As members of the tournament Scrabble community are aware, both the national and world championships are being held next month in Las Vegas. I have participated in the world championship tournament in every year that it has happened since 2011, and this is the first time since 2001 that the tournament is being held on American soil. After the disruption caused by the pandemic, these two events are a great opportunity for me and other Scrabble players to regain some of what we missed over the last few years.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate in either tournament. Last September, I was handed a three-year ban from NASPA. This ban was the culmination of a smear campaign against me by other members of the Scrabble community, specifically Evans Clinchy, Jennifer Clinchy, and Lola McKissen, aided and abetted by Steven Pellinen. I have taken legal action against those individuals, with the exception of Steven Pellinen. I do not want to air my grievances against them here, but I do want to draw the Scrabble community’s attention to the irresponsible and unfair way that NASPA (and WESPA) have handled this situation.
What follows is a summary of my interactions with the various Scrabble associations in 2022 and 2023. All of the below except for the last few paragraphs has already been communicated to NASPA, WESPA, and ABSP.
Stand in your truth, fortified by kindness, and tell your story.
Kacy duke
On April 14, 2022, I received an email from Steven Pellinen, copied to the WGPO Board with the subject heading “Notice of Potential Disciplinary Action”, including five attachments:
- A more detailed letter from Steven Pellinen
- A statement from Lola McKissen
- A statement from Evans Clinchy
- A statement from Jennifer Clinchy
- A collection of attached documents (the majority of which is screenshots of my blog at splenetic.net)
I believe that this email was the culmination of an attempt to destroy my reputation within the American tournament Scrabble community by spreading defamatory falsehoods. From 2017 to 2019, Evans and Jennifer Clinchy had done many underhanded things to keep me out of NASPA tournaments they organized, and when that wasn’t enough, they decided to create a whole separate Scrabble organization, from which I was excluded. I strongly believe that they convinced Steven Pellinen to file this complaint in an attempt to give their personal grudge against me an air of bureaucratic legitimacy. Unsatisfied with excluding me from their new organization, in which I had no interest to begin with, they expanded their efforts to get me banned from all tournament Scrabble. These statements are an attempt to frame me for harassment and other misdeeds by creating a false narrative about me.
It was absurd that I even received this email from WGPO on many grounds. First, the vast majority of the allegations in the documents were about private relationships that should not be the business of any Scrabble organization to cast judgment on. Second, the few allegations that may have been relevant were related to NASPA-sanctioned tournaments, which are the only sanctioned ones that I play in North America. I am not a member of WGPO, and I have had zero interest in playing in any WGPO tournaments.
Later that same day, I received an email from Judy Cole, copied to the Advisory Board at NASPA containing the same five attachments, informing me that Steven Pellinen had sent all of the documents to the NASPA Executive Committee, and that the NASPA Advisory Board wanted my response “within 10 days if possible.”
The next morning, April 15th, I responded to NASPA and copied Steven Pellinen personally (but not WGPO) saying I only recognized NASPA as having authority over Scrabble in North America, and that I would only deal with them. I further stated that I would need at least a month to respond, and that I would additionally provide my official response to Steven Pellinen as a personal courtesy to him.
Two people from NASPA replied in agreeable and helpful ways. Steven Pellinen responded, asking me to respond to part of the complaint sooner. I ignored Steven’s message. Steven was the plaintiff in the case against me, and it was completely inappropriate for him to circumvent NASPA and ask for a reply sooner, just as it was completely inappropriate for WGPO to contact me in any way whatsoever about this. A few days later, on April 19th, NASPA told me that I had as much time as I needed to respond and to refrain from attending any NASPA clubs or tournaments and from making contact with the complainants until they made their ruling, which I complied with.
On April 25th, I received an email that was caught in my spam filter from conduct@cocoscrabble.org telling me that I had until April 28th to respond to them because of this incident report. This email included quotes from an April 14th email that they had allegedly sent me, but I had never received that one.1 I never responded to any of CoCo’s communication, and they sent me another email on May 22nd with their disciplinary decision in an attachment, which banned me from playing in their tournaments for five years.
I had hoped to get my response back to NASPA by late May, but I was unable to do so. I had already booked travel, long before I received the incident report, to go to the UK and Germany to compete in tournaments in both countries that were sanctioned by the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP) and WESPA. Technically, this was not within NASPA’s purview, but I was completely above board with NASPA in letting them know about my planned travel and intent to play in the tournaments. The NASPA Advisory Board explicitly okayed me playing in the European tournaments before adjudication of my case. These are the only tournaments I played after receiving this incident report, and I have not attended any clubs nor even played Scrabble with anyone online in that time.
Meanwhile, Steven Pellinen emailed me again on May 27th telling me that WGPO was proceeding with a review of my case without my statement, because I had not submitted it on time. I responded, reminding Steven that I would copy him on my response to NASPA and informing him that NASPA had given me no deadline. I further pointed out that WGPO had no right to ask me for anything or to have a hearing about me, as I was not playing in their tournaments and had no intention to do so, and that the only tournaments relevant to the incident report were NASPA tournaments. On June 29th, I received an email from Keith Hagel, on behalf of the WGPO Board of Directors, notifying me that I had received a five-year ban.
I had been registered to play in the NASPA Scrabble Players Championship in Baltimore in late July, but because I was not able to get my response to the incident report written in a timely way, I dropped out of the tournament.
On August 8th, Michael Tang made an announcement about the Alchemist Cup 2024, which is an international event pitting teams of the top 5 players from many countries against each other. His announcement included the news that players who were suspended by two out of three Scrabble associations in North America would not be permitted to register for the event, and he specified that he was considering NASPA, WGPO, and CoCo to all count as Scrabble associations for North America. This rule was clearly targeting me, as I was the only person in the world who was suspended by two out of three North American associations. Furthermore, it was unprecedented to consider either WGPO or CoCo as an association for qualifying purposes. Only NASPA had WESPA recognition and had ever been involved in international qualifying before.
(Note also that the exact ways in which Evans and Jennifer had broken NASPA rules in 2017-2019 had the effect of corrupting the qualifying process for the 2018 and 2020 Alchemist Cup tournaments. Evans and Jennifer had organized their own Virtual World Cup in 2020, which was billed as a replacement for the canceled 2020 Alchemist Cup, and they had also cheated me out of a spot in that event.)
On August 24th, I received another email from the NASPA Advisory Board telling me that my name was now on the suspended players list and that I had until two weeks from that date, September 7th, to get a response to NASPA. The email also mentioned that Steven Pellinen had contacted the Advisory Board and was pressuring them to act sooner. I responded the next day saying that I would get my response in by September 7th.
On September 6th, I sent my response to the NASPA Advisory Board, copying it to Steven Pellinen. A day later, Jason Idalski, who had been my main point of contact on the NASPA Advisory Board, informed me that their next meeting would be on September 20th.
On the morning of September 21st, I texted Jason Idalski back to inquire about whether the Advisory Board had made a decision. I did not hear back for several hours. I then texted Stefan Rau, another member of the Advisory Board I know well, asking the same thing. Jason Idalski and Stefan Rau got back to me within ten minutes of each other, each giving me contradictory information.
On September 23rd, I received an email from Jason Idalski, copying both the Advisory Board and Steven Pellinen, informing me that I had been given a three-year ban. The email referred to three violations by me of the Code of Conduct but gave no specifics as to what I had done to violate the Code or what part or parts of the Code I had allegedly violated, other than a reference to Section 2.
On September 25th, I was contacted via Facebook Messenger by Eric Kinderman, a non-voting member of the WESPA board, telling me that NASPA had told them that I was sanctioned for three years but did not give a reason. He suspected foul play. I responded,
I did submit a defense, and if you read it, it conclusively proves that all the charges against me were false, and also that all three people who submitted statements knowingly and intentionally submitted false information against me. The response they gave me also did not specify what I did that supposedly merited the suspension. All of my communication with the Scrabble associations henceforth will be through my lawyer.
I also learned around this time that Sue Tremblay, Community Advocate of NASPA, was never informed of the incident report brought against me or the NASPA Advisory Board’s deliberations about it. She only learned about the case from me after I had already submitted my response. According to NASPA’s website, the Community Advocate’s “mandate is to provide a safe environment for members reporting cases of harassment within the association.” Sue was always looped into incident reports like this one since her appointment, and she seems to have been intentionally excluded from this process.
On November 8th, 2022, my former attorney sent a letter to the NASPA Advisory Board asking for explanation of the rationale behind their decision and whether there were any additional documents submitted as part of the case that I had not been shown. The letter also doubled as a litigation hold letter.2
On November 10th, John Chew, the President of NASPA, who serves on both the Advisory Board and the Executive Committee, wrote back notifying me that the Advisory Board would not elaborate on the ruling.
On November 15th, John Chew wrote again, attaching additional statements from Jennifer Clinchy, Lola McKissen, and Steven Pellinen dated September 9th, 2022. These statements contained a large amount of additional defamatory material from Jennifer and Lola. The statement from Steven Pellinen also showed that he was very obviously not an objective third party and was a further scathing criticism of me. Though NASPA’s Advisory Board did not meet to consider my case until 11 days later, on September 20th, I was never informed of the additional documents prior to NASPA’s verdict. Furthermore, I never would have found out about them if not for the letter from my former attorney.
The submission of the September 9th documents was against the rules of NASPA’s disciplinary procedures as far as I understood. Jason Idalski had explained to me over the phone that the disciplinary process was just that the Advisory Board would review the complainants’ original statements from April 2022 and my response in a private meeting. Neither I nor the complainants would be at the meeting. There would be no cross-examinations or further rounds of statements.
On April 14th, 2023, I filed a lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court against Evans, Jennifer, and Lola for Defamation, Conspiracy to Defame, Intentional Interference with Economic Relations, Conspiracy to Tortiously Interfere with Economic Relations, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, and Conspiracy to Intentionally Inflict Emotional Distress. I did this, at great personal financial risk to myself, because my reputation has been unlawfully tarnished and I need the Scrabble world to see the truth.
On May 26th, I emailed an appeal to the NASPA Executive Committee in which I thoroughly disproved all of the accusations from the September 9th statements, just as my September 6th response disproved all of the accusations from the earlier statements. Within a few minutes, John Chew emailed me back confirming receipt of the email and saying it would be placed on the next week’s agenda.
On May 30th, Judy Cole emailed me saying that the Executive Committee has agreed to hear the appeal but has not yet set a date when to do so.
On June 1st, my attorney emailed both Judy and John, who are presently the entirety of the Executive Committee, asking for the timetable for when a decision can be expected and letting them know that I want to play in the 2023 Scrabble Players Championship and 2023 WESPA Championship in July.
On June 4th, John Chew wrote back to my attorney, “Due to David’s eight-month delay in submitting his appeal, the Executive Committee’s ongoing planning of our annual championship next month, and the need to perform a thorough and de novo review of the case, we cannot provide a date by which our deliberations will be complete.” John was counting eight months from September 23rd, 2022 to May 26th, 2023, even though I did not receive the latter statements made against me until November 15th, 2022. The only party who has made an eight-month delay is NASPA, who has still given neither me nor WESPA any explanation of what I did that merited a suspension.
On June 8th, I emailed my appeal and all previous communication on the case to Mina Le and Wayne Kelly, who put it before the WESPA Executive Committee and ABSP Committee respectively.
On June 11th, Mina notified me that the WESPA Executive Committee is refusing to intervene and letting NASPA address it.
On that same day, Wayne Kelly notified me that ABSP will not reciprocate NASPA’s suspension of me. He mentioned that my standing in the UK is “beyond question.”
I hope that this situation will be corrected soon, so that I can sit down across the table and play Scrabble again with all of the wonderful people I have enjoyed tournament games with for over twenty years now.
Footnotes
- It is possible that the April 14th email was lost in my spam filter, but that seems unlikely to me, because my email provider says that it deletes things from spam after 30 days. I checked the spam filter in late April and saw the April 25th email from CoCo but no April 14th email.
- On November 11th, 2022, litigation hold letters also went out to Evans Clinchy, Jennifer Clinchy, CoCo, Steven Pellinen, WGPO, and Lola McKissen.