32-year-old Wellington Jighere, from Nigeria, beat 129 competitors to win the World English-language Scrabble Players’ Association championship, Sunday, defeating Englishman Lewis MacKay with four straight wins in the best-of-seven final round.
The finalists, Jighere and Mackay, are in another room, hopefully outside shouting distance. One of the supervisors in the room texts the draw and words played to Chris Lipe, a United States championship player who takes on the role of commentating, with occasional pauses while autocorrect garbles the letter draws.
The first draw of the final tournament is laid out. D, E, I, L, O, R and T for Mackay, A, L, E, N, V, O and Y for Jighere.
The small crowd of spectators starts piping up with suggestions. There is general consensus that Jighere should play “lenvoy” (12 points), meaning messenger or envoy, and a murmur of approval when he does.
The crowd is decisive about what move each finalist should make. There is a collective groan when Mackay, who suffers from a bad tile draw for all four games in the championship, misses what to some spectators is an apparently obvious opportunity to play “autogeny” (12 points). Instead he plays “you” (six points).
By the start of round four, the crowd, which waxes and wanes depending on the schedule of games in the open tournament next door, has called it for Jighere.
“Lewis is playing very badly,” one spectator remarks. “He has missed a bingo in each round.”
At this level Scrabble is a numbers game. A bingo, he explains, is a seven plus letter word that garners a lot of points.
Throughout the game 43 words are formed on the board, at least half of which to the untrained eye are just sounds: jai, mho, ye, oe, gi, ur, ed, en, de, ene and deg all made the cut.
Mackay finishes with “neg”, but it’s not enough to beat Jighere, who wins the final game 449 points to 432.
After accepting the congratulations of the spectator room Jighere walks into the open tournament where his team-mates are competing and the orderly proceedings are broken by the shy winner’s thumbs-up. The clinking of Scrabble tiles and soft murmur of voices are briefly replaced by joyful whooping as four other Nigerian players throw back their seats to ran and hug Jighere, and the room breaks into applause.
The new world champion had previously played in two other world championships, placing third in Mumbai in 2007 and 11th in Malaysia in 2009. He was sponsored by the Nigerian government to come to Perth and expects a hero’s welcome on his return. He’ll be bringing home a $10,000 cash prize.
“It is the first time that an African has won in these world championships so I have to go and celebrate with them,” Jighere says.
“Nigel is still the master. It just happens that today was my day.”
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buahri phoned Mr Jighere to congratulate him, his office said.
“I called to rejoice with you over your performance. You have done the country proud, and we are very happy,” it quoted Mr Buhari as telling the champion.
