More from Sherrie Saint John:

Round 6

Prior to the commencement of round 6, we had a 20-minute tea break.
Rashid Ateeq Khan (PAK) is visiting with me now, waving his country's
flag.  He was VERY excited playing the World Champ.  David got both
blanks, even.  (In fact, he got three blanks; he overdrew his opening
rack and lost a blank.)  Rashid played DENUDING, OUTNAMES, and
SENIORS.  David played BELONGEr and ASPORTeD.  523-370 was their final
score.  Rashid is a young 29, and his father, Ateeq R. Khan, is a
former Saudi Arabian champion.  Rashid started playing Scrabble at age
8.  About five years ago, he started playing SOWPODS.  However, this
balanced studying hurt him in the recent Thai national championships,
when he placed 8th out of a mere 1000 competitors.  (The Thai
championship uses the OSPD as its word source.)

During this round, Shafique Thobani (KEN) played HUTAIS/SAGENE.  His
opponent challenged, but wrote HUTIAS/SAGENE.  When the runner pointed
out the discrepancy between the two spellings, Shafique withdrew his
tiles from the board, admitting that he had accidentally transposed the
I and A.

Jim Kramer, our resident tiny-facts-finder-outer, reports that Raja
Fuadin Abdullah (MYS) has lost games by 1, 2, and 3 points!  What
heartbreakers!

After tea and coffee, the group has again assembled into twos, walking
into Noah's Ark of Scrabbling

Board 1 this game pits Joel Wapnick (CAN) against Allan Saldanha (GBR);
both are undefeated at this point.  Board 2 has the only other
undefeated player, Rashid Ateeq Khan (PAK), playing Esther Perrins
(AUS), who is the 4-1 player with the highest spread.

Charlie is certainly getting punchy.  He just handed the word judges a
challenge slip that said CHALLENGE, then asked them how they would rule
on it.

Someone brought up a challenge slip that said, GONAD, and John Chew
commented, "It takes real balls to challenge a word like that!"

We'll leave you hanging as to his ruling.

This round, Alexandra Williams, the most able NSA intern, had a turn at
the digital camera.  Before long, she had a photo of almost every
table!  We will be taking them off the camera and putting them on-line
sometime tonight.  Maybe we've created a budding Annie Liebowitz!

A late story, but a good one nonetheless.  In an earlier round, Jere
Mead (USA) and his opponent thought they had tied.  As they were
filling out their paperwork, Jere noticed that his opponent had
miscounted his last play, awarding himself one fewer point than he
deserved.  As a result of his laudable sportsmanship, Jere ended up
losing the game by one point.

Russell Byers (GBR) handed in his paperwork at the end of his game a
happy man.  He is 5-1.  His teammate Andrew Fisher is 4-2.  David Acton
(GBR) is also 5-1.  His only loss was to Joel Wapnick (CAN).  He lost
by 11 points because he didn't know ALIBIES.  In OSW-speak, it is only
good ending in IS, so he played BAILIES instead and lost.  Acton, who
has never played Allan Saldanha (GBR), will most likely get his chance
at this tournament.  It is surprising that two elite players from the
same country would never have met head-to-head.  May the best Brit
win!  #:\)$

Joe Edley (USA) took to doing Tai Chi after round 6.  Gareth Williams
(GBR) started slowly with two losses, but he is now steaming ahead at
4-2.

Joel Wapnick (CAN) is the only remaining undefeated contestant (unless
you count alternate Jim Kramer, who is 1-0 and so is also undefeated).
Wapnick defeated Saldanha (GBR) 459-389.  Rashid Ateeq Khan (PAK) lost
this round to Esther Perrins (AUS).  He played two bad moves (he says):
he had CANDIED for 70, but he got greedy.  He wanted more.  So he
attempted DERACAINE for 90 points.  She challenged and off it came,
earning him 0 points.  Next turn, he tried DERACINES, another
nine-letter word.  It also failed.  Then he settled on DERACINE for 75,
which is good.  One of Esther's plays, CASTRATER, was challenged off by
Rashid.  She won in the end, but they both took chances!