Adventures Of The German Amateur Scrabble Society, 1939-45

The German Amateur Scrabble Society (GASS) were having a rough time. They hadn’t won a tournament since the Kaiser wore a pointy hat and morale was low. At the last big tournament both sides had been bogged down with consonants until America showed up late with the vowels and it was all triple word scores after that. GASS had been beaten bad, told it was out of the European league altogether and limited to forming three letter words - and then only for defence.

So when a brash new coach, with promises of a glorious and poly-syllabic future rose up from the ranks of disenchanted former crossword players, GASS was ready to listen and he was promptly elected head coach. This new coach, Andy they called him, then annexed Austria for its good spellers and Czechoslovakia for their abundance of 14 syllable words full of ‘Z’s and ‘K’s.

Finally though they went too far. One morning they went over to Poland’s clubhouse and beat the shit out of them while Poland was still making coffee. That having worked pretty well they went up the road and captured the Belgian Vowel Works, in Antwerp. Then they beat up the Dutch and Norwegians for looking at them funny. By now Britain had heard about it and had put together a few of the lads in a mini bus with some ‘E’s and ‘O’s and an experimental ‘Y’, and sent them over on the channel ferry. They were all good spellers but unseasoned, lacking the flem required to pronounce many Germanic words. Meanwhile France dropped all its tiles on the floor and began to cry.

Things looked bad for a while, England was beaten back, Australia went home and the Canadians insisted on ending every word with “eh” which was some fucked up arctic-rules thing only they understood. The Germans sank shiploads of new replacement letters and England soon had to begin recycling old words like “hark” and “forsooth”. Vowels were rationed and it was sometimes difficult to find a whole sentence for Sunday tea.

After a while Andy, on advice from a porcelain teapot, decided to turn all his players around and have a go at Russia. The Russians however had done this before with Napoleon and knew just what to do. They burned all their tiles, hitched up and headed east with GASS armoured letter carriers chasing right behind them until they were all the way to Moscow in the centre of the board, with its glittering Red Star. By now Germany was having to truck new letters a thousand miles to fuel front line spelling and the weather was turning. When winter hit the Germans were still being supplied with tropical words like “orchid” and “bananas” which quickly froze up until they couldn’t be removed from their little wooden holder-things. It was then Russia turned, and a million vodka fuelled Heroes of the People’s Scrabble Forces attacked. Words like “подстрекните” and “рыбы” rained down on the hapless GASS forces who were totally unprepared and quickly surrounded - with only four ‘E’s and a ‘K’ left between them. “Eeek”, although appropriate, is not a proper word and soon the Russians were on to the finals in Berlin.

Meanwhile Japan had coaxed the Americans into a game in the Pacific league* and they enjoyed it so much they came over to Europe to join in the big Invasion ’44 game in Normandy which they won and soon they too were off to Berlin to play with Andy. Andy, in anticipation of the match, shot himself in the head. Most of the remaining GASS team ran off to South America and everything was back to normal except some of the poor countries got switched around and Russia kept eastern Europe and wouldn’t give it back.

*America won the Pacific tournament after developing a word as bright as the sun and playing it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was then forced to withdraw, as it was on fire.