{"id":530,"date":"2008-07-10T07:54:19","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homepages.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/2008\/07\/10\/from-spelling-bees-to-scrabble\/"},"modified":"2008-07-10T07:54:19","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:54:19","slug":"from-spelling-bees-to-scrabble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/2008\/07\/from-spelling-bees-to-scrabble\/","title":{"rendered":"From spelling bees to Scrabble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/orry-swift.jpg\" alt=\"Orry Swift\" align=\"right\" \/>I was never all that great at spelling bees. I still remember the last one I participated in, and the word I misspelled &#8212; &#8220;diagonal.&#8221; I added an extra letter in there somewhere, and quickly took my seat with the rest of the students who had struggled with similar challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Orry Swift probably never had that problem. A former spelling bee champ, Swift &#8212; now a senior finance major at Baylor &#8212; has shifted his focus from spelling bees to Scrabble. And he&#8217;s good &#8212; real good. In fact, when you&#8217;re flipping channels later this month and come across a Scrabble tournament on ESPN, pause for a moment; the player you&#8217;re seeing might just be Orry.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scrabble-assoc.com\/ratings\/data\/state\/2008\/200806.html#P_TX\" target=\"_blank\">4th-ranked Scrabble player in Texas<\/a>, he&#8217;ll be competing in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.scrabble-assoc.com\/main.asp?id=58\" target=\"_blank\">National Scrabble Championship<\/a> in Orlando July 25-29. He explains some of his strategy in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wacotrib.com\/news\/content\/news\/stories\/2008\/07\/06\/07062008wacscrabble.html\" target=\"_blank\">this <em>Waco Tribune-Herald<\/em> article<\/a> and offers tips in the accompanying video. Maybe these sorts of tips will help the next time someone breaks out the Scrabble board at a family reunion.<\/p>\n<p>Sic \u2019em, Orry!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was never all that great at spelling bees. I still remember the last one I participated in, and the word I misspelled &#8212; &#8220;diagonal.&#8221; I added an extra letter in there somewhere, and quickly took my seat with the rest of the students who had struggled with similar challenges. Orry Swift probably never had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-for-fun","category-student-life","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}