Kiwi Scrabble team celebrates underdog win in trans-Tasman challenge

A New Zealand team of professional Scrabble players have won the Trans-Tasman Scrabble Challenge for the first time in 14 years.

Dylan Early, part of team New Zealand, finished second individually in the competition, which was held from 15 November in Auckland. Out of the 288 games played over three days, New Zealand had 165 wins to Australia's 123.

But how do you get so good at Scrabble that you qualify to represent the country? Well, for Early it's been an every day "obsession" for 30 years. Still, the avid player - who says he once scored 230 points with zebrinus - reckons there are players out there better than him.

To go that far, you do need "a good combination of language and mathematical and strategic skills", he tells Nights.

"It's not just knowing a bunch of words, it's also knowing what to do with them and of course it's all about getting the highest score. So you've got to be practically and strategically minded to be able to place your words in just the right place so that you can get a good score and your opponent has limited options."

Competitive Scrabble is quite different to doing it for fun with you mates every now and then. You play one on one and have a time limit of 25 minutes for each person, he says.

"We've got special boards and tiles as well, so the boards rotate so that nobody has to play upside down or be disadvantaged in any way, we've got special letters called pro tiles and they're smooth to touch so nobody can feel for the good letters."

Although there's always a dictionary on hand "to end all the arguments", this year there was speculation that some Victorian players refused to participate because New Zealand was using the 2019 edition of the Collins Scrabble Words Dictionary, he says. The new dictionary removed about 400 offensive words, according to reports.

"We haven't quite adopted that new [2022 edition] dictionary in New Zealand yet, but parts of Australia have."

At the end of the day, the trans-Tasman rivals still get along.

"Everybody is big mates. Some of the friendships go way back beyond 1996 so it's old friends getting together, having a few good games, and then afterwards there's a lot of camerderie and people go out to dinner together and have a drink and a laugh."

New Zealand has 16 Scrabble clubs and one online as well. Players of all levels are welcome and will probably get paired up with somebody of skill level, he says.