Recap from the cheap seats
I've been thinking about what looked like polarized opinions -- Joe Edley, Dan Pratt, perhaps others, on one side, and myself on the other -- and especially about Joe's 'good old days' post which I tried to puncture, and I've come to a key conclusion.

Putting myself in Joe's place, there *was* something distinct about the NSC incident: the bingo is what he intended -- in fact, for a brief second, he believed he had played it.

Let's look at a closely similar case: Player A sets down LANYARD, and as he is reaching to place the S, there's a loud disruption at the next table, he drops the S in the wrong spot, and hits the clock.

In the latter case it is (a) even more clear what Player A intended, and (b) the distraction was public and shared. In such a case I am guessing that a majority of directors would rule that the S could go where it was intended, and play proceed. I could be wrong.

In the actual case, I'm guessing that real director rulings on the spot would be a little more mixed -- possibly leaning toward disallowing Joe's S. But Joe is a great arguer, so I could be wrong :)

For comparison, I've been on the side of arguing that the blank designation process should account for "what was intended." It seemed absurd for this newfangled written form to supersede a clearly announced "T" in ELA?ION, and for the bingo to be disallowed when the Florida court examined the chads and determined the "S" had a bit more of the ink on it. Especially when the designation forms themselves don't have a standard format and can lend themselves to confusion.

I guess that puts me in the same camp with Joe and Dan -- what is happening to the game, when petty-minded rules and minuscule procedures can overtake the simple act of putting down the damn word and adding up the damn score?

The NSC case feels different from two angles.

One, hitting the clock is more sacrosanct than writing down a blank. Hitting the clock is used as the definitive marker for many other rules, including challenging, calculating overtime, and more. On the other hand, as we've seen this week, we have no problem coming up with other outlier scenarios where the spirit of the game can be applied to overtake it: dropping a tile, confusion after returning from a judging station, accidental clock-hitting-while-sneezing, clock malfunctions, etc.

I'll be blunt about the second angle: it's Joe.

The rhetoric (including my own) in this week's discussion obscured an important distinction. Were we asking: "Would a reasonable person, in either JKB's place, or in a director's place, allow LANYARDS?" Or were we asking: "Should Joe have asked?" And when many of us opined that Joe should not have asked, I believe others took it to mean that no reasonable person would agree to this.

I will state that MANY reasonable people would have agreed to this -- in fact, till now, I've taken pains not to bring JKB into this, but the fact is there: Jason is as strong, bright, and reasonable as they come, and he agreed to it. If we're asking the first question, the answer is far from a no-brainer. I'd like to think that I would insist on bringing over a director, but I can't be sure. It was a unique circumstance.

But when we ask "Should Joe have asked?", we're actually making an inquiry into "right behavior." It's not particularly about the rules, or exceptions from the rules; it's not rigid constructionism vs. feel-good 'spirit of the game' -- because asking for something is not a decision. And the answer has a gray area -- a larger gray area, certainly, than I initially proposed. No newly written rule is going to dictate that one can't or shouldn't ask for a ruling in the case of some weird occurrence.

For example, if it had been me, in the heat of the moment, I might have turned my rack to ruefully show my opponent the "S" I'd left there, to explain why I had announced 70-something instead of 20-something. Would that action have constituted "asking"? What if my opponent then committed an "act of kindness"? So there are gray areas.

What if the 7LW had been a phony? What if the 8LW would have been a phony? The mind boggles.

In my mind it comes back to that very personal reaction to having hit the clock. It's very clear to me that the purest, cleanest, most knightly, BEST action is to gut it out -- you flubbed it, take your lumps. The distraction was of his own making. The "S" was still on his rack. A bizarre mistake, but an "angelic" player would not ask.

News flash: A lot of us are not angelic. This is a GAME (read, "war"), and the objective is to win. So this to me becomes a very interesting example of a case where "integrity" doesn't tell the whole story. Don't you consider it a breach of integrity to not try your hardest to win? So we get into all those other interesting areas, like intentional phonies, body language, and other aggressive gamesmanship that is short of coffeehousing and every bit a part of tournament SCRABBLE.

It's a little like losing by 2, and being asked in the hallway, "Did you recount?" If you answer, "Nah, too much trouble," some players look at you like a lesser mortal -- why wouldn't everyone do everything possible within the rules to win?

Should Joe Edley be held to the "angelic" standard? I think that's what a lot of us were, in effect, saying. Given his position and profile, it seemed shocking that he took the most aggressive (verging on breaking-of-the-rules) course, rather than an intermediate course (calling a director, or ruefully displaying the "S" as I might have done) or the purest course (sucking it up).

But you know, I think that's Joe. A 3-time National Champion is going to be someone with some chops (some kind of chops). You may not like 'em, but he is who he is.

It's a separate question altogether whether that's the person to represent SCRABBLE, especially if "representation" encompasses writing the rules, commenting on the rules, appointing AB members, directing, directing directors, competing, writing books, authorizing books, and more. I'm not saying Joe isn't fit for any of this, just that the job description has inherent conflict of interest, and sometimes you need someone who can articulate the side of the angels.