He may not know what all the words he knows actually mean. But he does know an awful lot of words. In the last 14 years, 23-year-old Scrabble champion Akshay Bhandarkar has learned nearly 70,000 to 80,000 words, from little two-letter ones like “ai,” “pe”, and “id” to bigger ones like “emicate”. The chairman of the Mumbai Scrabble Club and this year’s winner of the Mattel India Scrabble Championship, Bhandarkar is ready to pit his wits against the best at the 7th World Scrabble Championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, later this year. Going with him is Pramit Kamath, an IT consultant and this year’s runner-up, better known in scrabbling circles as ‘Armpit’. The two plan to prepare by playing 15 to 20 games against each other every weekend until the championship. “Playing Scrabble needs two skills—vocabulary and strategy,” says 23-year-old Kamath. Memorising words, especially ones that use ‘power tiles’ like X, J, Q and Z, is crucial. “V is the toughest tile to play,” says Bhandarkar, who works with a securities firm. S, E, T, A, R, N, I and blanks are the ‘good’ ones. Both began early, Bhandarkar at nine, playing against his mother and later in scrabble clubs. Kamath first pitted himself against his father, an avid word-gamer, and later against fellow IITians. Today, Bhandarkar’s best score is 665 and Kamath’s is 628. The world record is 770. “My best move ever was surprisingly with a not very exotic word—it was ‘mythical’,” recalls Akshay. He got 230 points with two triple word scores and a 50-point bonus for using all seven tiles in one move. Always on the lookout for that seven-letter word in the tiles, Akshay’s worst nightmare is not being able to spot it. Little wonder, then, that a word means much more to them than some letters with a meaning. “It’s a single unit of thought,” says Pramit thoughtfully. “A word? It’s three tiles short of a bingo!” grins Akshay.
