WAIMEA — Some sentences speak volumes beyond what they’re communicating, phrases, if you keep your ear sharp, that say much more than just what they say.
It’s not boasting, more like clues sprinkled about.
Like what I picked up talking with Gary, who they call Mr. Bingo.
“That’s when I moved to the Washington coast to build a sailboat and sail it,” he said, casually, when we were getting to know each other at Tutu’s House in Waimea.
It’s little Easter eggs like that which are worth paying attention to, almost forewarnings.
“Careful,” the alarm says. “Gary has a skill set you do not.”
As it was, I learned about Gary’s building and sailing prowess after he thumped me at Scrabble, when we were just chatting, so it didn’t serve as a heads up that I might be out-skippered on the game board.
Enough warning was issued, anyway.
“Watch out for Mr. Bingo,” Anna Spielman, club founder, said when I first walked in to the Scrabble group on a recent Friday for one of their weekly meetup sessions.
“He always draws the S and the diamond,” another player, Fran Sanford, warned, the familiar laments of swearing another player has better luck at drawing more advantageous tiles.
Which, in my case, is true.
It’s uncanny how Meghan, my fiancee and regular opponent, always pulls the S, the beauty of a letter that pluralizes almost everything and allows a player to stack words and double the points.
With an S, you’re never boxed in or out of options. She draws 90% of them. The diamond is the blank tile, which can be used as anything. And yeah, she gets almost all of those, too.
But as avid players — Megan and my Scrabble board is a travel one we can fold up mid-game and take with us anywhere, cafes, airplanes, without moving a tile — we were curious what the club in North Hawaii offered.
It offers a lot, it turned out. Friendly people, great stories, and top of the line competition, at least for this player.
The score was so lopsided in the game I played with Gary and Donni Sheather, I did not write it down in my notebook. I put my pen and pad away about half way through, around the time Gary Scrabbled for the second time — that’s when you play all seven of your tiles on one turn, worth an extra 50 points.
I’ve had one Scrabble, which the group calls bingos, in my last 21 games.
I know because Meghan and I keep our scorecards and time-stamp them. Hey, the Scrabble community is fierce. The New York Times, I’ll point out, writes articles about when the game updates its dictionary for game-acceptable words and the reactions thereafter.
Gary, though, had two bingos in half an hour. Hence the nickname.
“Doing this keeps my mind sharp,” said Gary, who moves, talks, looks and acts much younger than his 83 years, on why he likes to play.
True to form, before he laid down his second Scrabble, “violets” for 75 points, he chuckled to himself quietly but pleased.
Anna, an English woman with sharp mind and an affinity for the game, formed the group a few years go after she and her husband moved back to the Big Island following stints on Maui and Kauai.
She belonged to a group on Maui and started a group on Kauai, which is still going, so she wasn’t going to do without when they retired and came back to Hawaii.
“Each place, I really needed Scrabble. I love it,” she said. “It’s yoga for the brain.”
So hooked is she that when she reads, she breaks words down like she is looking at them stacked on a Scrabble board. If it’s longer than seven tiles, is it a compound with a standalone root upon which a player can build? On walks with her dog, she tries to think of all the J or Q letter words she can.
Each of those tiles is worth big points and pretty easy to play.
“I’m a little bit of a nut,” she said.
So we all are.
Meghan and I keep our scorecards, time-stamped, with a running tally. She’s up 12 games to nine. The Times piece said the acceptance of “OK” as a two-letter Scrabble worthy word this year was a controversy. And one member used to play games against herself, as in, she’d draw tiles for two players, and just change seats after each turn.
“I used to play with my mother as a kid, and it got so she wouldn’t play with me anymore,” Fran said of taking to the game early.
When she saw the group of several members in Waimea, she thought she’d give it a try.
“And everybody was very welcoming,” she said.
They were for Meghan and me, too.
The backgrounds of all the players represent a cross section of careers, which made conversation fun. Gary, a retired teacher, was a linguist lover at Gonzaga University, and Fran trained a student who went on to win the state spelling bee.
They’ve met some interesting players along the way as well.
One player, a nice young man who plays a good game, as the group described him, honed his skills in jail. They caught one player cheating, a medical man who used to join the club when patients canceled their appointments. He was looking up words on his cellphone and they called him on it.
“He was very sheepish about it,” Anna said.
After a few games and a couple hours, I learned a few things to bolster my talent, which is only so-so to begin with. Key is knowing as many two- and three-letter words as possible so you can stack multiple ones per play — thereby increase your point haul.
But Meghan picked up a few things, too, I’m sure, and really, our 12 to nine score is no fluke. It only helps a little that she draws almost every S.
