list of all the two letter words in the Scrabble dictionary.
“Two letter words are probably the most important,” Rubinstein explained.
“They changed my life,” Ainslie added with a chuckle.
Sitting there at the table, I learned a thing or two about Scrabble myself. The coveted “bingo” word is a word that uses up all seven letters on the rack. Not only will the feat impress an opponent, but it will also earn a player a bonus of 50 points. The seasoned vets provided me with other useful tips: save the more common letters for bigger words, such as bingos, and save the letters with higher point values for premium squares. Putting an E, worth one point, down on a double letter score square is not nearly as efficient as putting down a ten-point Z.
While the Scrabble Club loves to joke around and have fun, they do give it their all when it comes to playing the game. As I glanced around the table I saw that players were just as focused while waiting for their opponent to place their tiles on the board, as they were when figuring out their own moves.
“You look at the board and get a feel for where the good spots are,” Bellamy said as he shuffled the tiles on his rack. He explained that while a lot of people simply look at their letters and try to make words out of them, it’s important to play to the board, and see what opportunities are available.
Bellamy is certainly no stranger to earning large point values. When asked what the Scrabble highlight of his semester has been so far, he and Rubinstein recalled a game between the two of them in which Bellamy scored 167 points off of one word. Not only was the word a bingo, adding 50 points to his total, but the seven letter word also stretched from one Triple Word Score space to another.
The two founders of the club, Bellamy and Rubinstein, have been playing Scrabble together since their freshman year. They decided to start a club for their mutual hobby this summer, and they got started with the process right away. Using their own personal contacts and networks, as well as Facebook, the two co-founders recruited members, some of whom enlisted other Scrabble enthusiasts that they knew.
After amassing a group of members, appointing officers, and signing up Prof. Molly Diesing, linguistics, as faculty advisor, it was time to become an official Cornell organization.
“Every time I thought we were done there were more forms,” Rubinstein replied with a grin, when asked about the process of becoming an official club.
Now that they’re official, however, the Scrabble Club is onto bigger and better things. Right now, the club is eager to attract new members. They’ve made fliers to post around campus, and may host a Scrabble tournament open to the entire Cornell community.
“It’s on our to do list,” Bellamy confirmed.
As the racks were put away and the tiles were placed back in their bag, the other players congratulated Rubinstein on his victory. Everybody left with a smile on his or her face. Win or lose, Scrabble is always spelled F-U-N.