Winner smashes record at Scrabble Championships

13:04 19 October 2011

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Nigel Richards from New Zealand has been crowned World Scrabble Champion 2011, setting a new world record.

In the fiercest competition to date Nigel Richards fought off a record 116 competitors from 44 countries to take the championship title.

It was the Polish capital Warsaw that hosted the 20th anniversary of the World Scrabble Championships this weekend, which set a record itself for attracting the highest number of countries and entrants.

After numerous rounds, knock outs and with tension running high, Nigel Richards from New Zealand and Andrew Fisher from Australia battled it out to decide who would be the 2011 champion.

Winner Nigel was hotly tipped to win and entered the competition as a previous champion in 2007 and runner up in 2009.

By winning, Nigel set a new world record by being the only person ever to take home two world championship titles.

Coming in second place, Andrew proved to be a worthy opponent but was unable to match NigelÂ’s winning words.

Warsaw proved to be an idyllic setting for the championships as 116 competitors flew in from 44 countries in what proved to be the biggest World Championships in its 20 year history. 

The tournament also played host to the shortest ever match, which took place between two competitors from Pakistan and the Netherlands, who took just 3 moves to lead to a -6 to -9 win for the player from Pakistan.

Scrabble is currently produced in 33 different languages with over 150 million games sold in 121 countries around the world.

Four million of the board games are sold worldwide every year, which might account for the fact that there over a million missing Scrabble tiles worldwide.

The next tournament will be taking place in 2013 and with the growth of the competition, itÂ’s looking like it will be another record breaker.