Bengaluru boy, 14, finishes second in World Youth Scrabble Championship

Affan Salman of Pakistan won the tournament.

Besides Suyash and Madhav, three other players from India’s 13-member squad comprising nine boys and four girls, also finished within the top 30 – Triambak Eashwar from Chennai (17th), Aarush Jotwani from Mumbai (20th) and Ahana Goyal from Delhi (27th).

In the 2024 edition, 136 players from 15 countries participated in the tournament held at Citrus Waskaduwa in Sri Lanka from September 6-8.

The WYSC is Scrabble’s youth World Cup organised annually for the world’s top junior Scrabble players by the World English-language Scrabble Players Association (WESPA).

Suyash Manchali, a Class X student at MES Kishore Kendra Public School, Bengaluru, started playing Scrabble when he was 7, the inspiration stemming from his mother Shubha Shivashankar, an avid Scrabble player/teacher and a freelance Japanese translator. The mother-son duo still plays Scrabble everyday, picking new words and honing strategies. Not surprisingly, Suyash could drop words like dwam, cleated, proxy, homings on the board that bagged him the second spot at WYSC. Of the 24 rounds, Suyash won 17 matches.

Suyash highly recommends Scrabble software like Quackle and Zyzzyva and online resources: Aerolith and Woogles.

Madhav Gopal Kamath, 13, a class IX student of New Delhi’s Sanskriti School, is India’s top-ranked youth player, and is currently ranked among the top five players overall in the national Scrabble rankings. He has consistently finished towards the top at the WYSC in recent years, and in April 2024, won the Goa Open, becoming the youngest player ever to win a major Scrabble tournament in India.

“India’s competitive youth Scrabble circuit has seen an upswing in recent years, and the vision of Scrabble Association of India (SAI) is to gain recognition for competitive Scrabble as a sport. India is also considering submitting a bid to host the WYSC in 2025,” said Rustom Deboo, Secretary, Scrabble Association of India.

Neeta Bhatia, the sole Indian representative at the 14-member World Youth Scrabble Committee, and the coach for the Indian squad at WYSC says that Scrabble is not merely a word game, it is also about strategy, analysis, mathematics. She recommends Collins Scrabble Word List (available online) as one of the best resources for any Scrabble player.

About Scrabble

In 1931, an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts invented a word game. Originally called Criss Cross, the word game with 225-squares was based on the crossword puzzle and anagram. It was redesigned, renamed as Scrabble, and marketed by James Brunot in 1948 and was first sold in Great Britain in 1954. Today, Scrabble is one of most popular board games with more than 165 million games sold in 120 countries around the world since 1948, the year the game was patented.

Scrabble is the official sport of Senegal. April 13 is World Scrabble Day.

Good to know

Scrabble Association of India (SAI): Website: www.indianscrabble.com. Email: indianscrabble@gmail.com; Phone: 9920598992. You can become a SAI member by applying online. Membership fee is Rs.500 per year for new members; ₹400 for annual membership renewals; life membership fee is ₹3,000.

Neeta Bhatia, Founder, Wordaholix, offers online Scrabble training sessions.

www.facebook.com/wordaholix. Email: wordaholix@gmail.com.

The Wordaholix Scrabble League (WSL), India’s only Team Scrabble Tournament will be held from September 27 to 29 at The Bark, Lonavala (Maharashtra).

The second edition of Asia Cup Youth Scrabble Championship (ACYSC) will be held in November in New Delhi.