Jews dominate Scrabble world

A Jewish Canadian has won the World Scrabble Competition for 2005 in London. With the victory, Adam Logan, who was born in Kingston, Ontario, and grew up in Ottawa, earned $15,000 and became one of the disproportionately high number of Jewish Scrabble players who excel at this game of forming everyday and obscure words that use letters in unusual combinations and, of course, the holy grail – two blank tiles.

Four of the eight world champions so far have been Jewish – Logan, Wapnick, the United Kingdom’s Mark Nyman and United States’ Joel Sherman. Three of the seven players on the 2005 Canadian team were Jewish: Logan, Wapnick and Toronto’s Zev Kaufman. Out of 105 players from 41 countries (including two from Israel) who competed in London, about 10 percent were Jewish.

Logan believes that “whatever concentrates Jews in mathematics, computer programming, law and other intellectual professions presumably has the same effect for Scrabble.”