V.I.O.L.O.N.E. It took Ranganathan Chakravarthy all of five seconds to assess the letters he had, form the seven letter word on his scrabble board, and then spin the glass-topped board around — turntable style — to face me. I had no clue what the word meant, and he himself had to look it up, before informing me that violone is a musical instrument of the viol family. “I knew it, because of the way it is structured. ‘Violone’ is bound to have been a word,” he says.
In layman’s terms, because he had studied and practised words, their origins, formats and structures for decades, Ranganathan was able to take a basic word he was familiar with, build upon it using the letters he had in hand, and come up with a fresh word by himself, without having read it in a book or heard it in conversation. That’s the beauty of scrabble.
“Language and vocabulary aren’t the be all and end all of scrabble, though,” says the Chennaiite ranked the third best competitive scrabble player in the country. “There is a lot of math that goes into it, especially probability.” You know how many letters there are in a scrabble set, and you know which ones have been used. Using that information to calculate what your next hand would be, can give you a much-needed edge.
- 1 Ganesh Asirvatham, Malaysia
- 2 Nigel Richards, New Zealand
- 3 David Eldar, Australia
- 4 Conrad Basset-Bouchard, United States
- 5 Wellington Jighere, Nigeria
- 6 Brett Smitheram, United Kingdom
- 7 David Wiegand, United States
- 8 Adam Logan, Canada
- 9 Lewis Mackay, United Kingdom
- 10 Komol Panyasophonlert, Thailand
Yes, scrabble can get that competitive. And no, neither Chennai nor India as a whole, has managed to tap into its full potential, if Ranganathan and fellow player Mohan Verghese Chunkath are to be believed. Fresh from the Scrabble Association of India’s national open in Mumbai — where he came third in the Premier division — Chunkath opines, “We have quality players, but the game isn’t as broad-based as it could have been.” For instance, he says, schools in other South Asian and Southeast Asian countries have scrabble as part of their co-curricular activities, which serves as a stepping stone for youngsters to take it up competitively.
Ranganathan drives this point home further, by silently handing me a sheet of paper. It has the global rankings, as per the results of the 2017 World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association (WESPA) Youth Cup. Sri Lankan, Thai and Pakistani players rule the list, along with a small smattering of names from New Zealand and Australia. As Ranganathan points out, “The top Indian name is at number 21.”
Ranganathan and fellow player Krishnan Arumugam have been constantly at work to shift the image of the game from a light weekend pastime to one that requires concentration and a constant eye on the 50-minute time stamp. In the last few years, their focus has been on schools. As of now, though, only four to five schools in the city have embraced it. “Scrabble builds vocabulary and hones a child’s skills in mental mathematics. Which is why this wouldn’t be an extra-curricular activity, but co-curricular.”
Currently, scrabble is considered a ‘mind sport’, along the lines of chess and contract bridge. And if Indian youngsters’ aptitude for the former — as well as their blazing track record on platforms like spelling bees — are anything to go by, there is a lot of potential here to be tapped into.
