Stewart Holden (born 5 September 1979) is a 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 ...

player from the United Kingdom. Holden is originally from

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but has resided near

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since 2008. He represented England at the World Scrabble Championship 2003, where he finished in 62nd place, and represented Northern Ireland at the World Scrabble Championship 2011 where he finished in 28th place and achieved the highest game score of the tournament (694pts). He has achieved ranking among the top 100 competitive Scrabble players in the world and as the runner-up in the 2007

National Scrabble Championship The Scrabble Players Championship (formerly the North American SCRABBLE® Championship, and earlier the National SCRABBLE Championship) is the largest ''Scrabble'' competition in North America. The event is currently held every year, and from 2004 ...

. Holden also compiles the weekly Scrabble puzzle for

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newspaper. Formerly, he was a committee member 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 ...

, owning his own business, Tilefish, selling Scrabble equipment and resources. That enterprise was sold to fellow ABSP committee member Amy Byrne in July 2008. Holden was the editor of The Scrabble Player's Handbook, a free 162-page ebook written by twelve former

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 ...

participants including 2016 World Champion

Brett Smitheram Brett Smitheram is a Scrabble Grand Master and one of the most successful players in the history of the game. Smitheram is the reigning (2022) UK National Scrabble Champion, defeating a high-calibre field in June. He won the 2016 World Scrabble Cham ...

. The book was launched on 1 January 2013, had been downloaded over 10,000 times within two weeks and has now been downloaded over 100,000 times. It received widespread coverage in Scrabble media when it was launched.

Countdown

In 2004, Holden was the overall winner of Series 51 of the long-running British

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game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...

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 ...

. Holden won eight games to become an octochamp, including a score of 137 in his last preliminary match which was, at the time, the third highest score in the history of the programme. His eight-game score of 870 was also the third highest score since the introduction of the 15-round format in 2001. Holden returned for the series finals as the number one seed, beating Steve Graston in the series final with a scoreline of 104-81. He was invited back for the twelfth Champion of Champions series but declined due to the conflicting dictionaries used in Countdown and competitive Scrabble affecting his performance in the latter game. Between 2008-2018 Holden contributed the content for a daily desktop calendar of Countdown puzzles. Having retired from competitive Scrabble in 2016, Holden is now a full-time

humanist celebrant A humanist celebrant or humanist officiant is a person who performs humanist celebrancy services, such as non-religious weddings, funerals, child namings, coming of age ceremonies and other rituals. Some humanist celebrants are accredited by huma ...

with Humanists UK in Northern Ireland.

References

External links

Association of British Scrabble Players
* World English-Language Scrabble Players Association *
Humanists UK celebrant listing
1979 births Living people Countdown (game show) British Scrabble players Alumni of the University of Exeter Contestants on British game shows {{board-game-stub