Mastering Scrabble: Philip Nelkon discusses his time as champion - and shares some tips

Originally from London and now resident in the South Cambridgeshire village of Barrington, Philip Nelkon is a four-time UK Scrabble champion who also worked for board game manufacturers Spear’s and then Mattel.

“I used to play Scrabble at home, with my mother and my sister,” remembers Philip, a skilled quizzer and general knowledge enthusiast, whose television appearances include Countdown and You Bet!.

“And when I was about 17, I heard someone on the radio talking about winning the National Scrabble Championship.

“So I entered the next year [1974] and got through to the final, and got pretty much humiliated! Obviously people had been playing a lot longer and a lot better than me.

“But I got the bug for it, and there was a London Scrabble League – so I started my Scrabbling career in the London Scrabble League and developed from there.”

Four years after his loss in the National Scrabble Championship final, Philip, who met his wife playing Scrabble in the London Scrabble League, eventually became national champion in 1978.

“There were about 100 people playing in the final,” he explains, “but in those days, you only had to play three games and the person that had the highest aggregate after three games was the national champion.

“Since then it’s become a lot more competitive and the National Championship these days is over three days, I think.”

Philip went on to become national Scrabble champion again in 1981, 1990 and 1992. Did he ever go abroad to test his Scrabble skills against the world’s best?

“I only played in one World Scrabble Championship,” he replies. “The World Scrabble Championship started in 1991 and the second one was in 1993, in New York – and I played in that one. I finished 13th, out of about 80.”

Philip, who notes that Scrabble is more popular in France than it is over here (“It’s always been their number one-selling board game”), says that for him playing Scrabble was “only ever a pastime, or hobby”, adding: “Although there were monetary prizes, you could never make a living at it, and that’s still the case.”

That said, Philip did find a way to make a living out of it – albeit not directly.

“In 1993, I was asked by the manufacturers of Scrabble, who were then a company called Spear’s Games, to come and work for them to help with the publicising the game,” he recalls.

“Then they were taken over by Mattel, the American makers of Barbie, a year later, 1994, and I worked for Mattel for 19 years, up to 2013, working in the marketing department publicising Scrabble, organising tournaments, public relations work, developing websites…

“I had all sorts of different responsibilities, all related to Scrabble. I was the company spokesman on Scrabble, and it might surprise you how much Scrabble comes up in newspaper stories and broadcast stories.

“There have been instances where swear words have been disallowed from the dictionary, and there’s been controversy about that…

“We used to do events as well – one time, we had the biggest Scrabble board in the world at Wembley Stadium, and I was on television talking about that.”

Philip, who also published a book on his exploits, the brilliantly-titled Life on the Tiles: My life in Scrabble, says that these days, while perhaps not as many people buy the board game, Scrabble is popular online.

“I think you could say in terms of the number of people playing, there might even be more people playing than ever,” he suggests, “because obviously online Scrabble is quite accessible, as opposed to going out and buying a game and then finding people to play with.

“But in terms of sales of Scrabble sets, the peak sales were round about when I started working for Spear’s and Mattel, so in the mid-90s they sold a lot more than they do now.

“But then I think that probably is the same for all board games, because online has impacted it so much.”

These days Philip plays Scrabble once a month “just for fun” at Peterborough Scrabble Club, as there isn’t one in Cambridge.

“Personally, I don’t play any tournaments these days,” he says, “but there is a tournament circuit and if you’re a real enthusiast, you could probably play 26 weekends out of 52, somewhere within the UK or Europe.”

Some Scrabble tips from the former champion

Can’t decide if a word is allowed in Scrabble? Check the Collins Official Scrabble Dictionary to be sure.

Philip also recommends the Play Better Scrabble book, which stresses the importance of blank titles, as they vastly increase your chance of getting a seven-letter word and 50 points extra.

For a strong player, the blank should be held unless it increases the best play by 25 points-plus.

The book states that it is also important to know your two-letter words, as there are 124 of them. These are the most important words to learn.

An ‘S’ is also great, perfect for pluralising words already on the board and useful for bonus words. It is worth 8-10 points to a good player, depending on how the board looks.

There are also plenty of interesting words for seemingly impossible options. A CRWTH, for example, is a traditional Welsh stringed instrument, while a GUQIN is a seven-string Chinese musical instrument.

How a bout ZOAEA – “free-swimming larvae of crustaceans like crabs and lobsters”. Then there are numerous words which express feelings, such as BRRR, which one can use to signify feeling cold, and PSST, which is “used to attract someone’s attention surreptitiously”.

Players can also get definitions via the Collins Scrabble dictionary.