Brookline team goes out with W-I-N
Takes top prize at Scrabble finals
The Scrabble team from Brookline was on their P's and Q's yesterday -- and Z's, too -- at the Hynes Convention Center. Aaron Jacobs, 14, and Nathan Mendelsohn, 13, took home the $5,000 first prize in the fourth annual National School Scrabble Championship.
The pair of eighth-graders breezed through most of the games, according to Mendelsohn. ''But this last game totally came down to the wire," he said. ''We ended up winning by only nine points. It's a relief for it to be over."
It's been a long and laborious year for the fifth- through eighth-graders who have been competing in their home states for the chance to go word for word at the national tournament, which began in Boston in 2002. About 1 million students in 20,000 schools play the popular word game as part of the program. Only 196 players from 23 states made it to the big show -- and it is tense.
''A lot of people are very surprised when they walk in because they've never seen middle-school students this quiet," said Ben Loiterstein Greenwood, 43, of Lexington, who directed the weekend championship. ''All you hear is the click of the tiles and some whispers."
Coaches and relatives had to remain in the observation seating area, he said, only to watch the players plunk letters on the board and jot down the scores. Greenwood said he saw the most eccentric arrangement of letters in the first of yesterday's six-round showdown, when one team slapped down H-I-D-A-L-G-O -- which means a minor Spanish nobleman -- for a whopping 90 points.
Mendelsohn and Jacobs pulled away with such words as koi, which they admit they don't know the definitions.
''That's kind of the idea of Scrabble," Jacobs said. ''You don't have to know what it means."
With a year's worth of bragging rights, the wordy winners weren't sure how they would spend the $5,000. Jacobs said he wanted to donate some to the Red Cross to help Hurricane Katrina victims. Mendelsohn talked about saving for college.
''It's a little baffling to think about how much we won," he said.
''That's more money than I ever expected to win from Scrabble."
