If you knew that the word "dak" is actually a noun meaning "transportation by relays of men and horses," consider "iff" to be a legitimate conjunction or just like words in general, you may stand a fighting chance at the spring semester Scrabble Tournament.

The UW-Madison Super Scrabble Society is sponsoring the first-ever tournament, which will be held today from 7-10:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union Games Room. The rules allow for up to 30 student entrants, each of whom will play three one-on-one games.

The player who wins the most games while scoring the most points will claim the title of Scrabble Champion, as well as the satisfaction of a job well done. UW-Madison students can register Wednesday beginning at 7 p.m.

Wisconsin Union Marketing intern Trina Ploor organized the event after noticing that many of her friends "were really getting into playing it [Scrabble] for study breaks or even as an online distraction." Ploor then enlisted the help of the Super Scrabble Society to set up the free tournament.

Scrabble Society president Beth Pyne advocates the tournament as a way to take a break from studying, as well as a fun event to watch or compete in. Although most students probably don't think of Scrabble as a spectator sport, Pyne begs to differ.

"As long as the players are not interrupted, Scrabble can be very interesting to watch," she said. "It's always fun when people come up with obscure words and seven-letter words. Plus, tiles can change radically from turn to turn, so there can be drastic changes in the game standings."

Even if the only time you play Scrabble is when you visit your grandparents' house, there's room for players of all abilities.

"I am actually a horrible Scrabble player and usually cannot think of any words longer than 'cat,'" Ploor said.

"I think most games will not be extremely competitive, but there will definitely be some good games," Pyne commented.

Players also have the option of making the event more competitive with the addition of time clocks to keep turns to less than two minutes.

First-timers can easily pick up the rules of the game. Players begin by drawing letters for first move (the letter closest to A wins), then mix all the letters in a bag and draw seven each. Play starts with a player placing a word on the center of the board, with each subsequent player forming a horizontal or vertical new word off the letters already in place.

All words considered a part of speech can be used, except for words that are always capitalized, abbreviations and words that require a hyphen or apostrophe. This means that slang words, archaic words and even words originally from a foreign language are fair game.

According to Pyne, "the best Scrabble players study a lot of words and use flashcards and such to practice." Some even go as far as using computer programs to practice with different sets of tiles.

But just developing decent Scrabble skills can be much simpler, Pyne says.

"The easiest way to improve on one's game would probably be to learn or memorize the two and three-letter words," she explained. "Also, Scrabble is more of a math game than a word game, so it is important to pay attention to the board arrangement and constantly move around your tiles to make the most point-worthy word."

Pyne hopes the event will help publicize the Memorial Union Games Room and the Scrabble Society, which meets there every other Sunday. Both Pyne and Ploor also want the Scrabble tournament to continue to grow.

"Depending on the interest and response we get from Wednesday's tournament, we could turn this into a bigger event in the future," Ploor said.

But the ultimate goal of the tournament is to promote the game in general. "Scrabble is better than any other board game!" Pyne said. "It's fun and interesting to look at English from a different perspective and discover various obscure words. I think people should get bonus points for using Scrabble words in their everyday lives."