Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns and are included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.
Mark Nyman is an English professional Scrabble player originally from London, England and now a resident in Cheshire. At the end of 2002, he was rated 205 and was top-rated in the ABSP ratings. As at 7 September 2015 he is rated 200. His 27 consecutive tournament game wins is an ABSP record. He is most widely known as the first British player to win the World Scrabble Championship, which he accomplished in 1993. He married in 2004 and has two children, Max and Kizzy.
The World Scrabble Championship (WSC) is played to determine the world champion in competitive English-language Scrabble. It was held in every odd year from 1991 to 2013; from 2013 onwards, it became an annual event.
Collins Scrabble Words is the word list used in English-language tournament Scrabble in most countries except the US, Thailand and Canada. The term SOWPODS is an anagram of the two abbreviations OSPD and OSW, these being the original two official dictionaries used in various parts of the world at the time. Although the two source dictionaries have now changed their respective titles, the term SOWPODS is still used by tournament players to refer to the combination of the two sources. There has not been any actual hard-copy list produced called SOWPODS, although the current Collins Scrabble Words, or CSW, is in effect the full SOWPODS list by a different name.
Stewart Holden is a competitive Scrabble player from the United Kingdom. Holden is originally from Oxford but has resided near Belfast, Northern Ireland since 2008. He represented England at the World Scrabble Championship 2003, where he finished in 62nd place, and represented Northern Ireland at the World Scrabble Championship 2011 where he finished in 28th place and achieved the highest game score of the tournament (694pts).
The Scrabble Players Championship is the largest Scrabble competition in North America. The event is currently held every year, and from 2004 through 2006 the finals were aired on ESPN and ESPN2. The 2023 event was held in Las Vegas from July 15–19, 2023, with Joshua Sokol emerging as champion.
Pakorn Nemitrmansuk is one of Thailand's top Scrabble players and the 2009 World Scrabble Champion. An architect and resident of Bangkok, Thailand, Nemitrmansuk has competed at World Scrabble Championship six times between 1999–2011 and was the runner-up in 2003 and 2005.
English-language Scrabble is the original version of the popular word-based board game invented in 1938 by US architect Alfred Mosher Butts, who based the game on English letter distribution in The New York Times. The Scrabble variant most popular in English is standard match play, where two players compete over a series of games. Duplicate Scrabble is not popular in English, and High score Scrabble is no longer practised.
Nigel Richards is a New Zealand-Malaysian Scrabble player who is widely regarded as the greatest tournament-Scrabble player of all time. Born and raised in New Zealand, Richards became World Champion in 2007, and repeated the feat in 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019. He also won the third World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association Championship (WESPAC) in 2019.
Ganesh Asirvatham is an English language teacher from Klang, Selangor. He is a Scrabble player who represents Malaysia in international competition. He was the World Scrabble Championship 2007 runner-up. Ganesh was also the former Guinness World Record holder for the most Scrabble opponents played simultaneously by one challenger. The record took place on 7 November 2007 at the Infiniti Mall in Andheri, Mumbai, India. Ganesh beat 21 out of 25 opponents during his record attempt.
The UK National Scrabble Championship (NSC) is a British national scrabble tournament, held annually since its inception in 1971. While it was formerly organised by Mattel, the copyright owner of Scrabble in the UK, since 2014 it has been organised by Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP). It is one of five major scrabble tournaments in the UK. The other four comprise the UK Open, the British Isles Elimination Scrabble Tournament (BEST), the British Matchplay Scrabble Championship (BMSC) and the UK Masters. The current UK champion is Paul Allan.
The UK OPEN Scrabble Tournament is a British Scrabble tournament that was first organised in 2008. It is one of five major flagship tournaments overseen by the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP).
The WESPA World Scrabble Championship 2015 was organised by WESPA, the World English-language Scrabble Players' Association, which commissioned ASPA, the Australian Scrabble Players Association, to hold a World Scrabble Championship invitational event in Perth, Western Australia from November 4 to 8. Mattel and Mind Sports International agreed to this.
Brett Smitheram is a British Scrabble Grand Master and one of the most successful players in the history of the game. Smitheram was 2022 UK National Scrabble Champion, defeating a high-calibre field in June that year. He won the 2016 World Scrabble Championship, and has been ranked in the World top 5, and as a UK Scrabble Grand Master for nearly 20 years. Originally from Camborne, Cornwall, he lives in London and works as Chief of Staff for high-growth tech startups.
The MSI World Scrabble Championship 2016 was a Scrabble tournament organised by Mattel and Mindsports International (MSI) to determine the world champion in English Scrabble. It was held from 31 August to 4 September 2016 in Lille, France.
Craig Beevers is an English professional Scrabble player and former World Scrabble Champion.
The MSI World Scrabble Championship 2017 was a Scrabble tournament organised by Mattel and Mindsports International (MSI) to determine the world champion in English Scrabble. It was held from 22 to 27 August in Nottinghamshire, England.
The Mattel World Scrabble Championship 2018 was a Scrabble tournament organised by Mattel and Mindsports Academy (MSA) to determine the world champion in English Scrabble held from 23 to 28 October 2018.
Moiz Ullah Baig is a Pakistani Scrabble player who won the World Youth Scrabble Championship 2013 and the World Junior Scrabble Championship 2018, becoming the first player ever to win both. He won the Pakistan Scrabble Championship in 2018 and is currently the number 1 player of the country. In December 2018, with a WESPA rating of 1921, he climbed up to the 71st place in the world rankings – his career highest.
Women represent a small minority of chess players at all ages and levels. Female chess players today generally compete in a mix of open tournaments and women's tournaments, the latter of which are most prominent at or near the top level of women's chess and at youth levels. Modern top-level women's tournaments help provide a means for some participants to be full-time professional chess players. The majority of these tournaments are organized by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and revolve around the World Championship cycle, which culminates in a match to decide the Women's World Chess Champion. Beyond those events, among the most prominent women's tournaments are women's and girls' national and continental championships.
