Scrabble
There he is, clad in his “World’s Biggest Fish Fry” baseball cap, neon orange diabetic footsoles, and multicolored top hat à la Dr. Seuss. Four hundred and twenty pounds, bound to his high-backed leather armchair (driven with tender care all the way from humble Cincinnati), and a powerful, scruffy beard eclipsing his oxygen plug: this is Frank Lee, my final opponent at the National Scrabble Championship.
As the result of my transformation from mild-mannered schoolboy to board game connoisseur and Scrabble junkie, I had been feverishly studying until this very moment: the climax of my amateur Scrabble career.
The score is 386 to 326, my favor, and there is only one tile left in the bag. The board has practically become a New York Times Crossword, and not a meager Tuesday or Thursday; this is a full-fledged Sunday. Words like “IXIA” (defined as an African plant with sword-shaped leaves), “LEKU” (a monetary unit of Albania) and “UNAI” (a two-toed sloth) permeate our board; are we truly playing what some Merriam or Webster considered English words?
As I gaze down at my score sheet, attempting to card-count the tiles and ascertain which ones are left, Frank warily examines his side of the chess clock, which reads 1:37, and he nervously plays a W to form “EWE” and “WE” for twenty points. The bag is now empty, and this great, grey grizzly bear of a man now has one minute and thirty seven seconds left, out of his original 25 minutes, in order to gain forty more points.
By the time Frank apprehensively announces “twenty” as his score, I had figured out that the remaining tiles were I, O, N, P, R, S, and another W, an intimidating rack. To block the final Triple Word Score, I play the perfectly pleasant word “URIC,” meaning derived from urine. I announce my meager six-point gain and wait with trepidation for Frank to make his final move. Something is out of place.
After I play my word, Frank’s eyes grow large under his Technicolor bifocals. The clock is ticking down, 37, 36, 35, and soon Frank utters a mammoth sigh and places his S next to the U of “URIC,” forming “US.” I smile; Frank is almost definitely going to play “OWNS” or “WINOS” and I will handily win the game. But then, I see it: an E. I look frantically down at the results of my tile counting again and again, but still do not see an E in what I had calculated. Soon, all of his letters come onto the board at once, forming “ORPINES,” a plant with purple flowers also called a ‘live-forever.’ It dawns on me that I had miscounted the tiles and forgotten to cross off Frank’s W from “EWE.”
My jaw drops almost to table level. Frank had used all of his letters at once, thereby getting a 50-point bonus to his score. He wins the game 425-392. The perfect irony of the situation… the perfect irony of the word itself! I had arrogantly thought that I was the one who would be celebrating, but humble Frank Lee is the one who remains standing (sitting) with the single word that would ‘live forever’ in my mind.
My head hits the table, one of the ubiquitous pieces of folding plastic that dominate the room. How could I be so idiotic? How could I make such a critical mistake? How, how how? But as I sit, silently berating myself to no end, Frank looks up at me and says, “I take no pleasure in that win Christopher.”
I slowly lift my head to see his weathered blue eyes looking genuinely back at mine. He pauses, and it seems to me as though the whole room had gone silent. He looks at me more sincerely than ever before, an impenetrable, wholehearted gaze into my eyes. “I hope you can leave knowing that you’ve come away from this tournament with a better prize than anyone could have given you Christopher, because you deserve to be happy, and you deserve to be happy with what you’ve become.”
The words, the points, and the money all disappear. I look around the room and realize that I am not surrounded by diehard competitors who play this odd game for fame and glory, but by people just like me who had wanted to join this eccentric subculture, who had wanted to finally be accepted in their lives. For us, Scrabble is not about satisfying a vain addiction to competition, but rather about the heartfelt players like Frank Lee who have come together to support one another and their love for the game, foibles and all. I am not playing this game for dollars and cents; I am playing it for a sense of family.
Across the table is not just a man with a striped hat, an oxygen tank, and orange diabetic footsoles; this is a man who had been taken under the wing of our minuscule clique of players, and accepted just the way he is: as a lover of language and a man of honor. Good game, Frank.
What works?
This is an example of a strong narrative essay. It takes precisely ONE story, and makes that the entire focus. You’ll also notice that this story is under 1 minute 37 seconds long. He gives us the time stamp in the fourth paragraph, and then the game ends before that time is up. This is a really critical point that I want to emphasize because so many students think that their essays should span the full 16+ years of their lives. It most certainly does not. Powerful narrative essays often focus in on a 20-second- to 2-minute-long story. And then they provide piles and piles of details to make those few seconds come powerfully alive.
So, we have a strong narrative. We also have really strong Noticing. This skill, for me, gets to be capitalized. Many students across this country (and also adults, honestly) just don’t notice a lot of the things going on around them. So, if you’re the kid noticing someone’s neon orange diabetic footsoles (and more), that really says something. In general, pay attention to details as much as you can, and add in tons of details in your essays. You can always take some out if you feel you have too many details. But, the first paragraph here notices 6 things about Frank Lee. Six is a lot of things!
Next, notice that this kid is literally the national master (almost) of Scrabble, and yet the vocabulary he uses is SIMPLE. It’s readable. It’s maybe even basic. Don’t try to write some fluffy school English class essay where you replace every single word with a more “fancy”-sounding synonym! Seriously, please don’t do that. It’s the most miserable thing to read.
Okay, but, this kid does go on to show us that he’s got some skills with words, with letter counting, with Scrabble overall. Do top colleges want you to be great at Scrabble? No, they just like to see that you’re great at something. This kid found his niche.
Also, he does an incredible job of involving us in the board itself just enough to have some idea of the word connections, but not so much that our heads are swimming trying to visualize the board. The board doesn’t matter, the miscounted letter matters. The 50-point bonus matters. We gather those things quite nicely from his narrative.
Now let’s talk about emotion. This is where this essay really, deeply shines. This kid starts out at Pride; he’s a bit arrogant and even judgemental of his opponent. A risky move for a college essay, to be sure, but he redeems himself by the end. Then, when he loses, he drops down into Despair, Guilt, and Shame. Not a good place to be. But then he makes it back to the very high emotions of Love, Respect, Honor. That’s a MASSIVE journey that he takes us on! You do not have to take the reader on that massive of a journey…but you could. It’s nigh-impossible to fabricate, though. So, you’ll need it to be real. Think about your emotional position in each paragraph or “epoch” of your essay sometimes.
Finally, we get a few personality moments from this kid: that he’s interested in support and community, that he wants to be accepted, that he’s a good sport. Those are nice underpinnings, and they are clearly things that the writer wanted the admissions committee to walk away knowing.
What doesn’t work?
Really no complaints on this one. It’s pretty masterful.
You might think, “But, he only told me about Scrabble. What are all of his other resume items? He barely showed us anything about himself!” Don’t worry; I’m sure he put all his other resume items both on his Common App activities list and throughout his supplemental essays for each college. Any other resume items don’t really matter here, though. We learn SO much about this kid as a human person. I KNOW who this kid is. I know if I want him at my college. I know about his belief system; I know he works hard; I know he cares about others; I know he’s a bit human and can get cocky sometimes. I don’t need to know that he also did debate team for 3 years. And if he’s applying to, say, Engineering, then he’ll certainly showcase his Engineering prowess in another essay (he would absolutely have to do that). But, he doesn’t need to in his Common App. This essay is about you as a person. It can be about the things you do and create, or it can just be who you are.