First winner of Gaelic Scrabble World Championships

Murdo MacDonald was delighted to win the first championships

The first Gaelic Scrabble World Championships have taken place in the Hebrides - and been won with a score of 353.

The Gaelic edition of the popular board game has been launched as part of efforts to promote the language.

Four competitors were brave enough to put their knowledge of Gaelic words to the test in Saturday's contest in Stornoway, Lewis.

Murdo MacDonald, from Back in Lewis, won the first world title.

Mr MacDonald, who won a box of the game, told BBC Naidheachdan: "I feel on top of the world - the first ever Gaelic Scrabble champion.

"It was good fun. I really enjoyed it and I hope it takes off."

He beat Angus MacDonald, from Bernera, Lewis, who had a score of 134.

Meredith Hale and Eric Yarnell are Gaelic learners from the US who took part

Also competing were Meredith Hale and Eric Yarnell, Gaelic learners on holiday in Scotland from Seattle in the US.

Ms Hale, whose ancestors came from Lewis, said: "We are staying for a while and thought it would be a fun experience.

"We didn't think we would get to play."

Mr Yarnell added: "It is a really helpful learning tool.

"We were really surprised how many words we came up with, not being fluent Gaelic speakers."

The couple will be taking a box home with them after their holiday.

Mr Yarnell said: "We are really going to make our friends jealous."

High scoring words during the competition included:

• Cò - which means "who" in English - 30 points

• Putan - button - 24

• Freumh - root - 22

The Gaelic version of the board game was launched this month.

About 850 have sold so far.

Teàrlach Wilson, who was involved in organising the new edition and the championships, said: “We did some market analysis as we were developing the game and so I knew there would be interest in it.

"But I never imagined it would be this successful."

Angus MacDonald, left, and Murdo MacDonald concentrate on the word play

According to the Scottish government, there are more than 87,000 people in Scotland who are able to speak and/or read Gaelic.

Of this number, about 58,000 people aged three and over were able to speak Gaelic

The Gaelic version of Scrabble features 18 characters, rather than 26, because the Gaelic alphabet does not use the letters J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y or Z.

The grave accent, a mark indicating that a letter should be pronounced a particular way, also appears on the vowels À, È, Ì, Ò and Ù.

Stornoway-based cultural centre and community café, An Taigh Cèilidh, worked with Tinderbox Games in London to license the Gaelic version of the game.

The board and rules are in Gaelic and the number of letters reflect their frequency of use in the language.

The letter scores match how difficult it is to use the letters to spell a Gaelic word.