The dust is now settling at the Virtual World Cup; after all the madness, we're down to just four countries with a chance to win it all. Next week, we'll have just two, and a week after that, we'll have our champions. Here's a look at the matchups that await us in the semifinals this weekend.

Starting next week, the remaining eight teams will compete in a single-elimination bracket, culminating in a champion being crowned the weekend of August 15. Here's a look at the four matchups that await us in the quarterfinals.

There's only 1 match left to play in the pool play stage of this tournament, but just about everything is still up in the air. Almost no teams are eliminated from playoff contention; almost no teams are guaranteed a spot, either. Here's a rundown of what went down this week, where the teams stand now, and what needs to happen for each team to qualify for the knockout rounds.

With one weekend in the books, each team has now played exactly one match, which means we've got eight teams sitting pretty at 1-0 and eight now playing from behind at 0-1. Two of the four No. 1 seeds were upset by No. 4 seeds, and the same for No. 2 seeds against No. 3's. Here's a recap of all the action we witnessed this weekend.

We are a go. I repeat: We are a GO. Based on the average WESPA ratings of their top 5 players, the 16 countries securing a spot will be the United States, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ireland, Canada, India, Ghana, New Zealand, Pakistan, Kenya, Thailand, South Africa and the Philippines. Congrats to all!

I'm happy to say we've made a lot of progress. We're much closer to having a full field of 16, though not all the way there. Here's another update on where everything stands and what still needs to happen before our slate of teams is fully ready to go.

As of this writing, we're looking at 64 total players signed up - not too far from our goal of 80 players plus alternates. Here's a country-by-country breakdown of where the field stands right now, along with some next steps for how we can fill this thing out.

Over these next few months, we're going to be running a team tournament that's open to the entire world. We plan to gather national teams from all the world's top Scrabbling nations and pit them against each other in a big tournament to compete for global Scrabble supremacy. We'll call it the Virtual World Cup.

We're still plugging away at our CURE series of virtual Scrabble tournaments this spring, and every tournament, there's at least one fascinating game that merits a closer look. This time, it's a matchup between two American experts, Josh Castellano and David Whitley.

This was a Saturday well spent. Another successful tournament is in the books, and another new champion has been crowned. We're happy with how all five of these virtual tournaments have gone this spring, and we've been heartened to see the enthusiastic response from so many players not just here in North America, but worldwide.

Welcome to another installment of our Scrabbler Q&A series. Once every month or so, we'll sit down with a member of the Scrabble community for a lengthy interview. Our guest this time is Will Anderson, who's used his time at home to launch a word game Twitch stream where he plays Scrabble, Boggle and other games for a live audience.

Today's annotated game is from the CURE4, our most recent online event. It's a matchup between two of the world's top players - Esther Perrins, of Australia, and Austin Shin, who recently moved to the United States. Thanks to both Esther and Austin for sharing their analysis of the game.