A Lisgar Collegiate Institute graduate is set to take on the continent’s best Scrabble players at the 2011 Can-Am Scrabble Challenge in Calgary on March 19-20.
Competitors say there are not many players who can challenge Ottawa’s Adam Logan, a former Centretown resident and the 2005 world Scrabble champion.
“He strikes fear into other players,” says John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association. “He’s just extraordinarily smart.”
Logan, a 1991 Lisgar graduate, is one of seven Canadians and seven Americans who will go head-to-head in a weekend series to determine which country rules supreme at the popular word game.
The 35-year-old research mathematician, who has degrees from Princeton and Harvard, says playing against North America’s best can be a challenge.
“It can be intimidating but you have to try not to be too afraid of them,” says Logan. “The first few times you play people like that it’s hard to keep your concentration.”
But for opposing players, Logan’s impressive record does the intimidating.
His victories include three Canadian Scrabble Championships, an American national title, an award for North America’s top- rated player and a 2005 World Scrabble Championship. He has won over $60,000 in prize money in a playing career that spans over more than two decades.
Ottawa Scrabble Club member Jeremy Hildebrand says playing against Logan is extremely difficult because of his incredible knowledge of how the Scrabble board works.
“His awesome mind and his ability to play near perfect Scrabble makes playing against him intimidating,” he says. “You just get this sense of how fast his mind works when you sit across from him.”
Logan realizes the psychological edge his reputation gives him.
“People think they have to play perfectly against me or they’re going to lose,” he says. “That’s not a very good mindset to be in.”
But his opponents in Calgary have the ability to play near-perfect games as they are some of the top ranked players in the world.
Chew says Logan’s biggest challenge will be American superstar David Wiegand.
“You can show (Wiegand) a collection of 15 letters and he will tell you all the words you can make from those letters instantly,” says Chew. “He just knows the dictionary.”
But Logan says the player with the biggest vocabulary doesn’t necessarily win.
While he says he has a large vocabulary, he also relies on his knowledge of the board and his quickness in finding words.
“I’m pretty good at seeing that I’m not going to find a better word than what I’ve found,” he says. “If that’s the case I might as well just play.”
Chew says the Logan-Wiegand matchup is the one he is most excited about.
“It’s not just a board game,” he says. “It’s the fun of watching people who are the best in the world at doing something, showing off what they do best.”