NASPA Games

Last updated
NASPA Games
Predecessor National Scrabble Association
FormationJuly 1, 2009;15 years ago (2009-07-01)
Headquarters Dallas, Texas
Region
United States & Canada
Website https://scrabbleplayers.org
Formerly called
North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA)

NASPA Games, formerly known as North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), is a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 to administer competitive Scrabble tournaments [1] and clubs [2] [3] in North America. It officially took over these activities from the National Scrabble Association (NSA) on July 1, 2009. [4] As of July 31, 2021, the organization is no longer associated with the North American owner of the SCRABBLE® trademarks, Hasbro, Inc. [5]

Contents

Activities

NASPA has organized an annual North American championship since taking over from the NSA in 2009, most recently held in South Bend, Indiana in July 2024. Initially, it was known by its inherited name, the National Scrabble Championship (NSC). In 2015, the championship was officially renamed the North American Scrabble Championship (NASC), in recognition of its significant Canadian membership. In September 2021, the championship was officially renamed the Scrabble Players Championship (SPC), as a consequence of NASPA's dissociation from Hasbro.

Its committees and officers perform a number of tasks, including:

History

The National Scrabble Association (NSA) began promoting school, recreational and adult tournament Scrabble in the late 1970s with financial support from Hasbro. In 2008, Hasbro decided to stop supporting adult tournament Scrabble and clubs by the end of 2009. [6]

A meeting arranged by the NSA and Hasbro executives was held at Hasbro headquarters in suburban Springfield, Massachusetts in December 2008. It was attended by prominent Scrabble players, club and tournament directors, and others from across the continent, including John Chew, Chris Cree, Joe Edley, Ira Freehof, Matt Hopkins, Robert Kahn, Katya Lezin, Seth Lipkin, Mad Palazzo, Steve Pellinen, Mary Rhoades, John Robertson, Sherrie Saint John, Debbie Stegman, Alan Stern, and David Weiss.

The attendees were offered the opportunity to form a new organization to preserve competitive adult Scrabble in North America, and encouraged to do so with Hasbro's blessing but without any funding. The NSA would continue to exist, but would largely focus on its school Scrabble program and promoting recreational play. (It ceased operations on July 1, 2013.)

Most of the attendees accepted Hasbro's challenge and formed the nucleus of the steering committee. An email vote by the steering committee's members determined the new organization's name: North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA). NASPA was registered in Texas as a not-for-profit corporation and headquartered in Dallas. Chris Cree of Dallas and John Chew of Toronto emerged as co-presidents. Hasbro gave NASPA until the end of 2009 to establish control of the competitive tournament scene, but it was ready for the transition six months early. Accordingly, the first NASPA tournament games were played on July 1, 2009, in three different cities.

As of July 1, 2009, NASPA became the only group in North America permitted to use Hasbro's SCRABBLE trademarks in adult club and tournament play. Other organizations such as the Word Game Players' Organization have existed since 2010 and run their own tournaments, but have been careful to use the Scrabble name only nominatively and thus not to infringe on Hasbro's trademarks.

NASPA later adopted a stricter Code of Conduct, with the goal of improving players' and officials' deportment at Scrabble events. Punishments for misbehavior and cheating at tournaments and clubs have been much swifter and harsher than in the past.

Though it valued its status as Hasbro's officially licensed organization for tournament and club play, NASPA received no operational funding from Hasbro, relying on membership fees, as well as "participation fees" collected by tournament directors, calculated at a fixed rate based on the number of tournament games played.

On July 9, 2020, after some debate and a non-binding survey of members, [7] the organization decided to remove 259 “personally applicable offensive slurs” from its tournament and club lexicon, echoing Hasbro's public position. [8] The NASPA Word List, published for members only, continues to differ from the public Official Scrabble Players Dictionary in including other offensive words, generic trademarks, and longer words (up to 15 letters).

On July 22, 2021, Chew (now the lone CEO of NASPA, following Cree's decision in 2019 to step back as co-president to become CFO) announced to the membership [5] that NASPA's right to use Hasbro's SCRABBLE trademarks would be terminated as of July 31, 2021. This resulted in a number of organizational changes, including a name change to NASPA Games. The organization intends to continue operations as before, including its annual North American championship, without Hasbro's endorsement. Its new legal disclaimer reads, "SCRABBLE is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the USA and Canada, and of Mattel, Inc. elsewhere. NASPA and its activities are neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Hasbro or Mattel."

NASPA membership types

NASPA membership is mandatory for anyone who wishes to compete in sanctioned NASPA tournament play, though NASPA-sanctioned clubs are free to operate independently within the limits of the Code of Conduct. There are several categories of membership:

As of June 2013, NASPA had more than 2,500 dues-paid members.

Championships

As National Scrabble Championship: [9]

As North American Scrabble Championship: [9]

The 2020 and 2021 events, both scheduled for Baltimore, were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Related Research Articles

<i>Scrabble</i> Board game with words

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns and are included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.

The National Scrabble Association (NSA) was created in 1978 by Selchow & Righter, then the makers of Scrabble, to promote their game. It coordinated local clubs and Scrabble tournaments in North America, including the National Scrabble Championship, until 2009. The last director was John D. Williams, who is co-author of the book Everything Scrabble.

The World Scrabble Championship (WSC) is played to determine the world champion in competitive English-language Scrabble. It was held in every odd year from 1991 to 2013; from 2013 onwards, it became an annual event.

Collins Scrabble Words is the word list used in English-language tournament Scrabble in most countries except the US, Thailand and Canada. The term SOWPODS is an anagram of the two abbreviations OSPD and OSW, these being the original two official dictionaries used in various parts of the world at the time. Although the two source dictionaries have now changed their respective titles, the term SOWPODS is still used by tournament players to refer to the combination of the two sources. There has not been any actual hard-copy list produced called SOWPODS, although the current Collins Scrabble Words, or CSW, is in effect the full SOWPODS list by a different name.

The Scrabble Players Championship is the largest Scrabble competition in North America. The event is currently held every year, and from 2004 through 2006 the finals were aired on ESPN and ESPN2. The 2023 event was held in Las Vegas from July 15–19, 2023, with Joshua Sokol emerging as champion.

In Scrabble, a challenge is the act of one player questioning the validity of one or more words formed by another player on the most recent turn. In double challenge, if one or more of the challenged words is not in the agreed-upon dictionary or word source, the challenged player loses her/his turn. If all challenged words are acceptable, the challenger loses his/her turn.

NASPA Word List is the official word authority for tournament Scrabble in the USA and Canada under the aegis of NASPA Games. It is based on the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) with modifications to make it more suitable for tournament play. Its British and international-English counterpart is Collins Scrabble Words.

<i>Official Scrabble Players Dictionary</i> Word authority for American tournaments

The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary or OSPD is a dictionary developed for use in the game Scrabble, by speakers of American and Canadian English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joel Sherman</span> American Scrabble player (born 1962)

Joel Sherman, nicknamed GI Joel, is an American professional English-language Scrabble player and former world champion. He is featured in Stefan Fatsis's book Word Freak, in Eric Chaikin's film Word Wars, and in Scott Petersen's film Scrabylon. He is also mentioned in Collins Gem's reference book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Kramer</span> American Scrabble player (born 1958)

Jim Kramer won the 2006 United States Scrabble Open in Phoenix, Arizona. Kramer has competed in 15 U.S. championship Scrabble tournaments and has represented the U.S. at the World Scrabble Championships six times. Before winning the 2006 USSO, he had top-ten finishes in the national championships three times, in 1998, 2000, and 2005. His fifth-place finish at the 2003 World Championship (WSC) was the highest by any North American player that year. He finished third in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Cappelletto</span> American Scrabble player (born 1969)

Brian Cappelletto is a Scrabble player who represents the United States in international competition. He was the runner-up at the inaugural World Scrabble Championship in 1991 and won the event in 2001. He also won the American National Scrabble Championship in 1998, and was the runner-up in 2008 and 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Wiegand</span> American Scrabble player (born 1974)

Dave Wiegand is an American Scrabble player who won the National Scrabble Championship in 2005 and 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tile tracking</span> Gaming strategy

Tile tracking is a technique most commonly associated with Scrabble and similar word games. It refers to the practice of keeping track of letters played on the game board, typically by crossing letters off a score sheet or tracking grid as the tiles are played. Tracking tiles can be an important aid to strategy, especially during the endgame when there are no tiles left to draw, where careful tracking allows each player to deduce the remaining unseen letters on the opponent's final rack. The marking off of each letter from a pre-printed tracking grid as the tiles are played is a standard feature of tournament play.

The Canadian National Scrabble Championship (CNSC) is the Canadian national Scrabble competition in the English language, open by invitation and special qualification only to the top rank of Canadian players. All CNSC events have been held in Toronto.

David Lawrence Gibson was an American professional Scrabble player and mathematics professor. Ranked the top player in North America and widely regarded as one of the greatest Scrabble players, Gibson won the North American Scrabble Championship twice.

English-language Scrabble is the original version of the popular word-based board game invented in 1938 by US architect Alfred Mosher Butts, who based the game on English letter distribution in The New York Times. The Scrabble variant most popular in English is standard match play, where two players compete over a series of games. Duplicate Scrabble is not popular in English, and High score Scrabble is no longer practised.

Lexulous is an online word game based on the commercial board game Scrabble. It is run by an Indian company of the same name on a dedicated website, and is also available within the social networking site Facebook.

Nigel Richards (<i>Scrabble</i> player) New Zealand Scrabble champion (born 1967)

Nigel Richards is a New Zealand-Malaysian Scrabble player who is widely regarded as the greatest tournament-Scrabble player of all time. Born and raised in New Zealand, Richards became World Champion in 2007, and repeated the feat in 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019. He also won the third World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association Championship (WESPAC) in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">USA Table Tennis</span> American nonprofit sport governing body

USA Table Tennis, colloquially known as USATT, is the non-profit governing body for table tennis in the United States and is responsible for cataloging and sanctioning table tennis tournaments within the country. It was founded in 1933 as the United States Table Tennis Association. In addition to processing tournaments, USATT maintains a national rating and ranking system. It also oversees the USA National Teams. In total, USATT has over 9,000 members. The headquarters of USA Table Tennis is located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, which is also home to the United States Olympic Training Center. USA Table Tennis offers a $100,000 incentive for American Olympic table tennis athletes, though no American athlete has ever won a medal for table tennis.

The World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association (WESPA) is the overarching global body for English-language national Scrabble associations and similar entities.

References

  1. ↑ "How some spell fun: S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E". Caller. Archived from the original on 2010-02-02. Retrieved 2023-09-16.
  2. ↑ "Knoxville Scrabble Clubs Spell F-U-N". Knox News. Archived from the original on 2010-08-09. Retrieved 2023-09-16.
  3. ↑ "Escondido: Battle of the ages". North County Times. Archived from the original on 2010-04-14. Retrieved 2023-09-16.
  4. ↑ "North American Scrabble Players Association: Frequently asked questions". Scrabbleplayers.org. Retrieved 2010-01-30.
  5. 1 2 "NASPA News - July 22 2021 - NASPA Organization Update - Spotlight on Ezekiel Markwei". www.icontact-archive.com. Retrieved 2021-07-25.
  6. ↑ Brandon, Chris (16 July 2013). "No Letters Left: Game ends for Scrabble Association". AssociationsNow. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  7. ↑ Fatsis, Stefan (18 June 2020). "The Word Nerd Reckoning". Slate. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  8. ↑ D'Angelo, Bob (9 July 2020). "Scrabble Association bans racial, ethnic slurs from official word list". WSB-TV. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  9. 1 2 "North American SCRABBLE Championship - NASPAWiki". www.scrabbleplayers.org. Retrieved 2024-09-22.
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