Scrabble's Youngest Champions Just Put on a Show

The 2024 North American School Scrabble Championship reached new heights of drama, with titles decided by a single point and absolutely amazing word finding and strategic thinking. In this video, I break down my favorite moments from this event, which is one of my favorites on the circuit each year.
Sometime soon, I plan to resume streaming on my Twitch channel:
/ wanderer15
For School Scrabble VODS (coming soon), follow ‪@letsplayscrabbledotcom‬ !

2:45 From watching Will Anderson videos to being in one ... what a journey!

[@mxspokes]

Unbooked is I think the more egregious omission. "Does the hotel have any unbooked rooms?" Is a valid sentence

[@wanderer15]

Agreed. Very surprising omission and completely understand both the decision to play it and not to challenge it.

[@viviblue7277]

So crazy that faultline isn’t valid, it’s such a perfectly normal word here in parts of the world where earthquakes are common occurrences.

[@snowfloofcathug]

Just highlights the point Will made in the comparison video a while ago. It’s not about words, it’s about knowing the valid ‘moves’ I agree though, those “oversights” feel quite odd

[@eurasianlynx5188]

I've only ever seen it spelled as "fault line" with two words, that must be why it's not valid in all dictionaries.

[@ozzywatchesyt4720]

It’s valid in the Collins dictionary (used in UK), but not merriam (used in north america)

[@viviblue7277]

@@ozzywatchesyt4720 earthquakes happen in North America too.

[@Ramboost007]

Like California

[@irakyl]

Must have felt great to directly hear from a competitor that your video gave him a bingo! You truly are the Will Anderson of Scrabble

[@snowfloofcathug]

5:01 I somehow misread the rack as saying “Pharynx” to begin with. Always nice when mistakes work out

[@-ZH]

I wonder if the thumbnail subconsciously led to that, or it was just coincidence. Cool stuff.

[@snowfloofcathug]

@@-ZH I think you’re right! My brain will autocorrect words or (very occasionally) immediately spot the bingo but it’d probably have taken a second if not for being primed to see it this time (I am pretty sure I would’ve seen it still, just not as quickly)

[@JDLupus]

The shoutout and your reaction is SO wholesome!

[@drew53768]

Cherish absolutely played out of her mind the whole tournament. Props to her for spotting so many impressive words!

[@DrewLevitt]

PHARYNX was awesome. Just awesome.

[@ST21phil07]

I'm not a Scrabble player, but I love those videos. Your community seems really tight knitted and I find it beautiful to see. Congrats to all the future stars who played in this tournament!

[@lasagnahog7695]

Woof, winning three school championships is wild. It's not like it's something you can grind for decades. Nigel was nearly 30 when he started competing(source: wikipedia). Kids like this have an absurd amount of potential. It's super exciting.

[@pideperdonus2]

If you watch enough Will Anderson, you will be praised by Will Anderson.

[@AmaranthRBY]

Everyone did great but Cherish was seriously impressive, can't wait to see more in future tournaments. Outstanding word knowledge

[@gl9tched]

Middle schoolers these days are crazy...i just sat inside and played call of duty all day when I was in middle school lol

[@TrunkyGurden]

agreed! I have so much hope for the upcoming generations.

[@wanderer15]

Right there with you (though I’m old enough that my game was Goldeneye)

[@TheLethargicWeirdo985]

I mean the vast majority of middle schoolers don't do crazy exceptional things, it's just that the ones that do, get famous and are the only ones you hear about

[@redravenrages6321]

@@TrunkyGurden Thank you because we don't have hope for ourselves lolZ!

[@nootnootnits]

This is why doing the livestream for the School Scrabble Championship is so fun for me each year! I love getting to interview the players afterwards---it's a treat being able to pick their brains and getting insight into their plays!

[@stellabiderman4056]

This is a wild way to find out that your cousin placed second in the North American School Championships. You'll get it next time Gideon!

[@redravenrages6321]

You have silver in your blood, literally.

[@dentonyoung4314]

Congrats to all the youngsters who participated. And thanks for making this video: it's always fun to see the new talent come through.

[@qqw743]

Can you please explain how partner Scrabble works? Do they alternate turns? Do they consult with each other? If so, who casts the deciding vote? And can opponents overhear their plans?

[@wanderer15]

A lot of the answers to these questions are entirely up to the two teammates. I don’t think I’ve heard of too many teams that take turns. But often you’ll find that in their preparation, each teammate will try to specialize in a particular type of word. For example, one will learn some common bingos, and the other will learn shorter words with the J, Q, X, and Z. I think the overhearing thing is also something that could play a larger role than I often realize as one of the event’s commentators, but experienced teams are likely much better at communicating while giving little away.

[@AsanteLion]

I played SULFIDE in a game earlier today! Now I'm wondering whether I subconsciously did the same thing as Nathan😂

[@TheGuyCalledX]

It's not that uncommon a word if you've had to take chemistry classes. -ic -ate -ide -ane -ene -one -yne -ol are all pretty useful suffixes for high scoring words that use Z, X, H

[@ValkyRiver]

@@TheGuyCalledX There’s also -ous -ite -al -oic -ium -yl etc.

[@plebcrabslayer]

Stellar talent! Congratulations on the shout out! :D 3:50 How did they miss TMIS?

[@wanderer15]

That's an editing error on my part - that should've read TINS.

[@SomeOne-hb7cn]

Funnily enough, I was ALSO watching a Will Anderson video and saw someone play Fatwaing, which i later used aginst my mother. funny how that worked out

[@ritwikism]

As someone who doesn't play Scrabble much, I found PHARYNX immediately since those letters only make sense to me in that arrangement lol

[@redravenrages6321]

Next Nigel?

[@marcwoo2426]

M1 TMIS* on middle school finals visualization :P

[@noahfasoformoso]

I was wondering how they missed IT/AMUSE/TEELS there :P

[@wanderer15]

Editing mistake :( thanks for catching!

[@jupiter--system]

I have no idea what I just watched but it was awesome.

[@redravenrages6321]

I play Scrabble and I still never know :)!

[@escapedlunatic27]

I spotted DILATORY as an alternative to IDOLATRY in the first position, although it doesn't score as well because it doesn't have the Y on a triple letter. However, it's possible to do better with SORDIDLY or HYDROIDS across the D on the board, hitting both double word squares.

[@RichardWaleAderounmu]

Would you have spotted those words within the play time limit?

[@richards31415]

2:31 anyone else notice the opposing team has MAGILPS for 90 points? (Granted, I definitely did not know this word in middle school)

[@wanderer15]

A very obscure word that only very experienced players would find! In fact, in that position, Tobey and Theo played the extremely impressive PSALM hooking CINDERS for 40, which almost made the cut for inclusion as one of my favorites!

[@HollandB]

Gideon was milos ms partner in 2022 and is now killing it in hs

[@SpikeWikeyMr]

hey i was there it was cool (i was playing during the games)

[@redravenrages6321]

Simple comment, but effective!

[@pinklemonade6597]

Pharynx is nuts what an incredible spot!

[@jellomochas]

The board at 3:49 is wrong in two ways. - TINS was played at M1, not TMIS*. - QUOIN was played at D1. On Will's board, Milo and Nathan threatened outs with TEELS at 3B and N3. On the actual board, Milo and Nathan did not threaten any outs.

[@wanderer15]

Yes, good catches. I messed up!

[@NotFinnish]

I once spotted Ankerite with two blanks thanks to one of these videos as well. The kicker? No one in my chill scrabble group has ever bingoed (including me prior to that point). I am superior /j

[@elidoesstuff5503]

Nice word! I'm still a beginner, my best was probably the unnerve I recently played, or the Wordle word that has the most confusing letters, vozhd. Both were in the game scrabble go

[@wanderer15]

Great play! Bingoing is not easy, though with practice and preparation you can start to play them more frequently.

[@modupeagbelekale1019]

I also watched the video of Nigel played SULFIDE 😁

[@OfficialGidfather]

Life’s goal complete

[@Takyodor2]

🥹 indeed, that was great!

[@thunder7433]

awesome vid as always will!

[@Tidu123]

At 4:04, could a play of 'E' in G3 to form 'DAE' and 'EN' not have scored 8 points to win the game? Or is DAE only valid in Collins?

[@Thaplayer1209]

Collins only

[@raelsadd]

well safe to say after watching this video, i would probably lose to a middle schooler in scrabble (luckily though, it wouldn't be the average middle schooler)

[@thegodofpez]

The youth is the future!

[@abandonedaccounnt]

not challenging your opponent to get a bingo is crazy

[@stickman1695]

37 views in 1 minute bro... did not fall off

[@LifeInspector]

Those kids are inspiring!!

[@Messilegend1000]

How come didn't you cover any plays from Chloe Fatsis? Did she have a bad tourney? And what about that cute guy with freckles, the one who played "Exonerated"

[@justin_tang]

Chloe graduated from school Scrabble a few years ago and is now one of the top Scrabble players in North America!

[@ohtani2024]

Despite Collins contain too much words while some of them got too generous to be included, they are much fair to the words. MW omitted too many common words!

[@nooppressor1562]

Magnus Carlsen is to Gotham Chess as Nigel Richard's is to this channel

[@tranonehalf]

Commenting for the algorithm!

[@Austin101123]

Why are so regular common words like faultline, queso, unbooked, queef not valid words in one or even both dictionaries?

[@wanderer15]

For some words like QUESO, the dictionary has just been a little slow to catch up to certain food words. It was probably close to being added in the previous update and now feels overdue. As for FAULTLINE and UNBOOKED, they’re both very rare cases of normal sounding words that happen to be valid only in the worldwide Collins dictionary. Typically, these words are either archaic or unique to a certain English dialect, but these are exceptions. QUEEF, well…I expect it to get in sometime :)

[@PickUps]

Me Rn.... i felt that

[@PendragonDaGreat]

3:15 OH, that's why I'm not good yet, I hadn't liked this video. (ok that's a great L&S spot though made me laugh)

[@socksygen]

Hamburger

[@EltWilder]

Words.

[@Manigo1743]

No, valid combinations of letters.

[@gredangeo]

Technically speaking, as a form of protest. Both sides of players agreeing to accept both dictionaries as valid words, should be a thing. It's just absurd otherwise. There should be only one dictionary. English words are English words.

[@galoomba5559]

The Collins dictionary is used for scrabble outside north america. There's been some controversy around the north american lexicon recently, hopefully that results in more people switching to collins and not more splitting

[@TheExcalabur]

When does a language become multiple languages? When licensing rules apply, apparently.

[@jakeeakle]

"English words are English words." This couldn't be further from the truth. What counts as "English" varies /hugely/ based on context. Is MUTEX English? How about SADLIER? SILLILY? KLEENEX? WINKY? LEERINGS? QUESO? NUMBNUTSES? Each of these cases might or might not be English in a given context, and each for different reasons. It's not at all obvious how a Scrabble dictionary should decide in any of these cases (and the answers may surprise you, and several of them have changed over time). Since there's no objective measure, some group of people has to do their best to make a few tens of thousands of such determinations, and they're very unlikely to do it exactly to your satisfaction.

[@galoomba5559]

@@jakeeakle Yeah, the closest we have to a dictionary containing everything that could possibly be an English word is Wiktionary, and that has over 750k words, triple the size of CSW and quadruple the size of NWL, while not even including a lot of words in CSW and NWL such as plurals of uncountable nouns

[@whitesoxMLB]

Unfortunately, you all have been hoodwinked. Cherish, Theo, Nathaniel, and the rest are all just random kids who Will found around his neighborhood and got to pose in front of Scrabble boards. Check your calendars for today's date.

[@WilliamKiely]

That'd be a great April Fool's video: The Kindergarten Scrabble Championship with a bunch of kindergarteners posing.

[@largemidget4550]

So happy I stumpled across your channel, fascinating stuff. My girlfriend and I are scrabble aficionados and considered ourselves pretty good, averaging 300 or so per game. Watching your videos of the 800 point games was humbling. Sub'd and looking forward to more of your content! I thought I was cool having 2 bingos to my record, and seeing players get 6 or 7 in a game is just insane. Best plays: Quartz on the triple for 102, and Mongrel on turn 1 for 100 something, I forget because she just forfeited 😂

[@wanderer15]

Thank you for giving my channel a try! Remember, there have only been a couple 800 point games in the entire competitive history of Scrabble. They’re amazing even to diehards like myself. Sounds like you and your girlfriend are indeed solid players!

[@stickman1695]

Fantastic Incredible Radical Stellar Things are in this video 😊

[@tugabooga]

💀💀💀