PICAYUNE OF NO SMALL VALUE
My Scrabble history begins before Scrabble. Growing up in the 1930s, I played word games like Lexicon and Kanugo. We also had a bag of letters with which we played World Making And Word Taking, identical with what we now call Anagrams. You could call all this ‘proto-scrabble.’ I began playing Scrabble some time in the 50s. By then, I was living in Israel, but played with my sister and nephew (Philip Nelkon, later British national champion) on my frequent visits to England. So I soon acquired more than just the rules, but I didn’t know any other players in Israel and didn’t even own a set. Then came the first Scrabble tournament in Tiberias, for which I registered in the Casual division. I wanted to do so again for the second, but Sam would no longer let me. I was Competitive, at least, he said. I came to the inaugural meeting of the Jerusalem Scrabble Club, and have been coming ever since. In Week 5 of Season 2, I played one of my earliest bingos, PICAYUNE. It was Word of the Week and then Word of the Season.