Allan Simmons (born 27 July 1957) is a British

scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...

expert who was one of the founder members of the

Association of British Scrabble Players The Association of British Scrabble Players oversees competitive Scrabble in the UK. It was formed in 1987 by agreement with J W Spear & Sons, the game's trademark owner, who were subsequently bought out by Mattel in 1993. It currently has around ...

and succeeded Peter Finley as its chairman. He was the first chairman of the World English-language Scrabble Players Association. He was also the 2008 UK National Scrabble Champion. In addition to playing top level Scrabble since the late-1970s, Simmons is also known as a prolific author of

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...

books and publisher of Onwords magazine since 1979. Together with

Darryl Francis Darryl Francis (born 16 April 1948) is a well-known author of books on Scrabble. He was a co-compiler of Chambers' original Official Scrabble Words publication in 1988 and consultant on all future editions, along with ex ABSP chairman Allan S ...

he has produced every edition of Official Scrabble Words by Chambers and has more recently worked with

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

on their official wordlist book. He also previously wrote a weekly Scrabble column for ''The Times'', compiles a weekly Scrabble puzzle for The Telegraph, and compiles the content for an annual desktop Scrabble puzzle calendar. Allan Simmons has won the

British Matchplay Scrabble Championship British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

five times, The Scottish Championships four times, the UK Masters three times, the UK National Scrabble Championship once, and played at the

World Scrabble Championship The World Scrabble Championship (WSC) is the most-prestigious title in competitive English-language Scrabble. It was held in every odd year from 1991 to 2013. From the 2013 edition, it became an annual event. It has been an open event since 2014 ...

eight times. In October 2017, Simmons received a three-year ban for cheating. A committee member for the Association of British Scrabble Players, Elie Dangoor, stated that three independent witnesses allegedly saw Simmons put a hand with freshly drawn letter tiles back into a bag to draw more tiles during officially sanctioned matches – a move that is contrary to the rules of the game. An official statement from the Association of British Scrabble Players issued to its members announced that the ban was a result of an investigation by an independent panel following these allegations.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Simmons, Allan British Scrabble players Living people 1957 births