Finals

Friday, 12 March 2004, 2:15pm

The Game

A. G. Rigg v. Morris Tichenor

Both contestants agreed that they would stake the tournament upon one single-elimination game, and this set a tense mood for the last hour of the 2004 Scrabble Tournament. With a crowd of onlookers and well-wishers gathered to witness this historic event, the contestants set out to determine who should be king of Latin Scrabble and merit the coveted title of "Scrabblator Optimus."

Rigg opened up strong, setting out his agenda with true fighting words, laying out the bingo "delearis" (2nd s. pass. subj of deleo: 'you shall be destroyed!') for 72 points. Tichenor, not to be deterred by such threats, simply acknowledged with "ah" (interjection: 'ah!'), scoring a stunning 50 points with a mere two letters. Tichenor started to close on Rigg's lead, taking it with "perfuse" (voc. s. past participle of perfundo: 'O having-been-poured-over-thing!'). After Tichenor stole the lead, Rigg lost momentum, losing a turn when "quiet" was challenged and found to be an inadmissable form (though it appears to be a real form, they agreed that it was not admissable as a derivation from Lewis and Short's lexeme). Though Professor Rigg played the last tile, earning the bonus for going out, it was not enough to take away Tichenor's win.

Congratulations to Morris Tichenor, 2oo4 Centre for Medieval Studies Scrabblator Optimus!

Pictures from the Final

• Morris Tichenor, with defeated foe Miles Pattenden in the background.
• Professor A. G. Rigg, intently concentrating upon his next play.
• Another picture of Prof. Rigg, with an 'artsy' filter applied to cleverly disguise the fact that the original photograph is woefully out-of-focus.

Thanks to Morris and Prof. Rigg, to Tod Post for supplemental pictures when the organizer's camera broke, and to all participants in the tournament!