Recapping a Sunday 1-day in Providence, RI
It's always an inauspicious thing when Friday the 13th and the Ides of March happen to coincide on the same weekend. I mean, think about it - just one of those two events alone can signal your impending doom. Both at once? Forget about it. You're better off hiding under the bed and just waiting for it all to be over.
That's my outlook on it, anyway. But for Niel Gan and Matthew O'Connor, our two intrepid CoCo tournament organizers in New England, not so. They've already in 2026 courageously held a tournament in defiance of a massive blizzard in January, and basically done the same thing when another snowstorm came their way in February. These guys clearly don't back down from a challenge. So, naturally, there was no way a couple of calendrical oddities were going to scare them off from running another event in March.
And this weekend, they indeed did. On Sunday, four Scrabblers met up at the 50 Sims building in Providence, RI for an afternoon of Scrabble. Everyone got six games in, and the competition was spirited as always.
Matthew took home the title, his second CoCo tournament victory of 2026, with a very solid 5-1 performance. He swept his first five games and already had the win in the bag with one round to play. Though when you look closer, it wasn't quite the runaway tournament win that you might expect based on the W/L record. Matthew began to pull away from the field in the middle two rounds, when he swept a two-game set against Richard Buck... by scores of 395-388 and 384-383! A combined record of 2-0, +8. Sometimes Scrabble is a game of inches. Matthew may have ended up 5-1 in the tournament, while Richard was 1-5... but if those two games just turn out a few points differently, then suddenly both players are 3-3 and it's anyone's tournament. Kinda crazy to think about.
None of this is to take anything away from Matthew, who is of course a deserving winner. Congratulations to him on taking home his second consecutive Providence tournament win, and to Brad Whitmarsh, who put forth a solid 4-2 effort to earn second place. Thanks as always to Matthew and to Niel for making these tournaments possible.
And so, the series of New England CoCo 1-days keeps trucking along. They've been alternating between Providence and Somerville, MA from month to month, and that means Somerville is next in the rotation, with the next event coming up on April 12. Good luck to all at the April event - may the tiles be with you.