Mumbai masters Scrabble

Though the world may be mired in SMS lingo and emoticons there is one home for words that will never cease to be Scrabble the 65yearold classic word game and arguably the most popular in the world beckons people to fuse chance and skill and run for dictionaries as they yell shout and claim their score The joy of creating meaning in the smooth brown rack holds many childhood memories for children and adults the world over In the recently concluded National Tournament a Mumbai boy superseded 82 participants from across the country as he created more words on the 15x15 grid than most envious geeksPicDatta KumbharTale of two agesThe game has been making inlets in busy lifestyles of Mumbaiites in its own way PC Jose Chairman of the Mumbai Scrabble Club and the current National Champion Sherwin Rodrigues are two such individuals who found the game through unique routes but are equally smitten by it ldquoIt was in the 1980s when I was working with the company Saudi Aramco when I had nothing to do in Saudi Arabia Someone introduced me to the game and since then I was hookedrdquo recalls Jose who is as old as the game He laments how on his return in 1988 till about a decade the game remained inaccessible to him as there werenrsquot many takers to the gameRichard van der Merwe right senior Bayer representative South Asia with winner Sherwin RodriguesThe game changer was ldquoZygo forVR Damaraj director of the Zygo Clubs came to Mumbai and conducted a tournament in 1998rdquo says Jose Held for the first time in Mumbai the club went on to introduce love for the game in most metropolitans of the country Soon enough in 2003 the Mumbai Scrabble Club was foundedOn the other hand 24yearold Rodrigues relates why the game is a serious preoccupation with him ldquoAs a kid I always loved solving jumbled words My mother and grandparents introduced me to Scrabble and I figured it was the perfect game to play around with words It also helped improve my counting skills I liked that there is a lot of thinking required in every move of the gamerdquoLove of a lifetimeSince its early days the game in the city has witnessed a serious edge to it with the hosting of regular championships and tournaments Within a decade the maximum city held the World Scrabble Championship in 2007 Considering that the first World Scrabble Championship was held at London in 1991 the fact that Mumbai was taking the sport seriously within a decade of being introduced is a reason to rejoiceEnthusiasts play Scrabble at the ChampionshipDr Varisht Hingorani a radiologist from Juhu and former president of Scrabble Association of India SAI shares ldquoSAI has over 100 life members and an equal number of ordinary members The Mumbai Scrabble Club has more than 300 membersrdquoStill Jose laments how the lack of Scrabble being a spectator game means less number of people coming together to enjoy it Earlier Bandra was a meeting point for members to come and exercise their grey cells ldquoNow only tournaments and championships make people come together and play either in the premier or the open division categories depending on their scorerdquo Jose informs He suggests that city schools training their students might helpldquoOnly two schools have shown interest St Gregorios High School in Chembur and Juhursquos Jamnabai Narsee School that have been training their students for a while nowrdquoDr Hingorani who had been teaching along with his wife at Jamnabai for the last 10 years took the board game to another level ldquoSince I started teaching Scrabble it was always taught under the name Wordaholix Lately as we kept on getting queries by children who aspired to be World Scrabble champions we decided to expand the effort and name the initiative Wordaholixrdquo shares Dr HingoraniFounded in September 2013 and now aided by Rodrigues the classes are conducted almost every quarter Having conducted two batches they are heartened that many children want to raise the bar of Scrabble in the city while an adult showed keen interest in being trained as well They say that every minute 500 games are being initiated in the world We urge you to add to the number and open the board to give your fwllo wordsmith a run forthe dictionaryMumbai loves its ScrabbleAs per Mattelrsquos official sales records ldquoScrabble has enjoyed rocksteady yearonyear growth over the last decaderdquo Sivaraman Balakrishnan senior manager Landmark ascertains ldquoScrabble has been a perennial bestseller at Landmark stores with a consistent 15 growth over the last two years Last year Scrabble has experimented with a new range called Twist and Turn now a favourite gifting item Landmark will also host the Scrabble Challenge later this year along with Mattelrdquo Crossword CEO Kinjal Shah confirmed that about 200 pieces are sold weekly at their outletsand so it beganAs per Mattel ldquoScrabble was invented in 1931 by Alfred Mosher Butts an architect at Poughkeepsie in New York State USArdquo Unemployed at the time Butts was keen on creating a combination of three pastimes that were popular mdash board games crosswords and number games To understand letter distribution Butts studied the front page of The New York Times and calculated each alphabetrsquos frequencyCirca 1870 A group crowds around a blackboard engaged in the popular winter pastime of lsquoSpelling Beesrsquo a possible precursor of the board game Scrabble Pic CourtesyGetty Images