Word Addict: secrets of a world SCRABBLE champion. Craig Beevers

which mildly amused me as it is a nickname my sister has given me. Apparently I laugh like one, as well as being entertained by the downfall of others. I’ll leave others to judge. Anyway the play gave me the floater I needed as I sat there with NORSTUV. After a bit of double checking I put down V(E)NTROUS. I immediately drew a blank, but a load of vowels to go with it. I got another low scoring bonus down though GAIE(T)IES, whilst Lipe kept scoring with thirties. Blank number two came out and this time I had more options.

      Holding DEIIOR? I could score seventy-seven by playing a word starting from a T on the board. But it meant creating a massive hotspot. I didn’t like any of my options, but I eventually settled for DIORITE and held my breath to see if I got hit by a big reply. Sure enough X(E)NIC went down, and despite starting with three consecutive bonuses I was only up by thirty-seven. I picked out two Us but had some scoring potential. A few more twenties and thirties followed for each of us before Chris hit me with DIRECTE(R) and my lead cut to just six points.

      I spent a long time on the next turn knowing how crucial it was. I held the ugly EEGLLLT. It’s one of those racks where you’re desperate to play something tight but you can’t really score either. I wanted to shut down the board but it wasn’t possible to do it right away. I went for GLEET in the top right corner. It looked like an aggressive move but it turned tiles over, scored, and next move I knew I would be able to shut most of the board down. Sure enough, next turn I played VI(L)LA through the L I’d provided, killing an -S bonus lane which was always a big worry. I felt like a heavy favourite. Then I picked the Q.

      I scoured the board looking for options whilst I waited for Lipe to play. He was only thirty-six behind, but I might have had to change the Q and waste a turn, or worse get stuck with it at the end. With fifteen tiles in the bag, I searched hard for ways of playing it off one, two, if not three moves ahead. Then I saw the T sitting next to the bottom centre triple word score. I could play (T)ALAQ there for forty-two!

      I hoped desperately that Chris would go elsewhere. the T was a good scoring spot, so if he hit a good score there and took out my Q play I was in big trouble. I had no decent alternative. There were no Is or Us to come and none I could use on the board. Finally LORN went down and I got my forty-two points and shedded the Q. I had a buffer now, and only an unlikely bonus or a big mistake could take the title away from me.

      VENTROUS adjective, adventurous

      GAIETIES noun, the state or condition of being merry, bright or lively

      DIORITE noun, a dark coarse-grained igneous plutonic rock

      XENIC adjective, denoting the presence of bacteria

      GLEET verb, to discharge pus or mucus from the urethra

      TALAQ noun, a form of divorce under Islamic law

      I looked for highly improbable nine- and ten-letter words, very awkward eight-letter words. I couldn’t see anything and decided just to score and empty the bag. Now I just wanted Lipe to play something boring, not try a ridiculous bonus word that I’d have to wait a few seconds to challenge and wait for a big red cross to come up. He played DENSE. I played BARFS, making (HYENA)S. He then went out with ET. He had 414. It was 438 for me. I was World Scrabble Champion 2014.

       Scrabble™ Terminology

      Before we get into the meaty stuff, there are some terms to explain. Firstly, there’s the notation for describing where moves are placed on the board uses a grid reference. On the board that follows the game started with DOG, placed at H7a. That means row H, column 7. The lowercase ‘a’ means the word is played across the board (horizontally), as opposed to down (vertically), which would be represented by a lowercase ‘d’. Underneath DOG is HONOUR, which is described as a parallel play because it runs parallel to the word DOG, making DO, ON, and GO. HONOUR is played at I6a.

      If we wanted to play the word STRAW from I12d, i.e. pluralizing HONOUR to make HONOURS, that would be described as a hook. The word HONOUR can also be said to have been hooked or to have taken an S hook. Occasionally the terms front hook or back hook are used. The S in HONOURS is a back hook because it adds to the back. A front hook would be extending GO using an E to form EGO.

       Premium Square Abbreviations

DL – Double Letter Score	TL – Triple Letter Score
DW – Double Word Score	TW – Triple Word Score

      Also note that there are a few lettering notations with words. A bracketed letter or letters mean those that are already on the board. So if we wanted to extend HONOUR to HONOURED it would be written as (HONOUR)ED. Playing DREW through the R in HONOUR would be D(R)EW. Blank letters are represented as question marks in text, and when played as a letter they are printed in grey, for example the word ST?RTED with the blank as an A.

      Tile tracking is commonly used in tournaments and often automated in computer games. If you were tile tracking by hand. you would start a game with a sheet of paper with a list of 100 tiles in a Scrabble set. As each tile is played on the board you cross it off the 100. The letters that aren’t crossed off are often referred to as the unplayed tiles. There are also the tiles on your rack to consider. Taking these off as well leaves what are called the unseen tiles. Computer versions of Scrabble will typically display the unseen tiles.

      Rack management is an umbrella term to cover the skills of an advanced player when they balance their tiles. This includes playing off duplicates, excess vowels, or consonants, and otherwise breaking up awkward combinations. So a player with good rack management will be more likely to preserve a playable or friendly set of tiles for the next turn.

      Pre-endgame is considered to be the period when there are one to seven tiles in the bag. Endgame is when there are no tiles in the bag. Late game