John Chew

@poslfit.bsky.social

279 Followers 226 Following

I like words, math, languages, code, food, organisation, and problem-solving. I work on Scrabble, election data, dictionaries, and translation.

Three printed drafts of fascicle Q of the Canadian English Dictionary are stacked on a table.
A square heat map with values ranging from 0 to 70 shows a cluster of tournament scores mostly around 350-400 extending out to about 200-600.
A ThermoWorks infrared thermometer indicates that a grill cover is 81.3°C.
Three ravens silhouetted atop Half-Mile Bridge
Two dozen people stand in front of a video wall captioned "United For Literacy Game Night Winners", as two in the middle ring bells to mark the end of the Cboe Canada trading day.
Wide angle photo of Duane Linklater’s “Monsters for beauty, permanence and individuality”
A honeybee on a cluster of apple blossoms
Kristen poses with a mango lime pie baked for Pi Day
Melanie Valcin, John Chew, Jennifer Chow
Jane Siberry sits with her guitar in a theatrically lit bookshop
John, Shan and Max receive a card from two students, standing in front of a Scrabble board backdrop.
A group of 20+ Toronto Scrabble Club members pose for a photograph
A Canadian flag towel hangs on a clothesline, steaming in winter air
Looking west along the north sidewalk of Eglinton Ave E, toward Vacsmart.
A bus approaches a bicycle, buried almost completely in a snowdrift, except for its bell.
A hooded figure wearing balaclava and reflective ski goggles stands at a bus stop in Toronto
A narrow path leads between 1.5 m snowdrifts to a roadway.
A laneway full of snow at night, with a narrow footpath leading to a wooden gate
Two male Lightning connectors, one with a tip that broke off.
Four photos of Japanese New Year’s delicacies
Japanese baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani is pictured in an ad for bottled green tea, on which a handwritten speech balloon reads “Go Jays Go”.
Swatow restaurant menu item #19: duck noodle soup
Two Platinum Preppy 03 pens (black and violet) lie on a sheet of paper captioning them
A Toronto street sign reads “BICYCLE SIGNAL”; attached below it a sign reads “BICYLES EXCEPTED”.
A set of NASPA-branded professional Scrabble tiles, black lettering on yellow tiles.
John wearing an N-95 mask on the UP train at YYZ
Sun filters through the leaves of black locust trees next to the bright orange side of the St Lawrence Market’s north building
The inside front cover of a Canadian passport asks in the name of His Majesty the King that I pass freely.
Older son expresses glee at having balanced a wooden block precariously late in a game of the stacking block tabletop game, Misfits.
The sun shines through clouds over Toronto in a pattern evocative of a face
John poses on his bike wearing a helmet and LED headlamp, in front of a rainbow Pride mural at Church and Wellesley, the heart of the Village in downtown Toronto
A screen shot shows a winning game position with a newly created 2107 tile in a game of two thousand fortyish
Kristen with her sons Jamie and Liam
A triptych showing a holy basil plant, some freshly picked cuttings, and pad krapow gai.
A sign outside a CBC studio set reads “this is a closed set”.
The Chew family in front of an advance poll sign