Player Profile: Wendell Smith, A Player's Director

by Katya Lezin

“My wife was tired of losing,” Wendell Smith explains, recalling the genesis of his foray into competitive SCRABBLE in 1990. “So she found a club listing in the local paper [in Exton, Pennsylvania, where he lived at the time] and pushed me out the door.” Wendell learned the hard way that his SCRABBLE prowess at home did not translate into success at club play. He lost his first game by 424 points and didn’t win a single game for his first three months of playing at the club, but the string of defeats only made him more determined to study and garner a victory. By 2003, Wendell had played in 1,234 games and scored over 400,000 points at the Exton club, according to club director Steve Oliger.

Wendell played in his first tournament on July 3, 1992 in Baltimore, Maryland, amassing a respectable 5 wins and 5 losses for the day. (It also happened to be the setting of Marlon Hill’s first SCRABBLE tournament, and Wendell recalls that Marlon did not lose a single game.) Wendell has since played in 135 tournaments and continues to play in them to this day.

After moving to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Wendell became a director in 1995 and started Myrtle Beach Club #431. Wendell’s early club experiences and humiliating losses stayed with him, and he now strives as a director to maintain a level playing field and keep bullies and cheaters from taking advantage of weaker or newer players. As one of the few directors with non-expert status (his peak rating is 1147), Wendell is a champion for lower-rated players. “I represent the players at the lowest division,” he says proudly, “those whom I have heard referred to as ‘babies’ or ‘recreational players.’” He thinks it is important to have lower-rated players’ needs represented on advisory boards and in directors’ forums, and he considers it part of his mission to stick up for their rights.

Most of us who enjoy competitive SCRABBLE share a love of the game, but few of us can boast that we actually found love through the game. Not so for Wendell, who met his lovely wife Linda Bianca (having parted ways with the wife who pushed him into club play back in 1990) through SCRABBLE. Linda saw the listing for the club and thought it would be a fun diversion for her mother, Janet. Wendell showed Janet the ropes and she became a club devotee, but since the club met during the day, Linda’s teaching duties precluded her from joining them. She was finally able to attend Myrtle Beach Club #431 during the summer, and when school started back up in the fall, Wendell offered to meet Linda in the evenings so that she could continue to play. Love blossomed over the SCRABBLE board and on a SCRABBLE cruise Linda and Wendell took together. They were married in 2005 in Reno after the Championship and now direct tournaments together, making a formidable team.

Wendell Smith with his wife, Linda Bianca.

Many of the highlights of Wendell’s long-standing involvement with the game involve bringing people together and seeing how the game can transform lives. He still remembers the Nationals in San Diego, when a young, somewhat disheveled man sat in the balcony and watched the games intensely. He told Wendell that he had just been released from the California penitentiary and was the reigning state penal SCRABBLE champ. He asked to be introduced to one of the up-and-coming players, a student at Harvard, and the two developed a friendship that continues to this day. “I could have been like you,” the ex-con told the Harvard student, “if I had taken up SCRABBLE as a kid.”

As a director at the 2006 Nationals in Phoenix, Wendell recalls how fulfilling and inspiring it was to direct the division with Nadine Jacobson, a legally blind SCRABBLE player. He also values the role he was able to play in assisting with the Millicent King Award in recognition of youth players at the Charlotte tournaments he directed in 2007 and 2008.

Like many of us, especially those who have played in as many tournaments as he has, Wendell has also amassed some negative experiences along the way, and he has abandoned his goal of returning to his peak rating. “I play for the enjoyment of the game,” he says. For those who face him across a SCRABBLE board or play in one of the tournaments he directs or the divisions at Nationals he oversees, he brings a lot of the enjoyment to the game as well.

Katya Lezin lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband and three children (Noah, Hannah, and Eliza). She is the author of Finding Life on Death Row, which profiles six individuals sentenced to death, and has written numerous articles for magazines and other publications. When she is not on the tennis court or competing in a SCRABBLE tournament (two of her passions, which her husband would argue border on obsessions), she enjoys cooking, reading, and spending time with her family.