Word up! Scots Scrabblers hunt for glory
IT’S a game where vocabulary is king and the winner is someone who can tell a quonk from a tomial. Wordsmiths from across the UK are squaring off over the tiles this weekend as the National Scrabble Championships gets under way in Milton Keynes.
The world-building game, loved by millions around the globe, has a fiercely-competitive scene and top players vie each year to be crowned national champion. Among those in the running to take the title this year are two Scots keen to test their knowledge of the more obscure corners of the English language against similarly wordy foes.
Stuart Harkness, a 29-year-old from Tweedbank in the Borders, first got into Scrabble as a student. Despite being a maths teacher in his day job, he hopes to prove his expertise lies with words and says he loves the feeling of stealing a game with an obscure word.
“I love competition. I love learning new things, memorising facts, and pushing myself in everything I do. My first tournament was almost 10 years ago, and I still get the same buzz when I draw my tiles today. The Scottish Scrabble community is very close-knit and friendly, but there is no love lost when the timer starts. UK-wide tour- naments like this one are something special. There are over 50 players taking part from all over the country in one single division, some of whom you may have never played before. There are also two ex-world champions in the field, and the opportunity to claim a big scalp is exciting.”
Training for the tournament sees top players playing up to 10 games a night online, but Harkness says he’s not had enough time this year to put in as many hours at the board as he would have liked. However, he is hoping to give a good account of himself. “Realistically I’d be happy to win half my games, such is the standard of the players, with a couple of sweet moves thrown in.” The British Scrabble scene is highly competitive and the UK Championships which take place in Milton Keynes this weekend will see 50 of the best players taking part
Chris Cummins, 33, from Edinburgh, will also be hoping to post a respectable word score. The linguistics teacher, who works at the University of Edinburgh, has been playing Scrabble competitively for 15 years.
“I’ve always enjoyed word games and puzzles, and particularly enjoy the fact that Scrabble has simple rules but it’s creative and each game is different. There’s enough of an element of luck to make it unpredictable, but not so much that it takes out the skill and although you’re playing against an opponent, really you’re each playing against the board with the letters you draw.
“The boards in a tournament like this look very strange to the casual observer, as they’re covered in words that are commonplace to experienced Scrabblers because they come up a lot in the game, but are pretty much unheard of in real life. The top players also prepare a lot. I’m in the mid-range of rankings, so I’ll be hoping for a respectable mid-table finish. That said, playing strong players is a particular challenge, because it’s easy to get disconcerted when they play words that you’ve never seen before.”
The last Scot to win the championship was Paul Allan, 43, from Aberdeen, in 2013. In the deciding match he played “bandura”, a type of Ukrainian lute, which scored him 86 points and an unassailable lead.
For the record, a quonk is a noise picked up by a microphone, while a tomial is the cutting part of a bird’s beak.