THE MONTH IN THE WORLD OF SCRABBLE: NOVEMBER
The month of November has been a special one in 2015 for competition Scrabble.
The start of the month saw a massive 372 Scrabble players converge on Perth, Western Australia to take part in the World Youth Scrabble Championship (WYSC) and the WESPA Championship: a festival of Scrabble occurred and was followed throughout the world, eventually seeing Singapore and Nigeria take out the Titles.
Nicholas Hong was victorious in WYSC, becoming the second Singaporean to become World Youth Champion (Toh Weibin being the first in 2007) and attracting national publicity in Singapore as a result. The full results are listed here.
The WESPA Championship was a hotly contested event and included three side events for players unable to take part in the main event. The honour of being the winner of this tournament belonged to Nigeria’s Wellington Jighere. This achievement was recognised at the highest levels in Nigeria, with phone calls from the Nigerian President and recognition at a major Nigerian sports ceremony later in November. You can see the results here.
International recognition of the achievements was not confined to these countries. Sponsors in Pakistan took to Facebook to congratulate the Pakistani youth players on their strong performance at WYSC and Australian media had profiles and interviews with local players as well.
With the conclusion of these events, we eagerly look forward to seeing a large turnout of Scrabble players playing at MSI's 3rd World Championships being held at the Grand Palais in Lille, France. The Scrabble section runs from August 27 to September 4. An exciting $100,000 prize pool has been announced and is sure to attract many interested players from across the globe all vying to win the coveted Titles...
It certainly was a major start to November, but there were many more events occurring around the world to keep the competitive Scrabble player interested.
In Ireland, the All Ireland Scrabble Championship took place in Wexford with Kevin McMahon taking out the title with an 11-3 win record.
In India, six teams from around India came together to take part in the Wordaholix Scrabble League, a 26 game tournament. The Suzerains (Sherwin Rodrigues, V. Ramchandran, Radhika Mahalingaiah, Saraswathi Ramm, Kala Ganesh, Viji Ramchandran and Krtin Juneja) were victorious in this event. Before the event, the captain of the Suzerains, Sherwin Rodrigues, was featured in an article in India.
Pakistan returned to action with the 4th Ranking Tournament on the 22nd: Wajid Iqbal taking out the top division from Waseem Khatri, fresh from his return from Perth.
In England, after coming 10th in the WESPA Championship, Austin Shin returned to action in the Winter Match Play, taking out that title 14-3.
Next month will see more keenly contested tournaments all over the world. You can check out a summary of these events with our December update in a month’s time.
Until then, we shall conclude with a quote from the winner of the WESPA Championship, Wellington Jighere. "I will continue to take part in national tournaments. I am the number one in Nigeria and I know that at the next tournament, I will be the man to beat."
According to the Nigerian Scrabble Federation's Facebook page, that next tournament is an invitational, to be held at Senegambia Beach Hotel on December 4