By Genevieve Roja
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER SCRABBLE PLAYERS SPELL OUT THEIR VERSION OF F-U-N Thursday, April 27, 1995 Byline: Credit: MICHAEL V. COPELAND: THE IRVINE CITIZENAt first glance, the gathering of often pale and tobacco-stained players looked like a cross between a bingo game and a science fiction convention.
But the Scrabble boards gave it away. While some celebrated this Earth Day weekend reveling in nature, there were at least 90 others who preferred to spend two days inside, agonizing over whether "bortz" could possibly become "bortzing."
And if "bortzing" were an etymological figment _ it is _ would anyone challenge it?
These were the big questions at the first annual Orange County Scrabble Tournament held over the weekend in Irvine. Not global warming and its ramifications, but words like "bortz" and variations on that theme.
Scrabble addicts from up and down the West Coast gathered at the Atrium Marquis Hotel for a piece of more than $3,000 in prize money.
"It's the goofiest thing you ever saw, isn't it?" Dana Point resident and tournament organizer Mark Milan said.
Spread out along seven rows of tables were the combatants. They sat hunched over Scrabble boards and chess clocks peering intently at their word-filled battle field.
Tote bags lined the room's walls, filled with extra boards, Scrabble dictionaries and other game necessities. Many of the handmade bags had little Scrabble-centric phrases like "I hate this game" and "Scrabble players are never at a loss for words."
Players in three divisions _ novice, competitive and expert _ played 13 games in a round-robin-style tournament over the course of two days.
Each player was allotted 25 minutes in a game to make his or her moves, laying down plastic tiles with letters to form words _ words such as "bortz," which the dictionary defines as a dark-colored, poorly crystallized variety of diamond used for industrial purposes as an abrasive.
Don't, however, ask a Scrabble player what a word means.
"The meaning is unnecessary," San Francisco resident Stew Goldman, 65, said. "The only thing we worry about is whether an `s' or an `ing' can be added, we're not concerned with meaning."
Goldman, thought to be the strongest senior citizen player in the nation, had just dispatched Norma Fisher, 51, a New Zealand-native now residing in San Francisco.
Scrabble, the board game invented by an out-of-work architect in 1937, is played all over the world from Africa to Southeast Asia. The largest Scrabble club in the world is in Israel, and one of the largest tournaments is held annually in Thailand. The big tournaments are all played in English.
Scanning the room in Irvine, it would appear that Scrabble, at the competitive level at least, is dominated by men well into middle age.
"It's mostly men, many are retired," said Milan, who at 36 and a working real estate agent is something of an anomaly in the Scrabble world. "It's a lot of guys who like to talk on the Internet _ that type of person."
Mark Landsberg, a Leisure World resident in Laguna Hills, happens to hold the world record for most points scored in a tournament Scrabble game _ 770. He is among the top 50 or so players in the nation and was one of the favorites to prevail at this weekend's tournament.
In his world-record setting match in June 1993, Landsberg, 57, a retired game inventor, scored two triple-triple word scores and one double-double word score. Which is akin to what?
"It was like I ran a three-minute mile," Landsberg said.
The final word in Landsberg's finest game was "uncinate."
Which means?
"It means 127 points," Landsberg said with a grin.
But even Landsberg couldn't keep pace with Jim Geary, a brash 28-year-old resort employee from Phoenix.
Geary won the expert division of the tournament with a 10-3 record, beating out Goldman in a deciding match.
"I won the tournament when I played `intender,' " Geary said. "(Goldman) wasn't sure it was a word, so he challenged me and lost a turn. That gave me the point edge I needed."
Last Modified 6/2/00