Plink, plink, plink. Bowie resident Evelyn Parker, a retired nurse, drops her tiles onto the Scrabble board. B-E-E-T-L-E; the letters fall into place. She squints to make sure the word is spelled correctly. It is. Twelve points including the two triple letter scores. Parker is not thrilled, she can do better.
Though she said she hasn’t quite ‘‘gotten up the nerve to compete,” the competitive vibe of the Bowie scrabble club, which was founded in 1985 and whose members play on Monday nights, has strengthened Parker’s game.
‘‘Challenge me,” she said seriously to her bewildered partner as she put down A-T-R-E-S-I-A.
Ted Mast, a lawyer from Bladensburg, looked over at the board and abandoned strict Scrabble rules which prohibit players from receiving help during the game to confirm Parker’s word. ‘‘I don’t even know what [atresia] means,” Parker shrugged.
Linda Stephanides, the club’s director for more than a decade, quickly pulled out her handheld electronic word generator to double-check.
Stephanides, who wears a chain with a tiny ‘‘L” Scrabble piece (1 point) and keeps quarterly statistics for all the players, brings the household game to a professional status. She is not so certain, however, that the game will ever reach the popularity level of competitive poker, for example.
‘‘We all come together because we love to play the game,” Stephanides said. Her words rang true through conversation with other players, but it was equally clear that they enjoy the satisfaction of gaining high scores and beating opponents.
Opening her scrapbook, Stephanides listed a confusing array of acronyms like OSW and OSPD, known to Scrabble players as Official Scrabble Words and Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.
Bowie resident Judy Mason has not been playing for long, but is evidently eager to study obscure words. Upon hearing ‘‘OSPD,” she pulled a dictionary out of her bag. Stephanides dismissed it as the wrong edition. Nationally ranked Scrabble players like Stephanides only use the most up-to-date information. ‘‘Jacuzzis” is a word, ‘‘Cineplex” is not.
Stephanides is ranked 1,065 by the National Scrabble Association, a number she received by playing in NSA tournaments. She, Odenton resident Mary Lou Goetz, a retired executive secretary and one other Bowie club member will travel to Orlando, Fla. at the end of July for their second national tournament. The players will compete against 640 other people.
I’m going ‘‘to be killed again,” Goetz, the head of the Annapolis Scrabble club, who grew up playing the game, said, explaining that the tournaments are now dominated by much younger and quicker players.
This may be true, but does not deter the Bowie scrabble club. As the night goes on, players rotate to different tables, practicing their strategy on their partners. Ages range from 30 to 70, with many members retired.
In a game that combines both skill and luck, Springdale resident Rose Noel, a retired computer specialist, said opponents accuse her of playing a tight board, squeezing in letters to form two or three words in one turn.
While Noel and others attack their games from all angles, a younger couple jokes around, with the wife putting on a serious façade.
‘‘After this game I’m committing Seppuku [Japanese ritual suicide],” Bowie resident Denise Cross said, lamenting that her husband, Joe, had all the good letters and two blanks.
Parker does not react to her friend’s comment. The game is ending and she is concentrating. She finishes with 380, modestly leading her amateur partner by exactly 150 points.
