The Wonderful World Of Words

New Orleans, where revelers come to let their hair down and let the good times roll.

"Shh! Players, please leave the room if you need to talk," a woman implores contestants at the National Scrabble Tournament

A rather odd choice of cities, then, for a gathering of those who get their kicks making triple word scores and drawing U's for their Q's, in sober silence, the only sound the rattling of thousands of little tiles, CBS News Correspondent Bill Geist reports.

"We've got over 850 players from 40 states and five or six different countries here for a week of non-stop Scrabble, playing for $100,000 in cash, $25,000 first prize," announces John Williams, director of the National Scrabble Association.

Like the Olympics, the National Scrabble Championship sports a formidable and highly diverse field.

We've got cab drivers, we've had exotic dancers, a couple of people who actually work for NASA, aerospace engineers. It's really a broad spectrum," Scrabble player Joel Sherman says.

Sherman, a full-time Scrabble player from the Bronx, is here to defend his title. He's known to all as GI Joel, the GI signifying his considerable gastrointestinal difficulties.

Comedian Matt Graham from New York believes in better Scrabble through chemistry.

"This is chlorophyll, just to kind of clean out all the toxins, and this is a B vitamin, which is great for stress. This is pyroglutamic acid, and I really don't know how that works," Graham intimates.

There's former national champion David Gibson, a college professor from Spartanburg, S.C. and Marlon Hill from Baltimore.

"I'm a lot different than most of the other players," Hill says. "Clearly for the obvious reason, you know. And then I'm sane, you know. So, this is, you know, a job to me. You know, I treat it like a job, a job that don't pay you nothing. It pays nada, zip, zero, zilch."

Trey Wright, a classical pianist from Los Angeles is here. And then there's Billie Garver, a cotton farmer from Arkansas who's in her 80s.

"When they find out I'm from Arkansas, they think I'm stupid," Garver explains. "They say I'm old, and they think, `Oh, well, you know, she's just an easy case.' And then I trash them, and it makes me feel good."

Scrabble, invented by unemployed architect Alfred Butts during the Depression, has never been more popular, with two million sets sold last year, more than 200 tournaments, two Hollywood Scrabble films in the works, as well as this acclaimed documentary, and this best-seller: "Word Freak." Stefan Fatsis wrote it.

"For these people, it's a calling, teasing out the beauty in the language, memorizing these words, making these plays, solving the puzzles, and that's what every game is," Fatsis says. "It's a puzzle. Solving these puzzles is something that just gives you a great deal of pleasure and a great deal of joy."

Almost all of us have played Scrabble at one time or another, but not with referees.

Heated exchanges are commonplace. "No more abusive behavior," says a referee to a contestant. "O.K. It's not me, it's him," he replies.

Here, the refs issue an abusive behavior warning. What? Was he kicking his opponent under the table? The refs also look for cheating.

"Q's have been found in pants cuffs and under the table, and not found at all," Williams says.

This is serious, extreme Scrabble. Some wear protective equipment.

"Oh, yeah. It's cutthroat," one player admits.

Players are rated. They practice and study several hours a day, and chart every letter played. They relax after hours with a game of Scrabble, or perhaps a round of Anagrams.

These players know more words than we do. Where we might know 20,000 words, they know like 100,000. They know erlking, pranged and blellum. But what is an erlking, and has it ever pranged a blellum? Who cares? Scrabble players don't care about definitions. They just care that they're words.

"In Scrabble, meanings are meaningless, which offends a lot of word purists," Williams says.

Y-W-I-S. E-wiss? Wy-ess? Zoon? These are words? Where do they find such words? In the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, and frankly, almost nowhere else. It's almost as if anything you throw down is a word, although it doesn't have to be. Bluffing is perfectly legal, but opponents may challenge you.

"I'd challenge almost every word. In fact, I'd challenge this whole board. G-O, go. Now that, that's a real word," Geist quips.

"Some of the words that people just shake their heads at are--they don't like the onomatopoeia stuff, you know? They don't like `hmm' and `mm,' you know," Williams says.

"Is `mm' three M's?" Geist asks.

"Two M's is good," Williams says.

"I wondered how you spelled 'mm,'" Geist says.

"Yeah. mm, yeah," Williams responds.

"I wasn't sure," Geist admits.

Williams adds, "And H-M is good, and H-M-M is good, so."

"M-M-M is also good?" Geist interjects.

"No, M-M-M is not good," Williams says.

At the end of four days of non-stop Scrabble action, the field is trimmed to three of the game's greats--David Gibson, Chris Cree and Trey Wright, who compete in highly intense games. Look at Trey, hooking `dabbles' into four other words. And when Chris Cree makes one wrong move...

"Unintelligible play," someone shouts.

He's out.

After four days of non-stop Scrabble action, the field of 850 of the world's best players has been winnowed to Wright, the handsome young piano virtuoso with a creative, offensive style, against mild-mannered Gibson, a defensive specialist and a true Scrabble scholar.

The final match amounts to the world series of Scrabble, a best-of-five set recorded by ESPN and simulcast to a standing-room-only crowd of rabid
fans. Who knew? Scrabble as a spectator sport.

"I'm told that Gibson has never beaten Trey in a tournament game," an announcer says. "Looks like we're ready to rumble."

The game is on. Let the tiles fall where they may.

The words, the strategy, it's all Greek to me.

Two spectators follow intensely each move the players make. "Oh, no," one says.

"Oh, David's got a great rack," the other responds.

"Oh, no! Not 'dread.'"

"No."

"Because he's opening up the D."

"He's not blowing this game."

"I'm not even sure when to clap," Geist says. Wright sprints out to a 2-0 lead, enjoying excellent board vision and good tile management, I'm told.

"Part of that is attributable to Trey's excellent defensive play of `id,'" one man explains.

In the third do-or-die game, Gibson plays three-letter words, keeping the board tight and leaving little room for Trey to operate. But Wright plays lakiest (pronounced lackiest)--or is it lay-ke-ist?--for 81 points.

"Wow," exclaim two spectators.

And qat, Q-A-T. These guys probably spell `dog' Q-O-G. Gibson vowel-dumps to achieve rack balance, but it's too late. Wright has the last word.

Using all seven of his letters for a 50-point bonus, spelling `teopans.' Don't bother. It's not in Webster's.

And when Wright's girlfriend hugs his sister, even I realize that he's the new national Scrabble champion.

And for the first time in a week, Trey Wright is at a loss for words.