‘Lez’ too hot for Scrabble tourney

NEW ORLEANS – It wasn’t a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship Thursday.

In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word “lez,” which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament.

Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian.

“There are words you just can’t show on television,” said John Williams, executive director of the Scrabble Association.

Wright, a 30-year-old concert pianist from Los Angeles, played the word and then drew two replacement tiles so quickly that the referee didn’t notice at first. When he did notice, he said the slang term had to go.

ESPN officials told Williams the word could stay, but the issue was that Wright had already selected new tiles.

“He violated the rules. But there were also people who were upset that the word was played,” Williams said.

Williams spoke with Wright and his opponent, David Gibson, then called an emergency meeting of the Scrabble Advisory Board. The board unanimously agreed to remove the word. Wright then returned the two tiles he had selected and played a different word, Williams said.