We're 1 week out from the World Blitz Scrabble Championship

When we announced the World Blitz Scrabble Championship for the first time two weeks ago, there was an initial flurry of activity, with players rushing to sign up right away. We saw 35 people register within the first 24 hours, and quite a few on the following two days as well. Things have slowed a bit since then, but people are still trickling in - as of this writing, we've got a total of 63 people in the field. There's still about a week until registration closes, as we'll be accepting new sign-ups until Monday, Jan. 25 at midnight GMT. For those who are still considering signing up, I'm happy to help by answering any questions you may have about the event.

Actually, better yet - why don't I just make this easier by fielding those questions in advance?

I've gotten a handful of inquiries over the last couple of weeks from prospective players wanting to know more about the event, and I've been answering them one by one. But by and large, most everyone is asking about the same few details. I figured I'd put together a quick FAQ about BlitzChamps, in an effort to clear things up for you all. Here goes:

How is the structure of this event going to look, exactly?

That's a work in progress - it'll depend on how many players ultimately sign up. I was originally predicting we'd get about 64 people, which would make for a nice, clean 8x8 field - 8 groups of 8 players each, with a full round robin in each group, and the top 2 players from each group would advance to a 16-person playoff.

It looks like we'll end up with more than 64, though. I don't love the idea of groups larger than 8 players, because then you're talking about an incredibly long round robin. What we may end up doing is expanding the number of groups to include a 9th, 10th, or possibly 11th one, with up to 8 players in each. We would still have a 16-person playoff - all group champions would advance, and some of the second-place finishers would as well, depending on tiebreakers based on their W/L records.

More to come! As we start to pinpoint an exact number of entrants, we can provide more details.

There are some strong players in this field! Will I get to play them?

Short answer: Yes. The format will be similar to what we did for the Virtual World Cup last year, meaning the players will be seeded and sorted into groups so that each group has one of each seed. The 1 seeds will be the players at the very top of the WESPA ratings list (David Eldar, Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, Jesse Day, etc.), while the 8 seeds will be the unrated players (though we will probably make some exceptions for otherwise established players whose WESPA ratings are currently 0).

So when you're placed into a group, you'll get a full cross-section of the field in that group. You'll see one 1 seed, one 2 seed, one 3, and so on. Even if you're a relatively new player, this tournament will still let you take a crack at playing the very best of the best.

If I play this tournament, what kind of time commitment am I looking at?

It shouldn't be too bad. No matter what structure we settle on, we're going to schedule 1 match per player per week, and each match consists of 9 speed games with 3-minute clocks. You can do the math - you're looking at about 1 hour of play in a given week. You can spare an hour a week, can't you?

I have a busy schedule. Can I play my matches at convenient times to avoid a potential conflict?

Within reason, yes, we'll do everything we can to accommodate you. We're asking every player when they sign up to provide info on their availability and their time zone, so we're mindful of everyone's timing needs. And we're also (shout out to Becky Dyer, who's been all over this) putting together a massive spreadsheet of everyone's schedules so we can quickly identify who's available for which match when.

As for time zone differences, they can be annoying, but they're workable. For the VWC last year, we had a final between the United States and India, which are on opposite sides of the world, and we figured things out. As long as you make yourself available at a reasonable hour at some point, we'll find a time slot that works for you.

So - registration closes on Monday at midnight, right? What happens next?

Good question! From there, we'll take the day Monday to hammer out the details. We'll announce the finalized field, and then we'll do a random drawing to determine which of the seeded players end up in each group. The groups will be unveiled Monday, and shortly thereafter, we'll notify all the players of their schedule for Week 1.

I expect we'll see the first few matches starting early next week, followed by a bunch more on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 30 and 31.

If I decide not to play the tournament, will I be able to follow along with the live coverage instead?

Definitely. We're still working out the details, but we're planning to have a robust schedule of Twitch broadcasts - probably 4 or 5 per week. I'll be broadcasting some of the matches myself, and we'll have a team of a few other announcers, including some notable names from the Scrabble streaming world. More details to come on that!

While we won't be able to broadcast every match with a tournament this big, we'll be able to bring you quite a few. Blitz Scrabble should make for an exciting event to watch live - we hope you enjoy it!

And of course, if you're thinking about playing, there's still time left to register. Head on over to the tournament page today, and add your name to the list. Happy Scrabbling to all.