Last weekend, Hasbro crowned the winners of the North American School Scrabble Championship, a Scrabble tournament featuring 105 students from across the continent ranging in age groups between 7th grade and 12th grade. 40 championship teams and 25 high school players competed in the tournament with games lasting 55 minutes each. These kids must be acing their english classes because the turnout resulted in some truly impressive wordplay, and Hasbro sent Gizmodo the list of winning words and their highest resulting scores, as well as some genuinely extraordinary strings of letters.
All definitions are directly quoted from Dictionary.com, except in certain instances, which are denoted by a lack of quotation marks.
Charlock
Noun: “a wild mustard, Brassica kaber, having lobed, ovate leaves and clusters of small, yellow flowers, often troublesome as a weed in grainfields.”
“Charlock” was played by 8th-grader Eli Wool and 7th-grader George Mickelsen from JFK Middle School in Florence, Massachusetts for a whopping 194 points. Wool and Mickelsen played the word on a triple-triple, meaning it straddled two Triple Word Score tiles, hence the lofty score. The duo also used two blank tiles for the C and O. The kicker here is that the two tweens played the word without even knowing it was a real world at all.
Atelier
Noun: “a workshop or studio, especially of an artist, artisan, or designer.”
Nathanael Campos, a 7th-grader at Scotts Ridge Middle School in Ridgefield, Connecticut and Walden Giezentanner, an 8th-grader at Hixson Middle School in Webster Groves, Missouri, played the word “atelier” for a big 89 points.
Guineas
Noun, plural: “a former money of account of the United Kingdom, equal to 21 shillings: still often used in quoting fees or prices.”
12th-grader Ruth Li, a student at Blood Collegiate Institute in Toronto, played “guineas” for 86 points.
Naivest
Adjective: the most naive.
Naivest scored an unidentified student player 77 points.
Ocarinas
Noun, plural: “a simple musical wind instrument shaped somewhat like an elongated egg with a mouthpiece and finger holes.”
James Donnelly, a 12th-grader at Hingham High School in Hingham, Massachusetts, played “ocarinas” for 63 points.
Oxter
Noun: “the armpit.”
Along with “ocarinas,” Donnelly played “oxter” for 40 points.
Scores for the remaining words were not reported by Hasbro.
Remoras
Noun, plural: “any of several fishes of the family Echeneididae, having on the top of the head a sucking disk by which they can attach themselves to sharks, turtles, ships, and other moving objects.”
Nth
Adjective: “being the last in a series of infinitely decreasing or increasing values, amounts, etc.” For example, the nth degree.
Beastie
Noun: “a small animal, especially one toward which affection is felt.”
Fogey
Noun, a variant of “fogy”: “an excessively conservative or old-fashioned person, especially one who is intellectually dull (usually preceded by old).”
Zaire
Noun: “a paper money and monetary unit of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, equal to 100 makuta.”
Qadi
Noun: “a judge in a Muslim community, whose decisions are based on Islamic religious law.”
Roque
Noun: “a form of croquet played on a clay or hard-surface court surrounded by a low wall off which the balls may be played.”
Maturity
Noun: “the state of being mature; ripeness” or “full development; perfected condition.”
Sinuate
Adjective: “bent in and out; winding; sinuous.”
Undulate
Verb: “to move with a sinuous or wavelike motion; display a smooth rising-and-falling or side-to-side alternation of movement.”
Vendees
Noun, plural: “the person to whom a thing is sold.”
Embower
Verb: “to shelter in or as in a bower; cover or surround with foliage.”
Biometry
Noun: “the calculation of the probable duration of human life.”
Autopen
Noun: “a machine that can automatically reproduce or imitate an autograph or personal signature with any type of pen, pencil, or marker.”
Acajou
Noun: “the wood of any of several species of mahogany” or “the cashew tree, its nuts, or resin.”
Supines
Noun, plural: “(in Latin) a noun form derived from verbs, appearing only in the accusative and the dative-ablative, as dictū in mirābile dictū, “wonderful to say.”
Negroni
Noun: “a cocktail made from sweet vermouth, gin, and bitters.”
Elytron
Noun: “one of the pair of hardened forewings of certain insects, as beetles, forming a protective covering for the posterior or flight wings.”
Storax
Noun: “a solid resin with a vanillalike odor, obtained from a small tree, Styrax officinalis: formerly used in medicine and perfumery.”