ARE SCRABBLE PLAYERS ALL DUCKS?

I sift the Internet from time to time, googling for scrabble related material. Below is an editorial of Dubai’s National newspaper:  

 

The Scrabble Rabble
National Editorial 
Dubai

January 10, 2015

Of all the competitive activities in the world, Scrabble might seem to be the least likely candidate to cause rancour and aggravation. Genteel and erudite wordsmithing would be a more popular image for competitions, such as the one held in Dubai on Thursday.

But just like a duck, which seems to glide serenely on the surface of a pond but is furiously paddling below the waterline, Scrabble also attracts a sense of intense and sometimes unseemly competitiveness.
 

Take the example of the Australian Scrabble Players Association, which last week was ordered by a court to revoke the suspension of one of its players. Mohammed Hegazi spent six years challenging the association’s accusation that he had cheated.

Nobody ought to find this surprising. After all, even normally calm and rational people can get incensed by the Oxford comma or even when to use “that” instead of “which”.