Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 12/00) - After setting up a board at a local coffeehouse, Scrabble enthusiast Mike Beauregard initially found himself with no takers.

So he took the board by the corners and advertised.

The move netted 10 fellow Scrabble buffs ready to have words with each other.

Punning aside, it turned out to be a friendly Sunday afternoon gathering with enough people for four separate games.

"The most enthusiastic call came from Tony Foliot. He was ready to play," Beauregard said.

Asked what his biggest ever single-word score was, Beauregard said it was well over 100 points.

"I've seen double-doubles with seven letters that just blew people away," he added.

A double-double occurs when a player makes a word that includes two double-word scores. They get to multiply the total value of their tiles by four. Add the 50 points for using all your tiles and you have a whopper.

The only 50-point bonus, at least in Sunday's first round of play, was had by Lee Webber. Facing Foliot, as well as Gaston Saravanja and Doug Johnson, Webber kicked off the match with "destroy" for a 78 point score.

As for me, I was convinced to join in despite two crushing defeats over the Christmas holidays where, in game one, I was whipped by about 250 points. As for game two back home, seconds after spelling my last word, the tournament-ready Scrabble Queen to my left said: "Let me show you how you could have won."

But this past Sunday I turned in what I consider a much more respectable showing. Throw the word log in front of jams, count up the triple word score, and that's 71 points.

When all the words were in, I'd tiled up 125 points, nine points ahead of Mildred Wilke. But it wasn't enough to beat Christina Vernon and Beauregard who tied with 144 points.

Vernon's final move stunned her competitors.

Placing her final tile on the board took her to 139 points, but, under the rules, she also got to add the value of everybody else's leftover tiles to her score. Tiles in the hands of her three competitors totalled five points. That was just enough to force the tie.

Beauregard says everyone's welcome to play this Sunday for what is hoped will be a weekly gathering. The group meets at 2 p.m. at Javaroma in the NorthwesTel building.