Heilbron Scrabble    By Garth van Vliet

On 15 and 16 Oct I traveled to Heilbron in the Free State at the request of Thabo Tsotetsi. He and some friends had been playing Scrabble for a while and had also generated some interest at the local schools. Jacqui from Just Fun toys offered to sponsor them with 12 Scrabble sets which I took down with me. I offered to teach two days of workshops. Although I had said a maximum of 20 players could attend - about 40 showed up. The interest and enthusiasm were very high but what surprised me most was the level of play some had achieved. None had ever had any formal coaching or access to books etc on strategy. The only dictionary they had was a Reader's Digest one from about 1980.

Copies of Zyzzyva and Quackle were handed out to be installed at the community centre and on personal computers where available.

Two of the players Molefi Lethebe and Sono Leqheku came to the Redeye tournament (sponsored by Maryse Humphreys and Jackie Nortier) and acquitted themselves rather well winning 4.5 and 5 games and getting ratings of 904 and 939 respectively. Duncan Keet promised to post them a Collins dictionary. I am hoping to go down again early next year to run a one day tournament and run some more workshops.

I think we are going to see some rising stars from Heilbron in the next few years.