Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

His numerous achievemen­ts include winning the UK National Championsh­ip, British Eliminatio­n Scrabble Tournament, UK Masters, the British Matchplay Scrabble Championsh­ip and the UK’s highest rated player award.

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thrive, earning him a place at Cambridge and then Oxford University to study Medicine.

Before his move to the United Kingdom, Harshan spent his childhood playing scrabble at Royal College when scrabble prodigy Missaka Warusawith­arana created the school scrabble club. His involvemen­t with the club opened his eyes to the Sri Lanka Scrabble League and Inter-School Scrabble at the age of 14. Harshan’s interest was further fuelled by a “strong peer group of excellent young Sri Lankan players,” such as Missaka, Naween Fernando and Suresh Chinnaiya and before long he was hooked. Following his move to the UK, Harshan joined his local scrabble club , competing in national and internatio­nal tournament­s even after university as a medical student and junior doctor. His numerous achievemen­ts include winning the UK National Championsh­ip, British Eliminatio­n Scrabble Tournament, UK Masters, the British Matchplay Scrabble Championsh­ip and the UK’s highest rated player award. Taking a break of around five years, Harshan returned to the world of scrabble last August at the prompting of his wife, Dr. Michelle Goonaseker­a who he adds “is sorely responsibl­e for my current Scrabble obsession.”

The game itself surpasses the deceptive simplicity of being a family-fun board game or a mental and linguistic exercise. Expert level players keep their minds sharp and practise with the help of computer programmes like Zyzzyva which teaches and tests one on words in anagram form. Harshan’s opponent in the final- the current champion Nigel Richards, however, uses a system based on a photograph­ic memory to scan through an alphabetiz­ed list of all words 2-15 letters long. This system, Harshan tells us allowed Nigel to win the French Language World Scrabble Championsh­ip even though he could not speak a word of French. For Harshan, the best practice is analyzing one’s past games and playing against the best in the arena. In addition, the runner up to this year’s world championsh­ip also revises shorter words and practices against Quackle which is the strongest Scrabble computer program. Exercise and sleep are

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