Well at lunchtime the Scrabble trust went to Laurent. Anyway we've been going there the last couple of times at Balwyn and the food has seemingly improved over time despite a few teething problems. But this Laurent in Camberwell, oh my god. I went to order a salmon sandwich and as I was about to pay when I goggled at the price, twenty dollars! I ( Read more... )

Well I always look forward to the decathon as a lot of good players show up but this year was a bit of a letdown due to the shitty draw. With Naween Saidu and Ed present it should have been enough for a day of competitive games, and sure enough, those 3 games were very competitive, but every other game I played was a total blowout. My best play was ( Read more... )

OK so there is a place called College Dropout Burgers that I've been meaning to try for ages. The whole burger shop is Kanye West themed (and it was made before he lost his mind) - apparently he sued them unsuccessfully to cease and desist (I think they had to make some changes after the lawsuit, but the shop lives on). It's in Heidelberg which is ( Read more... )

I played in my first padel tournament a week ago. There were over 100 entries and the vibe was really good with a lot of people my age. Meanwhile, I stumbled on a backgammon club after having dinner the other night with Edward and Naween where I've been taking my Dad. The backgammon club is entirely old men; the oldest dude in there informed me ( Read more... )

Well, I had planned to play a mixed doubles tournament with Elle, but the tennis tournament was so poorly arranged that it became clear that it wasn't a serious tournament and I could sneak in a few good games of Scrabble. Note that with the way things are, I really don't know how much more Scrabble I get lifetime in our state, so I treasure every ( Read more... )

Well, I had a very nice time at the AGM tourney. First, it starts at 10. That's nice. Then, it's in Caulfield, that's nicer ( Read more... )

Umm, yeah, I'm the 2023 World Champion. Here's how it happened.

First things first, is I definitely checked out a bit of Scrabble since I won one of these to begin with; my level has probably  been on a slow downward trajectory since 2017 and my rating has reflected that (though there have been ebbs and flows, my cleanest tournament remains my ( Read more... )

Well the Vic champs had a record high entries - 40 - the best in years. Pretty scary huh, but hopefully things stabilise and something magical happens. The venue was nice but the location was pretty unideal - apparently the masters was here, but I can't remember if that was the one I turned down or not. Anyway, I don't care if they have a nationals ( Read more... )

This years Nats was almost not played due to the dictionary divide. That said, this will be the last CSW19 tournament I play; I caved because it was too good to resist being able to drive there. I will certainly not be going to Perth to play in an outdated dictionary. I already found myself actually having a bit of confusion, ironically, on the ( Read more... )

A wacky day out proved to be quite fun.

First I went to an auction; I've been going through the process of househunting and I thought it would be good to actually check one out. There was no bid and I wanted to stick around but unfortunately could not - this did end up adding a few minutes to my time though. A couple of other problems compounded ( Read more... )