Robert Watson (Scrabble player)

Last updated

Robert Watson was the American 1988 National Scrabble Championship champion. He subsequently retired from tournament Scrabble to pursue other interests, including medicine.

Watson, of Edina, Minnesota, began playing Scrabble after memorizing three and four-letter words to play Boggle and was skilled at bluffing. [1] He beat Joel Wapnick in the final of the 1988 US championship. [2]

Related Research Articles

<i>Scrabble</i> Board game with words

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.

Joel Wapnick is a Scrabble player from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, best known for winning the 1999 World Scrabble Championship (WSC).

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francophone Scrabble</span> Variation of Scrabble in French

Francophone Scrabble is Scrabble in the French language. The governing body, the Fédération internationale de Scrabble francophone, has more than 20,000 members. Just as in English, points are scored by playing valid words from the lettered tiles. In French there are 102 tiles - 100 lettered tiles and two blanks known as jokers. The official word list for Francophone Scrabble is L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble.

Joseph Edley is a professional Scrabble player and author, and the first player to win the National Scrabble Championship three times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joel Sherman</span> American Scrabble player (born 1962)

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.

Robert Felt (1953–2002) was a computer programmer, USCF-rated chess Expert, Tennessee Junior chess champion, and champion Scrabble player.

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.

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 (<i>Scrabble</i> player) New Zealand Scrabble champion (born 1967)

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.

The Spanish World Scrabble Championship is an international Scrabble tournament organised by the Federación Internacional de Scrabble en Español (FISE). The competition takes place each year in a different city in a Spanish-speaking country. The first championship was held in Madrid in Spain. The number of players has varied, from 32 players in 1997 to 120 in 2018.

The French World Scrabble Championships is an annual Scrabble tournament that takes place in a different French-speaking country every year. Created in 1972 by Hippolyte Wouters, it was the first of the three World Scrabble Championships to be created, with the English version being created in 1991 and the Spanish version being created in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NASPA Games</span> Scrabble tournament and club organization

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 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.

Wellington Jighere is a Nigerian Scrabble player. He won the World Scrabble Championship 2015, the first win for an African nation. He defeated Lewis MacKay in four straight wins.

Will Anderson is an American Scrabble player and Scrabble YouTuber. He was the North American national champion in 2017, winning 25 out of 31 games, finishing ahead of runner-up Mack Meller.

The Mattel World Scrabble Championship 2019 was a Scrabble tournament organised by Mattel and Mindsports Academy (MSA) to determine the world champion in English Scrabble held from 19 to 24 November 2019.

References

  1. Gonzalez, Tony (2008-06-20). "Champ reminisces". The Star Tribune.
  2. Paul McCarthy (2008), Letterati , ECW Press, ISBN   978-1-55022-828-1