It was Sunday morning, nearly 10:00am on the second day of the inaugural SNZ Women’s Championship 2026 in Auckland. The room was quiet and pleasantly cool for a January summer day. Players, intent on their wordplays, shuffled tiles that clicked against the racks or slipped softly from their bags. Nothing remarkable, you might think. Often a low hum of conversation can be heard during games, and at times the organiser will remind players to keep the noise level to a minimum. Game 10 was underway.
My scoresheet shows nothing remarkable about this game - the words played, the sequence of plays or the total points scored by my opponent and myself. Yet a scoring opportunity opened in a way I might easily have missed had I made a hurried decision.
My opponent had scored well, playing BLASTED for 70 points early in Turn 2. I replied with PLAZA for 32 points in Turn 4, bringing the totals: Her 118 and Me 85. She then used the first blank as an E to play SHREWD for 45 points in Turn 5, extending her lead to 166. At this stage, the board was tight, with little in the way of openings.
I held six letters - including the third S and the last blank — ◻EIORSY. At one point, I thought to play SOY for 23 points, a desperate move that would also have blocked my opponent from using the last S to hook onto the end of PLAZA, the only playable bingo column. But I hesitated. What to do? My rack leave would be good with ◻EIR, but better with the S. If I used that valuable letter for a modest mid-game score, I'd likely play catch-up for the rest of the game.
Meanwhile, across the way, the local Tongan congregation had gathered. The glorious harmony of their voices singing hymns drifted into the room. It was a divine pause-and-listen moment — and, inexplicably, I did so in the middle of Turn 5. It was truly beautiful to hear and settling. I jotted a few notes across the bottom of my scoresheet to capture the mood. For a few seconds, I almost forgot I was at a tournament.
The digital game timer relentlessly clocked down the minutes of my turn, adding to the pressure to get a word played onto the board and to score well. I rattled through the alphabet again. As I reconsidered how to use the blank as an H, the word emerged: hOSIERY for 74 points, with the S hooked onto PLAZA. Bingo! My total rose to 159, and I was back in the game: Her 166 and Me 159. Seven more tiles were drawn. I was able to place the X on a triple-letter square to edge ahead by five points. I won the game by a narrow three-point margin — and with no time penalty. It was a close call.
When I play in a competitive game - I'm a mid-ranked player, I can feel pressured to make a quick play or be distracted by talk and movement around the room. Looking back at Turn 5, I am reminded of how important it is to take the time to reconsider. I knew that 7-letter word - I just wasn't seeing it. Scrabble is about strategy: placements on the board, managing the rack and deciding.
During our post-game chat, I agreed with my opponent about the atmosphere in the room — the singing, the stillness, when she said, “the pressure’s different”. There is a quiet discipline in staying calm under pressure, in pausing long enough to think about what is possible on the board with the available tiles.
There's always something to learn from a moment in a game that may seem quite ordinary. Words may fade from the board, but some moments stay with you.
— Scrabble Notebook
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