The 2016 World Scrabble Championship came to an end in Lille, France over the weekend with Nigeria’s Wellington Jighere unable to defend his world title.
Instead, it was a British player, Brett Smitheram who defeated fellow Briton Mark Nyman in three straight in the final to be crowned Scrabble World Champion.
The 37-year-old’s highest scoring word was BRACONID, meaning a parasitic wasp, which earned him 176 points, according to BBC report.
It was the former UK champion’s first victory at the tournament. His best previous result was reaching the quarter finals in 2014.
Smitheram is from Chingford in east London, while Nyman, 49, is from Knutsford in Cheshire.
Nigeria’s not too impressive performance at this year’s tourney was no surprise because Nigeria’s contingent to the tourney were almost not attending the championship due to visa hitches.
In fact, the team got to the venue of the championship hours before hostilities began.
Jighere had defeated Englishman Lewis MacKay 4-0 in the final in 2015 in Australia to become the first African to win the English-language World Scrabble Championship.
In 2008, Ivorian Elisee Poka won the French-language Scrabble World Championship and in 2015, Schelick Ilagou Rekawe from Gabon reached the final of that competition. He lost to New Zealander Nigel Richards, who does not speak French.
The World Scrabble Championship is the biggest competition in scrabble and was turned into an annual contest in 2013.
The next World Scrabble Championship will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2017.
