National Scrabble Championship

The North American Scrabble Championship (formerly the National Scrabble Championship) is the largest Scrabble competition in North America. The event is held every one or two years, and from 2004 through 2006 the finals were aired on ESPN and ESPN2. The tournament rotates locations around the United States; the 2017 event was held in New Orleans, Louisiana. The next event will be held in Buffalo, New York from August 9-13, 2018. The current North American Scrabble Champion is Will Anderson.

The first officially sanctioned Scrabble tournaments in the U.S. were spearheaded, organized and run by Joel Skolnick in the mid-1970s. Skolnick was a recreation director for the New York City Parks and Recreation Department. He approached Selchow and Righter in late 1972, and the first tournament, open to Brooklyn residents only, commenced on March 18, 1973. The Funk and Wagnalls Collegiate Dictionary was used to rule on challenges, and the official word judge was Skolnick's then-wife Carol. Carol's sister, Shazzi Felstein, who would later finish in ninth place at the first North American Invitational tournament, won the first preliminary round with 1,321 points over three games. The final round took place on April 15, and Jonathan Hatch was the winner of the first official Scrabble tournament

The summer of 1973 saw two more tournaments, held respectively at Grossingers (won by Minerva Kasowitz) and the Concord hotel (won by Harriet Zucker) in New York's Catskill region. Another two tournaments quickly followed in November that same year: in Baltimore, Gordon Shapiro topped approximately 400 contestants; and at the Brooklyn War Memorial approximately 2,000 people entered the nine weekly preliminary rounds of the first all–New York City Scrabble Championship. It was won by Bernie Wishengrad. The New York City Championship was thereafter held annually, jointly sponsored by Selchow and Righter and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

The first national tournament was the North American Invitational, held May 19–21, 1978, in the Presidential Suite of the Loews Summit Hotel in New York City. Joel Skolnick and Carol Felstein, as usual, served as the tournament director and word judge, respectively. David Prinz took the $1,500 first prize, followed by Dan Pratt and Mike Senkiewicz.

In 1980, soon after the publication of the first Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, control of the national tournament passed to the National Scrabble Association. They continued to organize the tournament until 2008.

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