Historic Moments: SCRABBLE Through the Years

Incorrect Challenge Ruling Directly Responsible for Tournament Winner

by Stu Goldman

Many factors determine who wins a tournament: plays, opponents, mistakes, and so forth. Yet there was one tournament in which an incorrect challenge ruling almost certainly determined the winner. This happened in the late eighties, long before computer look-ups, and even before there was a rule that words challenged must be written down.
A legend of the game, Bob Felt, was playing one of the lowest ranked players in the top division at the Grand Canyon Tournament. Felt played LANITAL, but was uncertain whether it was good. The play was challenged, and the judge, looking at the word upside down, read LATINAL* and ruled it as unacceptable. Because Felt was unsure of the word, he did not ask for a second opinion. Felt lost that game, which he almost certainly would have won had the challenge ruling been correct.

The tournament format was round robin, with the last game as king of the hill. Going into the final game, Felt was seeded second, one game behind the leader, Joe Edley, who had a huge cumulative spread. Felt won that game, equaling Edley’s win-loss record, but lost the tournament on spread points. Had Felt won his LANITAL game, he probably would have won the tournament by one game. Stan Rubinsky, the director who read the word wrong, insisted on written challenge slips in all tournaments thereafter.

The kicker to this story is that in a subsequent year, at the same location, I told this story to my roommate. He played LANITAL against the co-director of this tournament and was challenged. This time the judge ruled correctly.

Stu Goldman lives in California and has been playing tournament SCRABBLE for 36 years.