Part I

Stuart White ended his term as Director of the Michigan League of Academic Games in 1989 to concentrate on coaching his team at Huron High School in Ann Arbor and assisting with the national tournament.

• Stu and Jim Davis from Pittsburgh took charge of the scoring at nationals for many years.

When I was a rookie at the nationals at Kent State, I watched Jim and the scorekeepers up on a stage. "I can do that. Plus, I can be on stage." I hit it off with Jim immediately. "That was pretty cool. I want to come back and do this again."

• After Kent State, the scorekeepers were put off in a room by themselves. So Stu and Jim turned the scoring room into the "Throne Zone" where their "subjects" had to make proper obeisance to approach the head scorekeepers.

Each tournament ended with a social for the adults that included Jim and Stu performing their Carnac the Magnificent routine imitating Johnny Carson's skit on The Tonight Show.

• Johnny's shtick consisted of guessing the answer to a question sealed in an envelope, then opening the envelope and reading the question. For example, "Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson." Question: "Name two presidents and a floor wax."
• Jim and Stu created questions and answers based on incidents that occurred during the three days of the tournament.

There was so much intensity at the tournaments that Jim and I provided comic relief. People looked at us with a false image. Jim and I were still coaching. It was a false premise that we were nothing but goofballs.

Following the 1991 nationals at Rock Eagle (GA), Stu and Jim joined with Larry Liss and Brother Neal Golden to form AGLOA, which conducted its first national tournament in April 1992 in Orlando.

 
Stu White (foreground) with Dave Campbell and Jim Davis

Stu retired from teaching 15 years ago to run his family's business.

• Before leaving Huron, he mentored alumni coaches there, including Ian Buchanan and Tom Laughlin.
• Another of Stu's former students, Eric Nelson, coaches at Clague Middle School and is a member of the AGLOA Board.

Stu has never missed an AGLOA tournament.

• Although he and Jim are no longer the chief scorekeepers, they return yearly to help administer the tournament.
• Stu looks forward to the 50th anniversary tournament.

2015 will be my last. I'll be 67, Larry 73. Larry and I have sons born a week apart. We talk about our sons every time we see each other outside of academic games.

Let's close with Stu recounting a poignant story from 1986.

I had a player named Orhan Oker. He'd been a 7th grader on my team the year before, a good player, a good soccer player too. His parents were Turkish citizens, his dad an engineer at Ford. As an 8th grader, Orhan was out sick a lot. His parents revealed that he had cancer. As the year progressed, he made most of the Saturday tournaments. He got sicker and sicker. You could see it. At the MLAG Super Tournament in March, he received the Outstanding Middle Division Player award.

I talked to the parents. Should he go on the trip to nationals at Gatlinburg? "Oh, he's gotta go. All his pals will be on the trip; he's practiced for it. Here's his medicine. He's very responsible." Neither parent could go on the trip. The only real guidelines they gave was that sometimes he'll be in bed and might have to miss rounds. His four teammates didn't care. They wanted him on their team. His room was next to mine in Gatlinburg. I'd bring him some fruit and juice. He made every round. He was so tired. When we got back on the bus to go home, he slept.

He never came back to school and died a week later. I remember going to his funeral with our principal. We both had sons a little older than Orhan. We watched the father struggle. I met the father for dinner six times over the next few years. We'd both cry. He said that academic games sustained his son. There was no way he would have lived that long if he hadn't gone to the tournament. He was a great kid. A year later, his dad finally cleaned his room. He gave Orhan's Outstanding Player trophy to me. I can't tell that story without getting upset about it.

Down Memory Lane

The original Tournament Rules of Equations and On-Sets allowed any player to call "Forceout" on his/her turn at any point in a shake.

• With no provision in the rules for challenging a forceout declaration, all players had to write a Solution using all the cubes in Required, any they wanted from Permitted, and one more from Resources.
• The procedure was intended to handle true Forceout situations when only one cube remained in Resources. (The Now or Never version of Equations and On-Sets introduced in 1992 changed the procedure so that the last cube was played to Required or Permitted rather than staying in Resources.)
• However, if Forceout was called with two or more cubes in Resources, then, in almost all cases, no player would be able to write a correct Solution using just one more cube.
• The scoring for the forceout was 1 point for anyone writing a correct Solution, -1 for the player who called forceout but could not write a correct Solution, and 0 for any other player who couldn't write a Solution.

So why did players call Forceout with more than one cube left in Resources?

• A player who led the match by two or more points would call Forceout to terminate the last shake to prevent an opponent from challenging.
• Since not enough cubes had been played to Required and Permitted to make a Solution with one more cube, the forceout declarer would score -1 but the other player(s) would score 0.
• Thus, the leader would win the match.

The rule allowing any player to call Forceout on any turn was modified twice within a few years.

• The first revision stated that calling Forceout with more than one cube left in Resources was legal only before the last shake warning was called. Of course, all that did was make players in the lead pay more attention to the clock. Leaders would call Forceout just seconds before the warning was called.
• So the next change increased the penalty for failing to write a correct Solution after calling Forceout with more than one cube in Resources from -1 to -4. This eliminated the tactic except in those cases where a player was so far ahead that the last shake made no difference anyway.