Thank you for registering to play in the 2011 Toronto School SCRABBLE Championship. Please take a few minutes to read over these notes before you arrive at Bessborough School on the morning of March 8th, to help our event run as smoothly as possible.
There is street parking on all the small streets around the school (except on the school side of the streets immediately beside the school). Please do not use the staff parking lot, as there is limited parking there. When you arrive, please follow the signs to the playing room, and check in at the registration desk to let us know that you are here.
If you are running late or have last-minute cancellations and cannot find substitutes, please call John Chew at 416-876-7675 to let us know. We will do our best to save your teams a place in the tournament if you arrive after registration closes at 10:00, but since we need two teams at each board, we cannot guarantee that latecomers will be seated.
At the beginning of each game, pairings will be printed and posted. Please help your team locate themselves in the alphabetical (by school name) pairing chart, see who they are playing, what their assigned board number is, and which team plays first; then encourage them to seat themselves as quickly as possible.
When all four players at a game are seated, they should verify that there are 100 tiles on the board and that the timer has been reset to 25:00/side, then carefully place the tiles in the bag and await the signal to start play.
Coaches and parent volunteers are reminded that under school Scrabble rules, they are not permitted to communicate with their students during play, to avoid giving anyone the impression that they are influencing the outcome of the game.
Please remind your students that anytime that they are not sure about a rule, they should raise their hand and a Toronto SCRABBLE Club volunteer will come and help them. If they are not sure whether or not the word just played is acceptable, they should follow the procedure in the rules and adjudicate the play using a laptop at one of the word judge stations.
School SCRABBLE is played according to the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary, 4th edition (this edition is the one with the bright red cover). If you are using the ZYZZYVA word adjudication software at your school, please make sure it is configured for the right dictionary. All in-game adjudications will be performed using ZYZZYVA; contestants should not refer to printed word lists or dictionaries during play.
At the end of each game, students should neatly complete a score slip and give it to a tournament volunteer, who will check the slip and pass it on to data entry. After the score slip has been given to the volunteer, no changes can be made to it, and coaches and parents are welcome to come talk with their students about the completed game and/or take photographs. Before getting up from the table, students should “square off” the tiles on the board into four 5×5 squares to show that all 100 are there.
As results are entered, electronic displays will be updated with current standings. At the end of each round, standings will also be printed and posted.
We will have a 15-minute prize ceremony at the end of the tournament. We hope that you can all stay for it, whether your students are winners this year or not.