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Dear
Steve
The Johannesburg Scrabble Club was launched in June 1982. The first
Transvaal Open Championship, "The Chambers Cup" took place on
11 and 12 August 1984. The winner was Roni Witkin with an average score of
410,5 over 6 games. In 2nd place was Ros Finn with an average of 397,3 and
3rd was Helen Lamport with an average of 388,3. Roni had the highest game
score of 520 and won the "Rose Bowl" for that, and the highest word
score went to Paul Voice for 122 points for which he got the Dolce Vita
Trophy. The South African Postal Scrabble Club was launched in 1983.
Regards
Gwen
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Dear
Steve
In 1964 I started a Scrabble Club with a friend of mine - Netta Linder- who
was also on the original committee with me when we floated the Johannesburg
Scrabble Club at Paterson Park. That one I also called the Johannesburg
Scrabble Club. We used to have meetings every Tuesday night on the 10th floor
of Anstey's Buildings - Corner Jeppe and Joubert Streets in the Johannesburg
city centre. It went really well - and we had some really interesting people
attending, including some Capetonians who started up as well. We had a
journalist doing monthly newsletters, a weekly ladder and such like. I don't
remember who those from Cape Town were. Then after about 18-20 months Netta's
husband died, and I became actively involved in our business in the country
(100 miles out of town) which was necessary because of problems there - so we
had to fold the operation temporarily - which turned out to be until 1982.
When I started at Paterson Park we started with the sets that we had from the
old club. The original committee who were with me when we launched Paterson
Park were: Hymie Kaufman (Metro Toy), Leah Katz (now in Canada), Dennis
Seligman (computer company, now deceased), Netta Linder (who died 18 months
ago), Pat Gibor (now in London), Harry Farber (? - I lost touch), Elizabeth
Rose (still living in Johannesburg), and myself.
Regards
Gwen
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In the
1980s, tournaments were decided not on number of wins and spread as we do
today, but on highest average score, irrespective of whether one won or lost.
This was the "British" or "open" or
"high-score" style of playing, as opposed to the
"American" or "matchplay" style, where wins were all
important. These games tended to be very open affairs, with mainly 2, 3, 7
and 8-letter words in evidence. Blocking was frowned upon, and triple-triples
could stay open the whole game! Eventually in the early 1990s the UK moved
towards matchplay style and South Africa followed suit.
I started playing tournaments at age 12 in 1984. I remember playing on
a Monday night at Paterson Park. Things were different - smokers outnumbered
non-smokers and smoked during games, with candles to drive the smoke out of
opponent's eyes. Two large rooms were filled with Scrabblers of all
ages. My mom Arlene Fine and I left at about 11 PM, but the play often went on
until dawn the following morning! Sadly, the JSC has been forced to move its
club day to Saturday afternoons, with people reluctant to travel in
Johannesburg at night.
At that stage, the sole word source in South Africa was the Chambers English Dictionary (1983 edition). One did not have the
luxury of word study computer programs like LeXpert,
nor even word lists like the OSW (Official Scrabble Words) or OSL (Official
Scrabble Lists). Players and adjudicators had to be adept at looking up
words in the dictionary itself. We had a list of extendable adjectives,
showing which ones would take comparative and superlative forms, and which
would not. Then publications like Chambers Anagrams and Chambers Words
emerged, which made life much easier and settled many disputes.
South Africa took its cue (or is that Q?) from the UK, and we accepted and
rejected the same words in Chambers that they did. In the mid-1980s - words
marked Shakespearean, obsolete and foreign were disallowed. So words marked
as South African from AARDVARK and BILTONG, BRAAIVLEIS and WITBLIS were
unacceptable in South Africa, as they were not good in UK play! This soon
changed. In 1993, South Africa adopted the Official Scrabble Players
Dictionary (OSPD)
as an additional word scource.
SANSPA was formed in 1987 with Gwen
Heiman as the first National Chairperson, and that is when the SA Nationals began, at first every two years.
Larry Benjamin was the first national champion, and is so far the only
four-time winner. When the first World Scrabble Championships was held in
London in 1991, the Nationals became an annual event. After Gwen
Heiman, Larry Benjamin became SANSPA Chairperson. Thereafter, SANSPA moved to
Cape Town, under Anita Kassel and Gerald Davids as Joint Chairpersons. Anita
then assumed the helm herself, until I (Steven Gruzd) was elected National
Chairperson in September 2000, when SANSPA moved back up to Gauteng.
Debbe Hossy
and Zubeida Brey were elected as joint co-chairs at the 2003 SA Nationals in Johannesburg,
thus moving the helm back to Cape Town. Debbe has now taken over as primary
webmaster of the SANSPA website.
Scrabble has indeed come a long way. The first Pan African Championships were
held in Nairobi, Kenya in 1994, and Cape Town hosted the 1998 event. Trevor
Hovelmeier won the Pan African Championship in 2002. Gauteng has started a
successful School Scrabble Programme that we hope to roll out
to the other provinces soon. There are 14 clubs affiliated to SANSPA as of June 2004, with a number of
unaffiliated groups and new clubs emerging. Our website and quarterly
magazine draw new players in all the time, as do reports in the media. We
also have links to all the 11 known Scrabble Associations in Africa.
I'm sure I've made some errors, or you may have some more information of
anecdotes about Scrabble's early days in South Africa. Please send them to
me! Email: steven@cde.org.za
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South Africans at the World Scrabble Championships (WSC)
1991 London,
UK
Larry Benjamin*, Averil Berger, Eli Levine
1993 New York,
USA
Larry Benjamin, Steven Gruzd, Lynn Roff
1995
London, UK
Steven Gruzd**, Debbe Hossy
1997
Washington DC, USA Gerald Davids, Steven Gruzd
1999
Melbourne, Australia
Dylan Early, Steven Gruzd, Trevor Hovelmeier
2001 Las Vegas, USA
Steven Gruzd, Trevor Hovelmeier
2003 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Steven Gruzd, Trevor Hovelmeier
* Larry finished 8th in 1991
** Steven finished 6th in 1995
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