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NSSC 2014 Commentary: Before the Tournament

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Final Round 1, Award Ceremony.

For the first time in its 12-year history, the National School SCRABBLE Championship is taking place in Hasbro's sleek new office space at One Hasbro Place in Providence, RI. We are across the street from where many exciting NSSCs took place at the Rhode Island Convention Center, most recently the 2009 event won by Andy Hoang and Erik Salgado.

Also for the first time, Mind Sports International has brought their famed RFID board to the event. Instead of human game recorders entering games onto a webserver, their game board will automatically detect the location of every tile and let viewers at home follow all the action along in a live stream featuring automatic analysis of the game.

Key playing equipment - tiles, bags and racks - are being provided by NASPA for the first time, along as usual with all of the floor staff: Tournament Director John Chew, Quadrant Leaders Ben Greenwood, Sherrie Saint John, Kieran O'Connor and Chris Lipe, Quadrant Assistants Patty Hocker and Kristen Chew, Volunteers Matthew O'Connor, 12-time NSSC staffer Donna Paul and Michael Thelen.

The fourth-floor playing space is laid out in two sections, each divided into two quadrants or zones. The zones are named A, B, C and D. Zone A has boards 2-9; Zone B boards 10-19; Zone C boards 20-27; Zone D boards 28-34. Board 1, the RFID board, is not in a zone.

Beginning with Board 2 in Zone A, the tile bags are colored in a repeating sequence of red, green, blue and black; the tile sets are similarly white, yellow, black, red, blue.