Summer 2016-17
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Journal of the New Zealand Association of Scrabble® Players No. 125 Summer 2016/2017 Also in this issue: Scandal in the Waikato Word Famous: Lynn Wood Slip Slop Slap New Zealanders on the Christmas Cryptic Crossword International Stage A Handy Fairy Tale Page 2 NZASP Executive Table of contents Editorial ..................................................... 3 President Paul Lister 128 Birdwood Avenue President’s Report ..................................... 4 Beckenham Christchurch 8023 Word Famous in New Zealand: Phone 03 337 6005 Lynn Wood ........................................... 5 Email [email protected] New Zealanders on the International Stage Vice Ruth Groffman .................................................................. 9 President 4 Wycolla Ave Scandal in the Waikato ........................... 14 St. Clair Club News .............................................. 18 Dunedin 9012 Phone 03 455 1777 Hall of Fame ........................................... 21 Email [email protected] SLIP SLOP SLAP .................................... 24 Secretary Frances Higham Christmas Cryptic Crossword .................. 26 9 Holden Place A Handy Fairy Tale .................................. 28 Papatoetoe Auckland 2025 Mailbox ................................................... 32 Phone 09 278 4595 Email [email protected] Two Extra Scrabble Tournaments ........... 35 Treasurer Dianne Cole-Baker Ask And-dream-a ..................................... 38 9/435 Parnell Rd Parnell Twenty Years Ago in Forwords ............... 40 Auckland 1052 Filk .......................................................... 42 Phone 09 309 5865 Email [email protected] Snappy Near Year ................................... 43 Web Master Glenda Foster Tournament Results ............................... 44 1 Walters Street Avalon Tournament Calendar .............................. 45 Lower Hutt 5011 Rankings List as at 31 December 2016 .. 46 Phone 04 567 1590 Email Club Contacts ......................................... 48 [email protected] Scrabble is a registered trademark of JW Spear & Sons, England, under licence in New Zealand to Mattel (NZ) Ltd. Forwords Summer 2016 Page 3 Editorial It’s no secret that your editrices are not own bed. Maybe their shower runs especially financially well-off. We both colder when you turn the lever towards have young children, and neither of us red. Maybe your opponent can never are currently experiencing the full again view you as a serious threat advantages of a dual-income across the board after they’ve seen you household. We’re both drawing stumbling blearily about their kitchen in subsidies from Work and Income, and your reindeer pyjamas. neither of us have a foot on the first rung of the property ladder. However, this On the other hand, though, there are the editorial is neither a plea for charity, nor many advantages of being billeted. A a yuletide exhortation to consider how Scrabble tournament can sometimes others are so much worse off. Instead feel like a Ferris wheel of nothing but I’m going to write about one of the many new words and new faces, interspersed things that makes the New Zealand with way too much tea and fruitcake Scrabble community a great one to be a (more about that some other time). Yet, part of (I know, Olivia wrote about just there is so much more to each Scrabble such a topic in the previous issue, but character than what is revealed to us bear with me...). within the four walls of yet another tournament venue. Who knew that this At the Whanganui tournament in challenger used to be a champion October, I got into a conversation with embroiderer? Or how well this virtuosic Anna Hough. Anna was observing that if anagrammer can tickle the ivories? Or your budget for Scrabble tournaments is that this Mainlander completes several finite, then the cost of accommodation crosswords each day? You can’t help can be quite prohibitive. If you have but find out more about someone when nobody to share a motel room with, you spend time with them in their home. you’ll be paying around $100 per night. In more isolated locales where public Personally, I love the buzz of uncovering transport is restricted, the added hassle/ new similarities between my host and cost of transport to and from the venue myself. I love finding the same Scrabble is another factor. Unless, that is, a -themed trinkets in others’ homes that I member of the host club can billet you. have in my own. Then you are not paying a cost per As a billetee, I can’t resist perusing my night, and you can share in whatever host’s bookshelves and music transport arrangements your host has in collections, and I have never yet failed place. You only really have the cost of to find titles and interests my hosts and I your meals to consider, and some hosts have in common. A shared penchant for will even insist on taking that fast food is always a winner in my book, consideration off your hands. but I am equally indebted to those hosts And all of this means (as Anna so rightly who have prepared hot dinners and/or observed) that you can subsequently go homemade lunches for me during my to more tournaments. stay. Sure, when you’re staying in someone It saddens me that I am not currently in else’s home, there are disadvantages. a position to reciprocate by hosting Maybe you’ll have to help make up your guests in my Auckland home. Forwords Summer 2016 Page 4 But it remains one of my long-term Scrabblers who are far from home goals that, before I toss in my tile bag during a tournament. You make it for good, I will be able to lighten other possible for us all to get to know each Scrabblers’ burdens by inviting them to other better, and to do more of what we stay with me. In the meantime, here’s all love. wishing tidings of comfort and joy to everyone, but especially to all those beneficent souls who have hosted (and Anderina McLean offered to host) me, Olivia, or any other President’s report I’ve been a proud and long-standing While WESPA member of the NZASP since the early preserves the 80s. Scrabble was very uncomplicated traditional WSC then, and some remnants of those invitational format, halcyon days are still to be found in our MSI’s ‘world constitution: “encourage all Scrabble championship’ is open players to compete together”, and entry. I couldn’t stand “organise and conduct tournaments”. it if we went to a scenario similar to the Paul Lister Local, national, and international World boxing Scrabble progressed idyllically through championship, where there are four (4!) the 90s and noughties. In those years different world championship boxing the most troubling issues were over who belts. I’m a bit of a loyalist and a preferred the “English” dictionary over traditionalist, and a Mind Sports the “American English” lexicon. In the International World Scrabble champ and recent past Scrabble had felt especially a WESPA World Scrabble champ would settled when the Collins Official grate on my nerves. A scenario like this Scrabble Words came out circa 2012 also discredits the integrity built up over following consultation with Scrabblers the decades by our administrators and Darryl Francis, Allan Simmons, and players. David Sutton. WESPA had been formed by this time, and a nice rollout of world Moving on… I would like to wish you all tournaments and updated ratings was a fabulous Christmas and a Scrabblish moving our game along famously. New Year. On offer in the year ahead are Forwords being delivered by email However, in recent years some troubling and in colour, a new rating system, and clouds have been rolling over our several interesting new tourneys. established Scrabble landscape, in the form of Mind Sports International (MSI). I look forward to catching up with you all The plots they have afoot include in 2017! ousting WESPA as the international Scrabble rules and regulatory body, obnoxiously trying to deny WESPA the Paul Lister right to use the term World Championship, and pushing an expurgated dictionary. Forwords Summer 2016 Page 5 Word famous in New Zealand Lynn Wood Lynn Wood has been a feature of the Scrabble scene in New Zealand for many decades. With her recent achievement in racking up the most tournament games played by any New Zealand Scrabbler, it seems timely that we should end 2016 with her profile. I was born in Wellington in 1949 to Frank and Thelma Chisholm. Mum was a Dunedin girl, so perhaps that is why I love Dunedin so much. I left Lynn Wood as a child school armed with school cert when I was 15. Because I got school C, my The chemist righted the situation for father bought us our first television. I me, but I was left red-faced and think he would have really liked me to blushing for quite some time go to university but I knew the afterward. academic thing just wasn't for me. I did complete units in Retail When I left school, I went to work at Administration, and Merchandising James Smith Department Store. It Techniques through the New Zealand was there that my love of clothing Institute of Management. However, came to light. I worked for several that experience just reinforced my years in school wear, haberdashery, view that study just wasn't my thing! and lingerie (it was over the bra counter that I met my first husband, I've held down a number of varied and Eion, who was a commercial traveller interesting jobs in my working life, and for Bendon at the time). I was then on 19 January 2017, I will have been promoted to a Buyer of Fashion working continuously for 52 years. I position. In total, I worked for 16 years got my first after-school job when I in clothing retail. was 14. It was in a Kilbirnie pharmacy (Kilbirnie is a suburb of Wellington, NZ Breweries beckoned next, and I where I still live today).