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.
The Association of British Scrabble Players oversees competitive Scrabble in the UK. It was formed in 1987 by agreement with J W Spear & Sons, the game's trademark owner, who were subsequently bought out by Mattel in 1993. It currently has around 600 members.
Allan Simmons is a British scrabble expert who was one of the founder members of the Association of British Scrabble Players and succeeded Peter Finley as its chairman. He was the first chairman of the World English-language Scrabble Players Association. He was also the 2008 UK National Scrabble Champion.
Darryl Francis is a well-known author of books on Scrabble.
Helen Gipson is a Scrabble player. On 4 December 2005 her ABSP rating peaked at third in Britain, making her the highest rated woman, and she is consistently rated as the top female player in the world. In January 2009 she won the UK Open beating a strong field including the world champion Nigel Richards.
Clive Spate is a British game show contestant. He was the winner of the eighth series of Countdown and has won many other TV quizzes, including the 2003 series Grand Slam, a contest between previous quiz show champions which also featured Olav Bjortomt, Mark Labbett, Graham Nash and David Edwards, among others.
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.
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 UK National Scrabble Championship (NSC), a British national scrabble tournament, held annually since its inception in 1971. While it was formerly organised by Mattel, the copyright owners of Scrabble in the UK, since 2014 it is organised by Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP). It is one of five major scrabble tournaments in the UK. The other four comprise of 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 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 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.
Michael McKenna is an Australian Scrabble player and world record holder who won the 2012 World Youth Scrabble Championships. He attends and is employed by the Australian National University.
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.
