Scrabblemeisters gather for a word or two

THEY'LL toss "yttrium" at you then follow it up with a "zeugma".
Be prepared to be blind-sided with "quahog" or a "quaich". And they'll be hunting down the triple-letter and triple-word scores like there's no tomorrow.
That's what's likely to happen if you take on any one of the 27 Scrabble players from throughout the North Island who have entered the Wanganui Scrabble Club's annual Labour weekend tournament being staged onSaturday and Sunday at the St John rooms in Tawa St.
Betty Eriksen, a club spokesperson, said all the players taking part this weekend are graded - eight in both A and B grades and the rest in the C grade.
Among the A graders are Howard Warner from Auckland and Lynne Butler from New Plymouth, who have been named in the New Zealand team to compete in the world championships in Mumbai, India, next month.
"The players earn their grading depending on the number of wins they have in tournament play," Mrs Eriksen said.
"When players go to tournaments they have an 'expectancy' depending on their rating, and they need to achieve that 'expectancy' to maintain their rating," she said.
"You go up in your ratings if you earn more, and you go down if you don't win enough."
She said the outcome of the game, even for the top-ranked players, depended a lot on the letter tiles they drew in each game "as well as their word knowledge".
As for high scores, Mrs Erickson said the some of players here this weekend are "quite capable" of racking up big numbers.
"Sometimes they'll score over 200. If they have a 'Q' sitting on a double letter score then the word makes two triple-triple, they could even score up to 300."
She said a player of Mr Howard's ranking would probably manage to average more than 400 points in every game he played.
"These are players who have a huge word knowledge. They're interested in studying words and things like anagrams and palindromes."
The highest known theoretically possible score for a single play under American tournament Scrabble rules is 1778 points.
It's achieved by joining eight already-played tiles to form the word "oxyphenbutazone" across three triple-word-score squares, while simultaneously extending seven specific already-played words to form new words.
This weekend players will no doubt spell out some exotic words.
Among could be "aas" (a type of lava), "aia" (an Indian nursemaid), "qis" (a physical life-force postulated by certain by certain Chinese philosophers), "pyx" (to test a coin), "sey" (a part of a carcase of beef) and perhaps even "zuz" (an ancient Palestinian coin).
But it's doubtful there will be plain old "cat".