Kelly makes Jo, Ax and Boxer with one play for 49 I feebly reply with Net for 18 and then my opponent makes If, Feral, Da and Jape on his next go for 29.

The next couple of turns put me in my place. I feel like suggesting we stop now so I can declare myself British champion. He plays Biped for 26 and I reply with Jap – which I am surprised to discover is acceptable – for 28. I am unlikely to present much of a challenge, but I am ahead after one go.

He is now the top player in the north of England, and a panjandrum at the Association of British Scrabble Players, which governs the competitive game in the UK.

He started playing Scrabble seriously in the mid-90s when he joined his local Scrabble club. Kelly, who is 37 and lives in Warrington where he works in local government, is a lifelong lover of puzzles, and was runner-up on Countdown in 1994. You think is it a coin from such and such a place or a feathered headdress?' It's hard enough to remember the words, he says, let alone the definitions. 'You're not really interested in the meaning of words, are you?' I say accusingly. When we eventually play, I have what I consider some aesthetic triumphs – notably when I make rime and tome on the same go – but they score only modestly. Scrabble is a mathematical puzzle, not an exercise in philology or an arcane pursuit for lovers of literature. All that matters is that the word exists and is in whichever dictionary you have agreed will govern the game. But it quickly becomes apparent that knowing the definition is not crucial to top Scrabblers. Because Scrabble players have traditionally used The Chambers Dictionary, which hails from Edinburgh, there are a lot of obscure Scottish words in Scrabble. Qi is the Chinese life force zo is a cross between a yak and a cow and ee is a Scottish variant of eyes.

They are crucial in Scrabble – words like qi, zo and ee.'Īs it happens, Kelly knows what these words mean. 'People struggle at the start to play words parallel to one another because they don't know a lot of two- and three-letter words. 'The key thing is to look at each move as a puzzle,' he says. Knowing a lot of words, of course, but he does not reckon that is the most important factor. What is the secret of good Scrabble, I ask him before we start playing.

Is zo in scrabble word