Scrabble board game tournament kicks off in UK

The word game competition is back after a five-year break

A big Scrabble board game tournament has kicked off in Reading in the UK.

The UK Open Scrabble Championships is one of the biggest Scrabble competitions in Europe, with players from all over the world travelling to compete for a cash prize.

The tournament, which was started in 2008 by the Association of British Scrabble Players, has returned after pausing for five years during the coronavirus pandemic

This year the competition takes place between 3-10 January, and around 100 players have signed up to compete, aged between 11 and 90-years-old.

A new update to the official Scrabble dictionary came into effect on 1 January, with more than 1,800 new words added, including bruv and fam, making this the first tournament to include the new words.

Let us know in the comments below which board game you think you could be a champion at!

What is Scrabble?

Scrabble is a board game for 2 to 4 players where competitors make words from tiles with letters on them to score points.

The person who scores the most points at the end of the game wins.

Each game starts with players taking turns to pick seven tiles out of a bag. They then use these tiles to make words and score points.

Each letter tile is worth a different number of points, based on how commonly the letter is used in day-to-day language.

For example, letters that are used often like A, O, S and T, are worth one point, but letters that aren't used very often, like Q and Z, are worth 10 points.

Players then take turns placing their tiles onto the board - which is made up of 225 squares - and can score extra points from special squares on the board, which can allow them to double or triple their scores.

How many words can you make? Players take turns to put words on the board to win points

Who invented Scrabble?

Alfred.M Butts invented Scrabble

Scrabble was invented in 1931 by an American named Alfred Mosher Butts.

It was originally called Criss-Cross Words and was based on an earlier word game he'd invented called Lexiko.

In 1948 James Brunot bought the rights to make and sell the game, and changed the name to Scrabble.

Since then Scrabble has grown to become a hugely popular board game, selling over 165 million copies around the world, and has been translated into around 29 different languages.

Scrabble records

The highest scoring word you can legally play in Scrabble is: OXYPHENBUTAZONE - which is a type of medication - and could get you a maximum of 1,778 points if played on the right squares.

However, so far the word has never been played, as it would require a lot of luck to get the right letters on the right squares on the board.

The record for the highest ever score in a Scrabble tournament is 850, and it was achieved by Toh Weibin from Singapore, at the Northern Ireland Scrabble Championship in Belfast, on 21 January 2012.

His top-scoring word was BEAUXITE, which won him a whopping 275 points. It's a different spelling of the word Bauxite, which is the name for a type of aluminium ore.