Joshua Sokol | |
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Born | Joshua Sokol-Rubenstein 1993or1994(age 29–30) Montreal, Canada |
Other names | axcertypo |
Occupations |
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Years active | 2013–present |
Joshua Sokol-Rubenstein (born 1993or1994) is a Canadian competitive Scrabble player and influencer. He won the 2023 Scrabble Players Championship.
Sokol, who is Jewish, has said Scrabble was his parents' "favourite board game" and began memorizing obscure words for the game as a child. [1] [2] He joined the Montreal Scrabble Club at age 10 and soon began seriously competing. [1] He has played at the Scrabble Players Championship (formerly North American Scrabble Championship) since 2013. [3] He excelled at the Scrabble Players Championship in Las Vegas in 2023, with a 23–5 record going into the finals (four games ahead of anyone else), where he then won 3–2. [3] He was the second Montrealer in a row to win the tournament after Michael Fagen the previous year. [2]
Sokol has described himself as a "Scrabble influencer". [3] [4] He started livestreaming on Twitch in 2020 and has uploaded hundreds of YouTube videos under the username axcertypo. [1] [5] He has commentated for Scrabble tournament livestreams. [6] [7]
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.
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.
The World Scrabble Championship 2001 was the sixth World Scrabble Championship. The winner was Brian Cappelletto of the United States.
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.
Word Freak is a non-fiction narrative by Stefan Fatsis published in 2001 (ISBN 0-618-01584-1).
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary or OSPD is a dictionary developed for use in the game Scrabble, by speakers of American and Canadian English.
Joel Sherman, nicknamed GI Joel, is an American professional English-language Scrabble player and former world champion. He is featured in Stefan Fatsis's book Word Freak, in Eric Chaikin's film Word Wars, and in Scott Petersen's film Scrabylon. He is also mentioned in Collins Gem's reference book.
Brian Cappelletto is a Scrabble player who represents the United States in international competition. He was the runner-up at the inaugural World Scrabble Championship in 1991 and won the event in 2001. He also won the American National Scrabble Championship in 1998, and was the runner-up in 2008 and 2010.
Stefan Fatsis is an American author and journalist. He regularly appears as a guest on National Public Radio's All Things Considered daily radio news program and as a panelist on Slate's sports podcast Hang Up and Listen. He is a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
The first World Youth Scrabble Championships were held in Wollongong, Australia 2006. Competitors from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, England, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and United States have competed in the annual tournament so far. WYSC is open to anyone under the age of 18 on 1 January of the year of each tournament. The tournament used to be held at the start of December but was brought forward to August for 2014. So far the WYSC tournament has been held in Malaysia five times, Australia twice, Dubai twice and the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom once each.
Word Wars is a 2004 documentary film directed by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo about competitive Scrabble playing. Its full title is: Word Wars - Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit. The film was an official selection at the 2004 Sundance film festival, had a 25-city theatrical run, was included as part of the Discovery Times Channel's "Screening Room" series, and was nominated for numerous awards including a 2004 Documentary Emmy for "Best Artistic or Cultural Programming" and an International Documentary Association (IDA) Award. The film is distributed by 7th Art Releasing.
David Lawrence Gibson was an American professional Scrabble player and mathematics professor. Ranked the top player in North America and widely regarded as one of the greatest Scrabble players, Gibson won the North American Scrabble Championship twice.
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.
David Eldar is an Australian Scrabble player and pro-amateur poker player who specializes in Omaha hold 'em. He is the World Scrabble Champion of 2017, sweeping Harshan Lamabadusuriya 3–0 in the final, and 2023, again beating Lamabadusuriya by a score of 4–3.
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.
NASPA Games, formerly known as North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), is a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 to administer competitive Scrabble tournaments and clubs in North America. It officially took over these activities from the National Scrabble Association (NSA) on July 1, 2009. As of July 31, 2021, the organization is no longer associated with the North American owner of the SCRABBLE® trademarks, Hasbro, Inc.
The World Scrabble Championship 2011 was held in the Hilton Hotel, Warsaw, Poland, from 12 October to 16 October 2011. The format was a 34-round preliminary tournament and a best-of-five final. The top two players after the preliminary tournament, Nigel Richards and Andrew Fisher, played a best-of-five final for the top prize and the title of World Scrabble Champion 2011. There were 114 places allocated to competitors from around the world, with 106 players eventually competing.
The World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association (WESPA) is the overarching global body for English-language national Scrabble associations and similar entities.
Will Anderson is known as a tournament Scrabble player and Scrabble content creator on YouTube. He is the North American national champion in 2017, winning 25 out of 31 games, finishing ahead of runner-up Mack Meller.
The 2023 WESPA Championship (WESPAC) was a Scrabble tournament organized by NASPA Games as part of the NASPA Double Down in Las Vegas - at the Westgate Las Vegas Resorts & Casino in Las Vegas, NV.