Lakshan casts scrabble spell
Sri Lanka’s top prodigy of the word game, Lakshan Wanniarachchi won the Sri Lanka Open Scrabble Championship for the tenth consecutive year at the Women’s International Club in Colombo last Sunday. The championship was organized by the Sri Lanka Scrabble League (SLSL) as Wanniarachchi consistently remained as Sri Lanka’s top rated scrabble player for over a decade.
This year the format of the tournament was changed and it consisted 17 games which were played over two days replacing the existing system where in a day only eight games were held. This year at the 23rd edition of the Open competition, 40 participants competed for the Sri Lankan Scrabble title. At the end of 15 games, the top two players were chosen for a best-ofthree final, while the rest of the players played two additional games.
Eventually at the conclusion of 15 respective games, Wanniarachchi and Nimalan Premkumar who was placed fifth at the World Youth Scrabble Championship in 2011, finished on top of the table with 13 and 11 wins respectively. Both were drawn to compete in the final after their impres- sive run in the first round. Sri Lanka’s sole representative at the World Scrabble Championship 2011, Wanniarachchi used his vast experience and superior knowledge to win the first two games by slim margins and claim the championship title without much hassle. Wimal Fernando finished third after winning 12 games. Kevin Ketagoda recorded the highest game score while Heshan Abeygunawardane recorded the highest word score at the event. - NA
The winners of the championship were as follows.
Winner: Lakshan Wanniarachchi (15 – 2) 1775; 1st Runner-Up: Nimalan Premkumar (11 – 6) 763; 2nd Runner-Up: Wimal Fernando (12 – 5) 377; 4th Place: Shaila Amalean (11 – 6) 820; 5th Place: Indunil Amarasinghe (11 – 6) 531; 6th Place: Ransimala Weerasuriya (11 – 6) 414; 7th Place: Shirley De Silva (10 – 7) 760; 8th Place: Yeshan Jayasuriya (10 – 7) 561; 9th Place: Roshana Ahmed (10 – 7) 213; 10th Place: Migara Jayasinghe (10 – 7) 25.