Scrabble: $30,000 at stake. Photograph: Martin Argles
DR OWL CARL EBBS MANIC HIP HOPS. It may look like nonsense and sound like nonsense but, as aficionados will have already realised, it's nonsense that's worth 49 points. It's also an anagram of "World Scrabble Championships", which start in London next week.
For four days, contestants will play out a war of words over 24 rounds for a place in the final and the chance of a share of $30,000 (£17,300) in prize money in the biannual competition. There's increasing excitement about whether the 21-year-old Thai, Panupol Sujjayakorn (43 points, by the way), will be able to successfully defend his title. For a taste of the tension, check out this report from the US national championships in August.
According to the organisers, Scrabble was invented in the 1930s by an architect, Alfred Butts, who called it Lexico. About a decade later the rights were bought by a lawyer, James Brunot, and its popularity was assured after an executive of the US department store, Macy's, was seduced by its charms.
The board game arrived in the UK in the mid-1950s and is now popular enough for the Association of British Scrabble Players to declare a national Scrabble week.
Of course, no good game of Scrabble is complete without a pantomime-style argument along the lines of "that's not a word", "oh, yes it is" etc, though these days there is help at hand to sort out the conflicts. At least people's names are off limits.
For anyone thinking of popping along to next week's competition, there's plenty of help online for improving your chances of winning and a healthy debate about highest scores. But anyway, enough of that. I'm off to play sudoku.
