Law professor Robert Ellickson relishes a good game of Scrabble. The problem is, not many people are willing to play against him.
He's among the top 50 players worldwide in the English language and has been ranked first in the state for most of the last 10 years. Occasionally, he's been bumped to second place in the Connecticut rankings by one-time national champion Rita Norr of Greenwich, who is about the only person nearby who is as good as he is at placing words on a Scrabble board.
"Expert Scrabble players know many more words, and vastly more about strategy, than recreational players do," says Mr. Ellickson, who is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law. His own skill at Scrabble, he points out, benefited from a few decades of practice.
"I began playing as a teenager in the 1950s, when Scrabble was all the rage," he explains. "I played often because I enjoyed it, and in my early adult years would play games with friends and my wife, Ellen" a catalogue librarian for rare books at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library .
Eventually, his passion for the game led to more serious play, and he began utilizing the "two great innovations" that allowed for Scrabble tournament competitions: a chess clock, which gives each player 25 minutes in which to make all moves, and a definitive Scrabble dictionary.
Beginning in the 1970s, Professor Ellickson began playing tournaments, including national and international competitions. He now enters about three tournaments a year, prefering those limited to the highest-ranked players. While he's serious about the game and certainly plays to win, he says his greatest reason for playing is "the fun of testing one's wits."
"Scrabble calls on both verbal and math skills, which few games do," he says. "It also features a considerable element of luck, which means that, unlike in chess, you can sometimes win against a much better player."
Those who are the best at the game, Professor Ellickson says, not only have excellent word knowledge, but are also good at "rack management" -- that is, playing a word that both scores a large number of points and also is likely to lead to a good play on the next turn. Top Scrabble players keep track of all letters played, which enables them near the end of the game to know exactly what letters the other player has. In addition, they are good at "gambling" -- knowing when to play a word that seems real but may not be, in the hope an opponent won't challenge it, or conversely, playing a word that is "wild looking" but real, hoping that the opponent will challenge it. A player who challenges a real word loses his or her turn; the penalty is the same for a player caught making up a word.
Professor Ellickson recalls, for example, the time he gambled on his last turn by playing the word SPEEL, not certain it was a real word but knowing that the play was his only chance to win. His opponent, a world champion, challenged the word, which the Scrabble dictionary confirmed to be valid, enabling Professor Ellickson to win the game. In a recent tournament he gambled with the non-words FRUCTOR and INAMINES, getting away with the first but not the second. He says he could kick himself when he remembers how he challenged an opponent's use of COETERNAL, which turned out to be a real word. "It's a very dramatic time when someone plays a word that you haven't seen before," Professor Ellickson says.
The beauty of Scrabble, he believes, is that because no one is capable of playing an entire game perfectly, "There's always room for improvement. Everybody draws lousy letters sometimes," says the law professor, noting that the game's experts have made the valuation of letters a science. "Q" is ranked as the worst letter, followed by "V." But players always welcome drawing a blank or a "S." The common "E" is an "underrated letter," says Professor Ellickson. While some players might say that having lots of vowels is unlucky, Professor Ellickson once managed to come up with the word OEDIPEAN, which resulted in a 50-point bonus.
Because so much is up to chance in the game, having emotional control is critical in Scrabble, says Professor Ellickson. "You win some, you lose some," he comments. He notes that tournament play is just an avocation for him, so he's able to put his losses in perspective. "I have a full-time job, and playing Scrabble is just something that keeps me sane during all my other activities," he explains.
A 1966 graduate of the Law School, Professor Ellickson has been a faculty member there since 1988. He's a specialist on 1and- use regulation and teaches, among other courses, a high-enrollment class on property law. He's also written three books, the most recent of which are "Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes," and "Perspectives on Property Law," which he coauthored with Law School colleagues Carol Rose and Bruce Ackerman. During a time when the Law School is undergoing extensive renovations, Professor Ellickson also serves as chair of the school's Building Committee. He and Ellen have two children, both now in college.
"I'm busy enough not to have the time to be obsessive about Scrabble," Professor Ellickson remarks.
Lately, Professor Ellickson's most frequent Scrabble opponent is the computer, which allows him to play challenging and competitive games -- without making anyone feel vastly overmatched. And sometimes, he goes onto an Internet site, where he can join in an electronic game against other masters. In fact, several times a year he tests his own skills this way against an Oakland, California, player named Lester Schonbrun, who Professor Ellickson calls "a legendary figure in the Scrabble world."
Still, he thinks it would be nice once in a while to find a well- matched opponent close by. Asked about the game's prospects on campus, he replies, "Yale's full of talented wordsmiths. There's no reason why Scrabble shouldn't blossom here."
By Susan Gonzalez