Lisa Perry is the Director of the Raleigh-Durham Scrabble Club. Having known three-time national champion Joe Edley since birth, she had always been aware of tournament Scrabble, but never played the game until the pandemic when she and her family casually picked up Words with Friends to kill time. She soon stumbled across this article and read the seminal account of the tourney scene, Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis. These events inspired her to get serious about competitive Scrabble. In her spare time, Lisa enjoys flipping through alphagrams to study bingos and practice anagramming. Within three years, Lisa has gone from 500 to a 1500s rating and won over $5,000 prize money in events.

Kenji Matsumoto is the Assistant Director to the Raleigh-Durham Scrabble Club. He is the author of the Breaking the Game website and Scrabble book, focusing on the strategy of tournament Scrabble. He has finished in the top 5 of five different national championships, earning himself a rating consistently over 2000 as well as an official Scrabble Grandmaster title. He was the NASPA Player of the Year in 2013, and has helped train numerous national champions. He also maintains an active Scrabble YouTube channel and is currently working on creating a new Scrabble study program called Scavenger.

David Weisberg, Club Advisor, started playing club and tournament Scrabble in South Florida at age 12 in 1996, including the Lauderhill club featuring many expert players. He has played in five North American championships, including four in the top division. He finished second in 2001’s prestigious Cincinnati Masters Championship, and in 2003 achieved a top 15 ranking. He has notched wins against numerous North American and world champions and has long been ranked in the top 100 players in North America. 

Several years ago he returned to Scrabble from a long hiatus and is now working to take his game to greater heights than ever before. He also plays avidly online on the site Woogles, especially the weekly Mondaily blitz tournament.