The Association of British Scrabble Players oversees competitive

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 ...

in the UK. It was formed in 1987 by agreement with

J W Spear & Sons J. W. Spear and Sons was a manufacturer of board games during the 20th century. The company was founded by Jacob Wolf Spier (1832-1893) in Fürth, near Nuremberg, Germany in 1879. They initially producing goods such as table mats, photo frames ...

, the game's trademark owner, who were subsequently bought out by

Mattel Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more ...

in 1993. It currently has around 600 members.wespa.org
The ABSP controls a rating system containing the names of over 2,000 people who have played in Scrabble tournaments around the country. The Association also maintains a calendar of these events, handles publicity for them and many other Scrabble-related events and actively pursues sponsorship and the development of tournament Scrabble in the UK. The honorary president of the Association is former

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

Gyles Brandreth Gyles Daubeney Brandreth (born 8 March 1948) is an English broadcaster, writer and former politician. He has worked as a television presenter, theatre producer, journalist, author and publisher. He was a presenter for TV-am's '' Good Morning ...

, who founded the first

British National Scrabble Championship The UK National Scrabble Championship (NSC) is a British national Scrabble tournament that has been held annually (except 1995, 2020 and 2021) since its inception in 1971. It was formerly organised by Mattel, the copyright owners of Scrabble in ...

in 1971 and has taken a keen interest in the game ever since. Former ABSP Chairman

Allan Simmons Allan Simmons (born 27 July 1957) is a British scrabble expert who was one of the founder members of the Association of British Scrabble Players and succeeded Peter Finley as its chairman. He was the first chairman of the World English-language S ...

is a prolific Scrabble author and the ABSP website was formerly maintained by ''

Countdown A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and eve ...

'' series champion

Stewart Holden Stewart Holden (born 5 September 1979) is a competitive Scrabble player from the United Kingdom. Holden is originally from Oxford but has resided near Belfast, Northern Ireland since 2008. He represented England at the World Scrabble Championsh ...

, who previously held the post of publicity officer for the association. The current ABSP chairperson is Mike Whiteoak.

References

External links

Official websiteABSP ratingsABSP calendar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Association Of British Scrabble Players Scrabble in the United Kingdom Scrabble organizations Clubs and societies in the United Kingdom 1987 establishments in the United Kingdom Organizations established in 1987