Top 10 Scrabble Developments of the Past 10 Years

The competitive Scrabble scene was influenced heavily by computer technology and the internet in the 2000's, but significant developments also occurred in the publishing and organizational arenas.  All in all, it was mostly a decade of achievement and progress, though not entirely without difficulty or controversy, due in large part to the following developments:

Top 10 Scrabble Developments of the Past 10 Years

• The Internet Scrabble Club (ISC) appears on the 'net (c. 2001).  Based out of Romania and eschewing advertising, it eludes the usual legal issues associated with using the S-word.  With a simple and straightforward interface, it still remains the best place online for real-time Scrabble play with strong opposition from around the world. 
• Stefan Fatsis writes Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001).  Well-written and deftly mixing history and anecdota, it introduced many future players to the ins and outs of club and tournament Scrabble.  Two documentaries, Scott Peterson's Scrabylon (2003) and Erik Chaikin and Julian Petrillo's Word Wars (2004), later cover most of the same territory in the visual medium.
• The first Causeway Scrabble Challenge is organized by Michael Tang (2002).  Today Causeway, an international event using the Collins word list, is arguably the premier Scrabble tournament in the world in terms of level of competition and prize money.
• The first School Scrabble Championship takes place in Boston, MA (2003), building on the success of the School Scrabble program begun by the NSA in the early 1990s.  The annual tournament for 5th-8th graders now offers a $10,000 top prize and considerable media exposure.  The annual World Youth Scrabble Championship (WYSC) debuts three years later (2006), providing a high-profile stage for international players under 18 years of age.
• The World English-language Scrabble Players Association (WESPA) is formed "to promote global recognition and respect of Scrabble as a serious competitive activity" (2003). Today more than 20 national associations are affiliated with WESPA, and thousands of players compete internationally under its auspices.
• Zyzzyva, Michael Thelen's word study and judging program, is released (2004).  Although certainly not the first such program (Lexpert and others were released in the 1990s), Zyzzyva has become the gold standard for word adjudication at tournaments and a frequent study partner for legions of competitive players.
• Seth Lipkin and Keith Smith develop the website cross-tables.com (2005).  Aptly subtitled "your guide to competitive Scrabble," cross-tables is now the "go-to" site for North American tournament listings, player results and ratings, and much more.  
• Jason Katz-Brown and John O'Laughlin release Quackle, a software application for high-level Scrabble play and analysis (2005). The program proves to be better than earlier engines (Maven, etc.) and quickly becomes a mainstay of the competitive player's arsenal.
• Scrabble comes to the popular social media site Facebook. The Scrabulous application is first on the scene (2007), but its developers (Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla) eventually cave in to legal pressure from Hasbro and Mattel.  (It resurfaces later as an altered version of the game called Lexulous.) Hasbro eventually releases a Scrabble Beta app (for North America) and Mattel releases a Scrabble Worldwide app (for the rest of the world). By 2010, both applications boast hundreds of thousands of users.
• Hasbro announces that it will no longer fund competitive Scrabble (2008), setting in motion a period of administrative and political turmoil. As part of the change, the Hasbro-funded National Scrabble Association (NSA) turns its attention to school and casual play. Meanwhile, the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), led by Chris Cree and John Chew, is formed and soon assumes primary management of club and tournament Scrabble in Canada and the U.S. (2009). A small minority of players, who disagree with the direction and philosophies of NASPA, form the Word Game Game Players Organization (WGPO) in 2010. Nonetheless, NASPA membership surpasses 3,000 in 2010 and the vast majority of competitive clubs and tournaments remain under its auspices.

Notable Mention

A few developments that just missed the cut included a host of important publications and a few other notable achievements:

• The publication of Tony J. Rasch's Brow-Raisers (2001)
• The web debut of David and Oliver Johnson's JumbleTime (c. 2002)
• The publication of Robert Gillis's Bob's Bible (2002)
• The first edition of Keith Smith's Total Scrabble (2003)
• The Long List (LL) is compiled by the NSA's Dictionary Committee, chaired by Jim Pate, creating an official source in North America for root words of 10-15 letters in length (2003); the Dictionary Committee also updates the OSPD/TWL in 2006
• ESPN begins broadcasting Scrabble, first covering the All-Stars tournament (2003) and then the Nationals in New Orleans (2004)
• The publication of Mike Baron's Complete Wordbook for Game Players (2004)
• The first Players Championship is organized by Chris Cree and others, in response to lack of funding from Hasbro for a National tournament that year (2007) 
• The publication of Paul McCarthy's Letterati: An Unauthorized Look at Scrabble and the People Who Play It (2008) 
• Cornelia Guest begins publishing The Last Word, an independent online Scrabble newsletter (2009)
• Joe Edley publishes a number of books, including the 2nd (2001) and 3rd (2009) editions of Everything Scrabble (with John Williams) and a series of Scrabble Puzzles books (2008)
• The publication of Joel Wapnick's How to Play Scrabble Like a Champion (2010), a much-revised version of his 1986 book Champion's Strategy for Winning at Scrabble Brand Crossword Game

And there were, of course, many important developments that missed the cut merely because they occurred in the previous decade:

• The first World Championship takes place in London, featuring the new SOWPODS word list (a combination of the North American and British lists) (1991)
• The NSA begins the School Scrabble program (1991)
• Two important tournament pairing software packages, John Chew's tsh and Jeff Widergren's Tourneyman, debut (c. 1992)
• Joe Edley and John Williams publish the 1st edition of Everything Scrabble (1994)
• The expurgation controversy erupts, eventually leading to the publication of the (expurgated) OSPD3 and the first (definition-less) TWL (c. 1994-1996)
• Sherrie Saint John's Crossword Games Pro (CGP) mailing list debuts (1994)
• John Chew creates NSA's first website (1998)
• Carol & M.G. Ravichandran's Lexpert program is first released (c. 1999)
• Cheryl Cadieux's OSPD mailing list debuts (1999)
• Joe Edley wins an unprecedented third National title (2000)
• The SOWPODS referendum takes place, with NSA members rejecting a change to the international word source (2000)

No doubt the next 10 years will bring another series of impressive developments, publications, and achievements.  Here's to the next decade of competitive Scrabble!