The World Scrabble Championship 2007 was held in th
Taj President Hotel

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

, India between 9 November and 12 November. The winner was Nigel Richards of

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. The tournament began with a 24-round

Swiss tournament A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other ...

, whose top two players contested a best-of-five final.

Results

The preliminary stage involved 104 players, the largest number of players in WSC history, over 24 rounds, using the " Chew Pairing" system to select the draw for each round. Nigel Richards beat

Ganesh Asirvatham Ganesh Asirvatham is an English language teacher from Klang, Selangor. He is a ''Scrabble'' player who represents Malaysia in international competition. He was the World Scrabble Championship 2007 The World Scrabble Championship 2007 was held ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

3–0 in the final. This was the first time either of them had reached the final. Ganesh was the number 1 rated player in the world at the time, and Nigel the form player had always been knocking on the door in majors and was a multiple winner of the

Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup The Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup is the Thai national Scrabble competition in the English language. It has also been known as the Thailand International in the past. The tournament has been honoured to accept a trophy from His Majesty the Kin ...

including 2007. Nigel won the first game 412–316. He bingoed VARSITy; Ganesh bingoed sERINGA. Nigel'
opening play
was GAVOT with the V on the centre star. During the game Ganes
missed the bingo
OUTCRAWL. Nigel won the second game 400–371. Ganesh took an early lead with AETHERS but had to exchange tiles twice, and although he caught up again with ANTIENTS and a late-game bingo DUPLiED, and Nigel only bingoed once with ODONAtE, Nigel won on the strength of the value he got out of the J, Q and X with JERBIL, QUOHOG and FAX. Nigel wins the third game 499-470 and becomes New Zealand's first world champion. This game was a bingo-fest with Nigel's RECOPIES, EQuINIAS and OVERAPT to Ganesh's TRECKING, ADNATION, DIrTIEST and a triple-triple TAILLEUR. However, once again, Nigel's luck with drawing the high scoring letters saw him have the edge in a fitting finale.

Complete results

*FINALS: *Game 1: Nigel 412 – Ganesh 316 *Game 2: Nigel 400 – Ganesh 371 *Game 3: Nigel 499 – Ganesh 470

References

External links

Official site
{{WSC

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

2007 in Indian sport 2000s in Mumbai