having to think about it any further. But I was now seeing words and having to work out whether they would be allowed or not. I was comfortable in front of the lights and cameras. Under such circumstances, with the pressure on, I felt in control and in the zone. This was important to me, as it’s not something you can really learn. I did well in the main series, winning my eight games before coming back for the finals. After putting a lot of pressure on myself I ultimately won the series and felt extremely relieved. I also left a load of my shirts and goodies in the studio. Oops. It was a great experience and I feel proud to be associated with Countdown, a TV show with a long and illustrious history, one of the few things that everyone in the country is familar with. So I returned to Scrabble for 2008, amid lots of congratulations and handshakes. I felt like I was really gaining momentum and would soon be able to compete on level terms with anyone. My studying kicked in and I was on track to qualify for the World Championships held the following year. I had managed to scrape through to the National Scrabble Championship final, which was a best-of-five held in London and relayed to an audience in another room – a common setup in Scrabble.
My opponent was Allan Simmons, an Englishman living in the Scottish Borders. He’d been playing in competitions and writing about Scrabble longer than I’d been breathing. He was a familar face and we’d played a number of times before. After the odd bit of radio and some newspaper interviews, we were introduced to a few dozen spectators by TV presenter John Craven. The audience would be watching through a combination of close-circuit television, on-stage commentatry, and a giant Scrabble board covered in velcro.
After a couple of games the match was tied 1–1, with the first to three being the winner. The pivotal point came when Allan laid down ?NDIRON for over seventy points. I hadn’t heard what he’d declared the blank as, so I asked for clarification. ANDIRON and ENDIRON are both words meaning the same thing: a metal support for logs in a fireplace. I was holding a Z and the blank was one square below a triple letter score. He announced ‘A’ and I immediately threw down a cheap comeback with the Z making ZA onto the A for over sixty points. But I’d completely failed to notice that Allan had played an invalid word NAIAS* in the process of laying down his big move. It dawned on me soon after and I couldn’t believe what I’d done.
I could have challenged his play off the board, although whatever I did he still would have got a similar score next turn because he had other options. But I would also have had the chance to counter with a big score of my own, depending on what tiles I’d have picked out. I went on to lose that game and the final 3–1. I had played moderately well, but a few holes in my word knowledge and that silly mistake had hindered my chances. I was disappointed and frustrated, but felt my chance would come again. Knowing I would be playing in the World Championships in Malaysia the following year helped keep me focused and positive. I resolved to do better, but the next year I got off to a terrible start in the National semi-finals. Played across fourteen rounds, two players out of sixty made it through to the final. I had lost two of my first three games and I had a mountain to climb. Things started to flow for me, and with one round to go, my fate was in my own hands. If I won I was in the final again.
I played another up-and-coming relative newcomer in Mikki Nicholson. She needed to beat me by at least 100 points to have a chance of qualifying. Mikki gambled a couple of times early on with dodgy words and lost. In a bit of an anticlimax I comfortably ran out a winner and found myself in the National final again.
This time I faced David Webb from Hertfordshire. He was not far from being a hometown favourite, living a commutable distance from London. It seemed to generate a bit more publicity and I found myself doing more interviews, in particular one surreal experience with a London radio station. I had been brought down earlier so I could take part in a live game played over the radio. There’s nothing like playing a visual game on audial medium right? After a good few minutes of heated debate delivered in fluent cockney between a radio presenter and assorted eaterie staff next door, it was decided the contest should relocate into the back of the radio van. A few moves spanned a couple of hours and I eventually returned to my hotel to laze around and eat sausage rolls.
After a reasonable night’s sleep in what loosely resembled a tenth floor caravan in the heart of London, I got on with the main event. David had been playing brilliantly all year and had risen to the top of British rankings. I anticipated a tough final. Fortunately for me, the tiles fell my way and I held the edge in the first game. I worried about getting caught up by a big Z-play from David, but ultimately I only had to avoid doing something stupid to go up 1–0. In the end, David not only couldn’t get a big Z play, he couldn’t play Z anywhere at all.
The next game followed and went comfortably in my favour whilst David struggled with poor racks. We had a break for lunch and did our bit of socializing and chatting on-stage. I got to trot out some of those tedious lines they must teach to sports stars in media training. Still, it really was anyone’s game, as there are few absolutes in Scrabble. The third game followed a similar path to the second, and I triumphed 3–0. It was a harsh scoreline, as David couldn’t really have done much more. It just went my way. I won £1,500, and after a bout of playing Word Soup on pub quiz machines with a friend and having no idea where the hell I was going, I got my train home and found a couple of rather nice camera lenses to spend my money on.
A matter of weeks later and the World Scrabble Championships (WSC) were upon me. It was held in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, just over the border from Singapore. I felt proud to be going over representing England as National Champion. This was the first time I’d ever left Great Britain and I’d never flown before. The twelve-hour flight over to Singapore wasn’t too bad and gave me a chance to watch some films, but crossing the border was tiring. Two sets of customs and an insane amount of traffic. Motorbikes and scooters essentially filled every available space for miles in the lane next to me. As well as the Worlds, I had been invited to another tournament. The Causeway Challenge had been growing exponentially year on year, organized by the tireless Michael Tang. He had helped to organize the WSC in the same hotel as the Causeway, so the players had the two biggest international events almost back to back. Around forty different nations were involved, hundreds of different players, thousands of Scrabble games, and millions of points scored. The hotel where it all took place was part of a larger self-contained complex, with armed personnel outside the building guarding the only way in through a small car park. I had a wander about inside and out, but there wasn’t a great deal to do. I’d managed to locate something which played a crucial role in my sustenance over the eleven days: a toaster, an orange plastic model aspiring to be a kitsch Bakelite number. I got by on a plateful of mini croissants at breakfast with toast, Maltesers and crisps during the day. I’m an incredibly fussy eater, and Malaysia being a mainly Muslim country, it cut down my options further, otherwise I’m sure there’d have been plenty of pork pies and sausage rolls to keep me going.
Scrabble or Scrabblers were pretty much everywhere you looked. Outside there were frequent thunder storms. I had a wander now and again just to try 90 per cent humidity. There were a few colourful birds and the odd butterfly to try and take photos of, but it was a pretty boring place once the novelty wore off, albeit incredibly cheap if you got away from the complex. I remember getting in two games of ten pin bowling for less than a pound, whilst the technology on the alley threw me back to the days of playing on the ZX Sinclair Spectrum.
After some glamorous ceremonies and free goodies (I’ve still got the shirt), 108 players from forty-one countries got shaking tile bags and the World Championships were under way. Twenty-four rounds were played over three days, then the top two went through to a best-of-five final. My goal was to try and finish in the top ten. The prizes started at tenth, which was of course a factor, but it was also an achievement to finish that high. I started off with a scrappy win before being drawn against two UK players … 8,000 miles to play Allan Simmons again and Phil Robertshaw from north west England! I narrowly lost both games, despite scoring 460 and 452.
I beat a player from Zambia to go in at the break 2–2. A couple of horrible games followed before I edged one back and drew great tiles in the final game of the day to finish on an even four wins and four losses, pretty much middle of the pack in fifty-fourth