Summer, 1992

‘Post’ Staffer Wins Scrabble Tourney

    Who says the people at The Jerusalem Post can't spell? Sam Orbaum, who works on the Post newsdesk, won the Summer '92 Scrabble tournament that ended on Friday, beating out a writer and a law-student.
    Playing in the Whiz Division, in which the best players compete, Orbaum won 12 of 13 games, besting Barry Chamish (10-3) and national Scrabble champion Evan Cohen (9-4).
    Mitzi Antflick of Beersheba won the Advanced Division, Agi Brener of Tel-Aviv won in the Competitive Division, and Jerusalemite Josie Lee won in the Casuals.
    Over 70 players participated in the event, held at Neve Ilan and sponsored by The Jerusalem Post.
                                      (Jerusalem Post Reporter)

06/09/95

Kesselman wins National Scrabble Title

    Three games before the end of the Third Israel Scrabble Championships, played last night in Jerusalem, everybody was congratulating the wrong player.
    Sam Orbaum needed to win just one more game but lost three straight - all to Zev Kesselman.
    Kesselman, 51, a chemical engineer from Elazar, beat out 15 other logomachists to win NIS 750 and a trophy. He also wins a free trip to London in November to represent Israel in the World Scrabble Championships.
The air ticket was provided courtesy of Ziontours Jerusalem, which co-sponsored the tournament with The Jerusalem Post.
    Kesselman finished with a record of  9-3 +625.
    Orbaum, 39, a Jerusalem journalist, clinched Israel's second allotted spot in the London tourney with a record of 8-4 +475, winning NIS 500.
    Third place and NIS 250 went to Zelig Leader, 52, a Jerusalem computer programmer with the Income Tax Authority.
    In a novel experiment, the tournament was broadcast live on the Internet. Scrabble fans worldwide followed the proceedings as described by one of the participants, Jerusalemite Steve Goldberg.

                                      (Jerusalem Post Reporter)

25/4/97

Zineb, shoji, howf boost Orbaum to Scrabble title

    Sam Orbaum made 'aliyah' to become the Israeli Scrabble champion Wednesday in Jerusalem. The word, worth 32 points, helped him to a sixth consecutive victory on his way to an 8-1 record, with a point differential of +815. He averaged 433 per game.

    Orbaum, director of the Jerusalem Scrabble Club, won NIS 1,000 and a gold trophy. The Jerusalem Post sponsored the championships, but all prize winnings were funded by the players themselves.

    Zev Kesselman of Moshav Elazar, the defending national champ, finished second, 6-3 +288, winning NIS 500. JJ Jonah of Jerusalem took third place (6-3 +243) and won NIS 300. Steve Goldberg, the major surprise of the day-long tournament, took fifth place behind Jerusalem club champion Hazel Haberer. Goldberg, 5-4 +407, inflicted the only loss on Orbaum and nearly beat him again, helping the Jerusalem club to a sweep of the top six places in the tourney.

    'When I first came to Israel, my dream was to lose a game of Scrabble,' said Orbaum in his victory speech. Orbaum founded the Israel Scrabble Players Association in 1982, yet never won the championship until this, his fourth try. 'But by now, with so many great players on the scene, my dream changed to winning this trophy.'

    The championships were played 'king of the hill' style, forcing Orbaum, who led the entire way, to play the second-place player in each round. He befuddled the country's best with such words as zineb, shoji, tetanize, quipu, galeae, howf and, appropriately for a professional editor, misedit.

    Orbaum and Kesselman also won the right to represent Israel in the World Scrabble Championships in November in Washington, DC.

                                   (Jerusalem Post Staff)

26/5/00

Baby Boom for Scrabble Champs

    The dominant words at the Jerusalem Scrabble Club this past month were

'prenatal,' 'parental' and 'paternal' - and not because the three words happen to be anagrams of each other.

    At one table, Brenda Cohen was about to have a baby. At the next table was Kenny Kodish, whose wife was about to have a baby. Nearby, Zev Kesselman and David Litke were expecting imminent grandchildren.

    It sounds like a Lamaze class, but this was the scene at the world's largest Scrabble club as all four were engrossed in something other than birthing: the championships.

    Cohen had to win three games against defending club champ JJ Jonah, who had already won the title five times and was coming off one of the best seasons anyone ever had in the JSC's 17-year history. Cohen had never won the championship; in fact, only twice in 34 seasons had a woman won the title.

    Jonah quickly won the first two games of the best-of- five series. It looked like curtains for Cohen. But Jonah, a Scrabble superstar who once represented Israel in the world championships, made a rare mistake to lose the third game, 378-357. Cohen won another heart-stopper, 362-344. In the deciding game, Cohen took command by playing NECKLACE on a triple-word score, clinched it at the end with SQUEG (to oscillate irregularly), and completed a shocking comeback with a 375-301 triumph. It was the first time anyone ever came back from an 0-2 deficit to win the club championship.

    A few days later, Cohen gave birth to a daughter.

    Meanwhile, Kodish, vying for the Division 'B' championship, had half a mind on his cellphone, because wife Debbie was due any hour. He managed two wins against 'B' League winner Mia Pincu, took a break as his son was born, and returned two weeks later to polish off a three-game sweep.

    Jonathan Wreschner, of Efrat, won the Division 'C' triple crown, unaffected by any distractions.

    All at the same time, Litke was preparing to host the National Championships at his home in Elazar. The event was nearly upheaved by a brit for his newborn grandson.

    The National Championships were won by Kesselman, who happens to be Litke's next-door neighbor, and who also was on the verge of grandfatherhood.

    (By coincidence - or perhaps not! - all five players happen to be Orthodox.)

    A few days after all the championships had been won and all the babies had been born, Kesselman and Cohen bumped into each other at Shaare Zedek Hospital's maternity ward.

    'Mazal tov!' they said to each other. It took a few moments to sort out if they were congratulating each other's victory, or birth, or both.