Potomac resident Bob Linn travels to 10 or 12 Scrabble tournaments a year.

POTOMAC’S BOB LINN knows how to make words count. The soft-spoken financial adviser deals with numbers for a living, but it’s his ability to recall thousands of letter combinations that landed him in Perth, Australia, last November with the U.S. national team to compete at the World Scrabble Championship.

“More mathematicians than editors play high-level Scrabble” says Linn, who has played in five world championships since 2003 and placed 54th out of 130 participants in Perth. In the Scrabble stratosphere, employing strategy and being able to quickly calculate the total number of points for a given word is more important than knowing its definition.

Invented in 1933 by unemployed architect Alfred Mosher Butts, Scrabble is found in three out of every five American homes, and some 2 million copies are sold every year in the United States.

But for Linn, Scrabble is more than just a game. The highly competitive 72-year-old started playing regularly in the early 1980s and reached expert level a year or so after wandering into a Scrabble club in Chevy Chase, D.C, and beating one of the best players there.

“I’ve always been a game player” says Linn, who also plays tennis and bridge and has competed in ping-pong and paintball tournaments. “I was captain of the University of Maryland’s chess team; I understand game theory.”

Linn’s wife, Gail, an audiologist, says that when she first met Linn in 1997, she didn’t want him to know that she wasn’t very good at spelling, “and I already had two master’s degrees at that point!” After participating in Scrabble tournaments for about five years, she now teaches tips for playing Scrabble in local retirement communities, plays games online at night to relax, and accompanies Linn to international tournaments two or three times a year.

We recently asked Bob Linn about life as a Scrabble whiz.

So, what drew you to Scrabble?

I like games. I like words. And I like competition.

How do you prepare for tournaments?

I make up index cards with word categories. I have cards reviewing games that I played—words I didn’t see on the rack, or forgot about, or want to remind myself [about]. I put them on the car dashboard, look at them when I’m at a stoplight. I look at them if I’m waiting in line. I’m always early for appointments, so I look at them then.

Here’s a card with the word ‘latrine’ Those letters also make four other seven-letter words: ‘retinal’ ‘reliant’ ‘trenail’ ‘ratline’ I also wrote a mnemonic phrase on the card that reminds me of the possible eight-letter words I can build. There’s a ‘C’ in the phrase, so ‘latrine’ must be able to form a word with ‘C’—‘clarinet’ ‘Latrine’ plus a ‘G’ makes six words: ‘altering’ ‘alerting’ ‘relating’ ‘triangle’ ‘tanglier’ and ‘integral’

So the idea is finding a seven-letter word and knowing what the seven-letter words in [that word] are. But if I can’t play a seven, [I have] a phrase to remind me or help me know the eight-letter word possibilities.

Do you play online?

Hardly ever. I use the computer just to study.

Do you have tips for players looking to improve their skills?

Start memorizing the two-letter and the three-letter word lists. Use the free Scrabble download word site, zyzzyva.net.

How many tournaments do you travel to per year?

Ten or 12.

When you travel abroad, what do you do besides compete in tournaments?

I’ll take Gail sightseeing for a week. Then she’ll go home and I’ll stay for a week and play in a tournament. We get to see the country, be together, and it helps me with the time changes. You don’t want to be falling asleep in a tournament. In high-level Scrabble, if you lose concentration for five seconds, it’s like somebody takes a mallet and hits you in the head. You didn’t see something in your rack, in your letters; you didn’t see something on the board you should have seen. I want to be awake and alert and on the right time zone.

What’s the most you’ve ever won in prize money?

There are some big prizes for the winners of the big tournaments, but I’ve never won those. I’ve won maybe $300 to $500 at a tournament.

Placing 54th seems like a decent showing at the world championship.

I feel that it was actually poor. I came in 31st once, which was the best I’ve done. But for me it’s not really about where I place. I was happy about [some of the words I played that were] difficult and interesting to find and fit. But I missed some words I shouldn’t have. Sometimes you get bad letters, sometimes you get good letters, but missing a word you should know? That’s where I give myself a bad mark.

So the fun is in challenging yourself?

Yeah. Look, my philosophy of life is, if you’re going to spend any time at all doing anything, why not try to be the best at it? Otherwise, why bother?