Tiles and tribulations
Montrealer wins big in Scrabble tournament
Heading into the Scrabble Players Championship, North America’s largest Scrabble tournament, Montrealer Michael Fagen was seeded in the bottom half of his division: 28th of 42 players.
“No one expected me to win,” he said. “And I certainly didn’t expect to win.”
But Fagen, 27, surprised himself by defeating secondseeded Orry Swift, an accounting professor from Texas, in a best-of-five final for the 2022 championship last Wednesday. He came home from the tournament, held in Baltimore this year, with a trophy and US$10,000 in prize money.
“It was memorable — and thrilling,” he said.
“Michael was coming into the tournament definitely as an underdog,” said Josh Greenway, a competitive player and tournament organizer and media director for the Baltimore event. “What he pulled off here is really important in our community.”
Word knowledge is important in Scrabble, of course, but so is how a player views the board and controls it, he said. Finding places on the board where you can score is also important.
“I have exceptional spatial ability. If the word is one I know, there is a good chance I will find it,” said Fagen, a selfdescribed “word nerd.”
“A lot of people think of me as a bit nerdy, but I really enjoy the game,” he said. He enjoys the challenge as well as the social aspect of gathering with people to do something they all love.
Fagen started to form words with fridge magnets when he was three and It occurred to his parents, casual Scrabble players, that “I had a talent.”
At 14, he joined the Montreal Scrabble Club, which meets Wednesday evenings in Côtest-luc. Playing against Fagen is “like playing against a computer,” said Bernard Gotlieb, the club’s founding president. “I can’t beat him. He’s a very strong player whose word power and strategy are awesome. Impeccable. When he plays, he’s very focused and immersed in his thinking and concentration.”
Since his first tournament in 2011, Fagen has played 800 games in more than 50 tournaments.