2016 Canadian School SCRABBLE Invitational

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Commentary: Final Round 1

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

Finals 1

The School games will commentated mostly by SCRABBLE expert Joshua Sokol (with a little bit extra from Jesse Matthews and Robin Pollock Daniel)

Eric & Evan JMNR (Jack) vs. Zoe & Mireille BWMR (Bowmore) are the two teams playing

First two moves down fast. Girls start with PANEL, boys play FEM.

Joshua suggests the girls pay HODOR* from Game of Thrones, but they opt for BROOD, a non-phoney. The game is going well, we like the kids' plays and then they pause the clock to work on the scores. They disagree. The girls pass their scoresheet to the boys and one boy says "You did your math wrong. The girls are right."

We laugh in here hearing that!

Kids are paying great fours: RUTH NAVE. Joshua said he didn't know those words up until a couple years ago.

Joshua thinks the kids are missing the E hook on AQUA: AQUAE.

Almost VIOLINIST, but no place to put it for the girls! IILNOSV

A very close game, 7 points between them.

The girls fish off an I, hoping to make their rack work better next time, they took a long time on this turn.

The boys are only 3 behind and probably scratching their heads about that "fish" play.

Vera Bigall is a coach of both teams and she says she encourages very little fishing. She is sitting the viewing room with us watching the game unfold.

We see lots to plays for the boys now: AEGINRR

John Chew says, "Student players starting to suffer seriously from the giggles (stress).The last two plays at school table held."

REARING went down as a bingo, the boys take the big lead.

Girls lose challenge on ZINE, REARING. Boys now have ??EEKLO. 245-180, their lead. Looks grim for the girls.

Joshua likes SEEDLESS for 80. The boys do SLEDdErS. We like a lot.

The endgame gets a bit complicated because the boys decide to track after the bingo and it takes the a few tries to get it mostly right. They get down to less than a minute on their clock and start to play fast as do the girls, who are also low on time. A couple phoney plays are made in haste, and challenged, and then the game ends with the boys winning 453-287.