World Scrabble Championship 1991

Last updated

World Scrabble Championship 1991
27 September 1991 30 September 1991
WinnerPeter Morris (Scrabble)|Peter Morris
Number of players48
Location London
SponsorMattel

The World Scrabble Championship 1991 was the first World Scrabble Championship. The winner was Peter Morris, [1] a Canadian, representing the United States.

Plans for a World Scrabble Championship had formed as early as 1986/87. After Coleco bought Selchow and Righter, the company announced that they were interested in helping players to organize a "World-Class Open" in 1988. At the 1987 Nationals, John Williams announced that the first World Scrabble Championship would be held the following summer in New York. It would be 1991, however, before it became a reality.

The 48 players were separated into random groups of 6 and played round robins within their groups. The top 2 players from each group then played a knockout to produce two finalists who played a best-of-three finals.

Morris and Cappelletto split their first two games then met for a final game to decide it all. On his tenth move, Cappelletto made a rare blunder by playing the phony SMAIL instead of CLAIMS. The move may have cost him the championship. As it was, Morris pulled out a complicated end game for a 4-point win and the first world title.

Complete Results

PositionNameCountryPrize (USD) [1]
1Morris, PeterUnited States10,000
2Cappelletto, BrianUnited States5,000
3Boys, DavidCanada2,500
4Edley, JoeUnited States1,000
5Tiekert, RonUnited States500
6Cansfield, JoyceUnited Kingdom
7Simonis, SandieUnited Kingdom
8Benjamin, LarrySouth Africa
9Fisher, StephenCanada
10Southwell, CharlieUnited States
11Finley, PeterEngland
12Cohen, EvanIsrael
13Carroll, CharlieUnited States
14Elbourne, PeterMalta
15Warusawitharana, MissakaSri Lanka
16Nderitu, Patrick GitongaKenya
17Grant, JeffNew Zealand
18Sapong, KwakuGhana
19Holgate, JohnAustralia
20Fisher, AndrewUnited Kingdom
21Spate, CliveUnited Kingdom
22Nyman, MarkEngland
23Violett, BobUnited Kingdom
24Schonbrun, LesterUnited States
25Sigley, MichaelNew Zealand
26Kane, AlistairAustralia
27Wapnick, JoelCanada
28Pratesi, DianeUnited Kingdom
29Filio, RolandPhilippines
30Donkoh, GeorgeGhana
31Brown, ChristineÉire
32Harridge, BarryAustralia
33Appleby, PhilEngland
34Butler, LynneNew Zealand
35Lawrie, GlenysAustralia
36Felt, RobertUnited States
37Filio, CandidoPhilippines
38Rowe, DennisEuropean Community
39Saldanha, NorbertUnited Arab Emirates
40Saldanha, AllanUnited Kingdom
41Sim, TonySingapore
42Berger, AverilSouth Africa
43Thobani, ShafiqueKenya
44Ismal, MuhammedMalaysia
45Cleary, Paul StephenAustralia
46Thompson, MartinUnited Kingdom
47Levine, EliSouth Africa
48Nakai, KenJapan

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.

<i>Scrabble</i> (game show) US television series

Scrabble is an American television game show based upon the Scrabble board game. Muriel Green of Exposure Unlimited developed the idea for a television game show based upon the board game concept. During 1983, Green convinced Selchow and Righter, who at that time owned the Scrabble board game, to license Exposure Unlimited to produce the game show. Exposure Unlimited co-produced the show with Reg Grundy Productions, and licensed the show to NBC. Scrabble aired on NBC from July 2, 1984, to March 23, 1990, and again from January 18 to June 11, 1993. Chuck Woolery hosted the program. Jay Stewart was the announcer for the first year. Charlie Tuna replaced him in the summer of 1985 and remained through the original run and the entirety of the 1993 revival.

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 World Scrabble Championship 1997 was the fourth World Scrabble Championship. The winner was Joel Sherman of the United States.

The World Scrabble Championship 2001 was the sixth World Scrabble Championship. The winner was Brian Cappelletto of the United States.

The World Scrabble Championship 2003 was held in the Corus Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The winner was Panupol Sujjayakorn of Thailand.

The World Scrabble Championship 1999 was the fifth World Scrabble Championship and was held at the Carlton Crest Hotel, Melbourne, Australia.

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">John Morris (curler)</span> Canadian curler and Olympic gold medallist

John C. Morris is a Canadian curler, and two-time Olympic gold medallist from Canmore, Alberta. Morris played third for the Kevin Martin team until April 24, 2013. Morris, author of the book Fit to Curl, is the son of Maureen and Earle Morris, inventor of the "Stabilizer" curling broom. Morris grew up in Gloucester, Ontario and at the age of five began curling at the Navy Curling Club.

The 1991 Minnesota Twins of Major League Baseball (MLB) won the World Series, the second time the Twins had won the World Series since moving to Minnesota in 1961. During the 1991 regular season the Twins had an MLB-leading 15-game win streak, which remains a club record. On June 17, 1991, the streak came to an end at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles but not before the Twins moved from fifth place to first, a lead they would not relinquish until winning baseball's championship. The Twins' winning streak of 1991 falls just seven games short of the all-time American League (AL) record of 22 consecutive regular season wins set by the Cleveland Indians in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francophone Scrabble</span>

Francophone Scrabble, or French-language Scrabble, is played by many thousands of amateurs throughout the world and 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Cappelletto</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duplicate Scrabble</span>

Duplicate Scrabble is a variant of the board game Scrabble where all the players are faced with the same board and letters at the same time and must play the highest scoring word they can find. Although duplicate is rarely played at competition level in English, it is the most popular form of the game in French and is also played in other languages, such as Romanian and Dutch. The largest French Scrabble festivals can attract over 2000 people and some individual tournaments can count over 1000 participants per game. Although not popular for competitions in English, the computer game Scrabble 2005 contains a duplicate version allowing up to 16 players to play on the same board at once. It was also used on the UK TV game show TV Scrabble as one of the rounds.

The Canadian National Scrabble Championship (CNSC) is the Canadian national Scrabble competition in the English language, open by invitation and special qualification only to the top rank of Canadian players. All CNSC events have been held in Toronto.

Nigel Richards (<i>Scrabble</i> player) International Scrabble champion

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 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.

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 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.

Peter Morris is an American baseball researcher and author. A lifelong love of baseball led him to membership in the Society for American Baseball Research, where he became an active member of the Biographical Committee, researching the lives of early major league baseball players.

References