Glen Ellyn retiree plays competitive Scrabble, heads local club
Competitive Scrabble player Tom Tremont can tell you 101 words that can be made with two letters and more than 1,000 that can be created out of three.
Right now, he's in the process of learning all the five-letter words that can be laid out on a Scrabble board.
"The guys that are really, really good, they're trying to learn ... maybe like 12-letter words, which is beyond me," he said.
Tremont considers himself only an average player competitively speaking, but the Glen Ellyn resident has come a long way in the five years he's been playing Scrabble. He's currently ranked 36th in Illinois with a rating of 990. Three players in the state have ratings in the 1800s, he said.
"I beat two of them last Sunday, which really made my day," he related with satisfaction.
He directs a Scrabble club that meets the first and third Saturdays of the month in LaGrange Park and holds four Scrabble tournaments a year.
One of the tournaments will be from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Glen Ellyn Public Library, 400 Duane St. Tremont expects about 40 competitive players in the North American Scrabble Players Association-sanctioned tournament, and a dozen casual players who do not need to register ahead.
The entry fee for competitive players is $35 (it was $30 before April 16) and includes a catered lunch. The top prize will be $125.
Good Scrabble players need to be able to take words apart and put them together in different ways, Tremont said.
"Looking at just some individual letters, it's sometimes difficult to see a word in there," he said. "You have to really be creative."
Creativity is part Tremont's makeup. He was an eighth-grade science teacher before he became a full-time magician, traveling the country doing trade shows and sales meetings. He also spent 22 years running Halloween Headquarters stores during the spooky season of the year.
Now retired, he was introduced to Scrabble five years ago by a friend and started playing competitively three years ago. He's played in the National Scrabble Championship tournament the past two years and expects to return in August when it meets in Dallas.
"I like the challenge of playing the really good players," he said.
Competitive playTremont's willingness to travel to tournaments and his ease with associating with higher-level players has made him an asset to the LaGrange Park Scrabble Club, said Roberta Krenek, a charter member of the 17-year-old group officially known as Scrabble Club 518."He's getting our club known," she said. "He's a quick learner and a very sociable guy."The club - one of two that holds sanctioned tournaments in Chicago area - was floundering a bit when Tremont walked in a few years ago. Seeing Tremont's interest, Krenek encouraged him to take the director's test that qualified him to become the club's leader 11/2 years ago."Everybody thinks he's a terrific guy," Krenek said. "He's running all kinds of tournaments and activities. He always has a little worksheet for us."The club has about 40 on its roster and an average attendance of 18 at its twice-monthly meetings, Tremont said. Members come from throughout the Western suburbs, including Schaumburg, Naperville, Wheaton, Oak Brook and Brookfield."We're a friendly group; not cutthroat competitive," Tremont said.In addition to playing Scrabble, members sometimes go out to dinner together and hold a tournament or party on the fifth Saturday of the month."There's a lot of camaraderie that comes out of playing Scrabble," Tremont said.Beginning players are given "cheat sheets" that contain all the two- and three-letter words and other tips for playing Scrabble. Tremont prepares quizzes for members on the types of words that are important to know - for example, words that use letters that appear less frequently, but carry more points,"There's 25, three-letter works that end in H," Tremont said.Tremont himself was able to make a memorable play after studying a list of 316, eight-letter words that contain five vowels. He remarked before one tournament that he wanted to be able to use the word "oeillade," a French word that means an amorous look."On the second play of the game, I was able to play it," he said.Words allowed in tournaments must be contained in "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary," but some would be hardly recognizable to the casual players, Tremont said. Who knew sh and qi are words?Players are allotted seven letters at a time. A player able to use all seven in a single move scores bingo and receives 50 extra points.In recreational Scrabble, up to four people may play at a time and dawdle over turns. Tournament matches are usually between two players and timed. Each player gets 25 minutes, but most experienced players are able to finish in 15, Tremont said. If all the letters aren't used before the clock runs out, the match continues but players have points deducted for overtime. Beginning level players usually score in the high 200s points per match, average players 360 and top players 450, Tremont said.Tremont said he tries to play at least one online Scrabble game daily and play a live game once a week."You're anagram skills get better and better," he said.People who are good at math often are good Scrabble players, but English majors not so much, Tremont said."They're more into the flow of words instead of individual words," he explained.Game with a historyInterest in Scrabble is growing, Tremont believes. The North American Scrabble Players Association sanctions more than 200 local matches a year, along with the National Championship. Scrabble is played internationally as well, with a World Scrabble Championship held every other year. Large tournaments offer thousands of dollars in prizes.Not bad for a game that couldn't even find a manufacturer when an out-of-work architect named Alfred Mosher Butts invented it during the 1930s. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how often each letter in the English language was used and assigned point values to letters based on frequency of use. Little used letters like x and q carry the highest points.Butts initially named his game Lexico. He later changed it to Criss-Cross Words and finally copyrighted the name Scrabble in 1948.Butts secured a partner, James Brunot, to manufacture the Scrabble sets but the game caught on slowly. Then legend has it, the president of Macy's discovered the game while he was on vacation in the early 1950s and ordered some for his store. Suddenly, everyone had to have one.Unable to keep up with the demand, Brunot sold the manufacturing rights. Hasbro now owns the trademark in the United States and Canada.Of course, competitive Scrabble players studying their letter tiles and the board for the words they can make aren't so much interested in the history of the game as their next move."In Scrabble, there's a little bit of a luck factor," Tremont allowed. "(But) the better players over time will consistently win more." <p class="factboxheadblack">If you go</p><p class="News"><b>What:</b> Scrabble tournament</p><p class="News"><b>When:</b> 9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday for tournament; casual players 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.</p><p class="News"><b>Where:</b> Glen Ellyn Public Library, 400 Duane St.</p><p class="News"><b>Cost:</b> $35 including lunch for sanctioned players; free for casual players</p><p class="News"><b>Info:</b> (630) 469-2282 or <a href="mailto:tomtremont@gmail.com">tomtremont@gmail.com</a></p>