(Some of the words that spelled victory for Africa’s first world Scrabble champ)
“It was a battle between one man and a whole continent.”
WELLINGTON JIGHERE
The cards — tiles? — appeared to be stacked against Wellington Jighere when he arrived in Perth, Australia, last week.
He was there for the Englishlanguage World Scrabble Championship, but he found himself behind even before his plane landed. According to the Agence FrancePresse (AFP), a visa issue delayed the Nigerian team’s departure from Lagos. Then, the 20-hour voyage left them just a day’s time to contend with the seven-hour time difference.
What’s more, while the 32-year-old has been an internationally ranked Scrabble player since 2007, he disappeared from world competition for several years after he “retired” in 2010 following disagreements with the Nigeria Scrabble Federation. He became active again in 2013, but going into this year’s championship, he had failed to break into the global top 10.
None of this seemed to matter on Sunday, when Jighere bested Englishman Lewis Mackay in the final and became the first Nigerian — and African — to win the world championship.
Mackay opened with “guiro,” a Latin American percussion instrument, for 16 points. Jighere followed with “aah,” for 17 points. While the lead was taken at turns by Mackay, Jighere picked up a healthy surplus of 63 points after their respective ninth moves.
At the end, the win was close. Jighere sealed the deal with “felty” — like the texture — for 36 points, ending with 449 to his opponent’s 432.
The significance of the moment wasn’t lost on the newly crowned king of alphabet tiles.
“It was a battle between one man and a whole continent,” Jighere wrote on his Facebook page following the victory. “I’ve not slept well in about a week. The fact that I was able to perform in spite of the sleeplessness still baffles me. It only goes to prove that God was deeply involved in this matter.”
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari personally called Jighere to “rejoice” over the performance of the team, which was ranked the competition’s best, the BBC reports.
Suleiman Gora, the head of the Nigeria Scrabble Federation, told AFP that he regarded Jighere’s triumph as “the climax.” Gora said he was barred from attending the competition because immigration officials “were not convinced that (he) would come back to Nigeria.”
Gora described Jighere as “the quiet type, humble and hardworking.” He had quit his job to dedicate four months to preparing for the tournament. A recent graduate of the University of Benin’s crop studies program, according to Scrabble TV Live, Jighere was completing the country’s National Youth Service Corps requirement.
The player, often seen sporting a white fedora or brown cowboy hat, got hooked after his brother introduced it to him as a teenager. Yet when Jighere first started playing competitively, Scrabble TV Live notes, he struggled with consistency.
“He had played in several major tournaments but seemed to lose steam towards the end,” the blog notes. “He would start off well then would start making mistakes.”
Not so during last week’s competition, where he played 31 matches over the course of four days. Jighere’s momentum proved unstoppable in the final, as he won the first four games in a best-of-seven series.
Among the words on his championship board are several that are likely unfamiliar to the average English speaker. There’s “kain,” defined by the Collins Dictionary as “payment in kind, usually farm produce paid as rent”; “mho,” the former term for “the derived SI unit of electrical conductance equal to 1 reciprocal ohm”; and “yex,” a belch or hiccup.