North America
The main Scrabble associations in North America are the National Scrabble Association (NSA) and North American SCRABBLE Players Association (NASPA). NASPA is starting to sanction official clubs and tournaments in 2009, taking this role over from NSA. The NSA will continue to coordinate activities such as the school Scrabble program, literacy fundraisers and casual Scrabble clubs.
Tournaments range from one day tournaments that are composed of only 6 or 7 games, to the National SCRABBLE Championship, which lasts 5 days and 31 games. The NSA maintains a ratings system based on wins, ties and losses, with ratings ranging from just over 2000 to under 300. Larger tournaments can also carry significant prize money. The official dictionary is the Official Tournament and Club Word List. When a player challenges a word he considers to be invalid, if the word is invalid it is removed from the board with a score of zero. However if the word is valid, the player who challenged the word loses his turn.
Scrabble clubs are also run that meet on a regular basis, usually weekly or biweekly at the same venue. Players usually play a smaller number of games than they would play at a tournament.
Read more about this topic: English-language Scrabble
Famous quotes containing the words north america, north and/or america:
“The English were very backward to explore and settle the continent which they had stumbled upon. The French preceded them both in their attempts to colonize the continent of North America ... and in their first permanent settlement ... And the right of possession, naturally enough, was the one which England mainly respected and recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and also of France, from the time of Henry VII.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I felt that he, a prisoner in the midst of his enemies and under the sentence of death, if consulted as to his next step or resource, could answer more wisely than all his countrymen beside. He best understood his position; he contemplated it most calmly. Comparatively, all other men, North and South, were beside themselves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When I think of him, and his six sons, and his son-in-law, not to enumerate the others, enlisted for this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for months if not years, sleeping and waking upon it, summering and wintering the thought, without expecting any reward but a good conscience, while almost all America stood ranked on the other side,—I say again that it affects me as a sublime spectacle.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)