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The Piedmont Highlander

March Crossword Key
March 6, 2024

Mattix plays Scrabble online

Mattix+plays+Scrabble+online

The timer begins. The tiles appear. Seven Letters: s, t, y, r, w, e, q. He begins to mix the letters around in his head to form the perfect word, a word that can be placed on the board to earn the maximum points possible. Though the timer is counting down at a constant speed, it seems like every second it is going faster. A smile comes across his face as the perfect combination is discovered, one he has dreamt about making for years, “qwertys”.

Computer teacher Nathan Mattix has been playing Scrabble for over ten years, and has completed over 30,000 games. Mattix started playing on a website called Mplayer, completing about 5,000 games. Mplayer was closed down, and Mattix quit playing.

“I eventually started playing on a website that is hosted in Romania. It is called the Internet Scrabble Club. It has got a lot of good players. I do not know what got me started,” Mattix said, “I probably just stumbled onto it and played a few games, and the next thing you know I’ve played 5,000 games, and I just kept right on going.”

Mattix said on the Internet Scrabble Club each player has a profile.

“For the longest time I had it [written] in my profile that I wanted to play the word ‘qwertys’, but I never ever got the combination of the tiles on my rack,” Mattix said. “You have to get exactly q, w, e, r, t, y, s to be able to play it.”

Mattix said he fulfilled his dream on February 3, 2009, by playing the word “Qwertys” and receiving 91 points.

“I always wanted to play ‘qwerty’, and not only did I get to play it, I got to put the ‘s’ onto it. Seven letters. Bingo. 50 bonus points. On top of having those wonderful letters like ‘q’, and ‘w’, and ‘y’ all in the same word. It is a legitimate Scrabble word,” Mattix said. “You can save the games in your history if you like a particular game and you like to preserve it. I’ve got that one saved in my history so I can go back and look up.”

Mattix said he plays about 20 to 30 games per week, depending on how busy he is. Each game lasts about six minutes. Anagrammers are online generators that rearrange a set of letters given to generate a word. Using anagrammers while playing scrabble is considered cheating. Mattix does not use anagrammers, and to avoid opponents who do use them, Mattix plays timed games.

“I play very fast games, where the total time you have got to make all your plays for the game is three minutes. You have just a matter of a few seconds to get each play down, which means that if you are typing letters into an anagrammer, your time will expire and you will loose,” Mattix said.

Mattix said playing Scrabble is a past time, and has not done anything more than entertain him.

“It is something I do whenever I want something fun to do. It has not given me a better vocabulary because I don’t know what any of the words mean that I play. It probably has made me a little better speller because that matters,” Mattix said. “I do not see it as anything other then entertainment. It has no value. I’m not good enough to be one of the elite world-class players. I’m just good.”

Mattix said he prefers playing online rather than on a physical game board.

“I like the fact that the computer verifies the word, so you don’t [need a dictionary]. It gets you a match that is going to be very competitive,” Mattix said. “You know that you can win, you know your opponent can win.”

Mattix said he used to play scrabble with his family, but his skill level has changed the circumstances.

“ I’ll slap a word down like ‘qoph’ and they will say ‘That is not a word’ and I’ll say ‘Yeah, it is. Look it up’,” Mattix said.

Mattix said Scrabble is a game of both luck and skill.

“A lesser opponent can beat a better opponent if you get lucky. At the same time, there is a lot of skill involved. Probably a lot more strategy than most players who play realize,” Mattix said. “The more you learn the weird words, the more you like it, because it gives you the advantage.”

Mattix said students have challenged him to games of Scrabble, but students do not comprehend the concept of winning 30,000 games.

“A student probably cannot win, unless they got q, x, z, j, and both blanks,” Mattix said, “and even then, it would be pretty hard.”

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