A game with words

IN THE 1930s, Alfred Butts invented scrabble, a strategy game, just by scanning newspapers and analysing the words and letters. However, the game gained popularity only in the 1950s when the Macy's Department Store promoted it. Today, children and adults the world over enjoy playing the game, thereby adding a whole lot of new words to their vocabulary.

But competitions in scrabble? Why not? To name a few, The World Scrabble championships, the National Scrabble championships and the Mind Sport Olympiad, where scrabble is one of the many brain teasers. Yes, there is a lot more to scrabble than just making words on the board.

Ask Chennaiite Mohan Verghese Chunkath. For Mohan, who won the National Scrabble championship, held in Hyderabad recently, and his teenaged daughter Anuttama, scrabble is more than a pastime. It's a passion.

Incidentally, the second prize too went to a Chennaiite, while at the junior levels, all the winners were from, you've guessed it... Chennai, including Anuttama, a Class 11 student.

This is the third win for Mohan, who will be off to Las Vegas to participate in the 2001 World Scrabble Championship to be held in December. Anuttama picked up the nuances of the game by watching her father and, of course, playing with him. "I have beaten him thrice," she says with child-like pride as the duo sit down to play a game.

Mohan smiles affectionately as he watches his daughter play her turn. Watching both of them is Mohan's wife, Sheela Rani Chunkath, Chairperson of Pollution Control Board. "Whenever they find some time, they sit down to play," she remarks. "No, I do not play the game," she hastens to add.

Mohan, who is in the Administrative Services, has been playing scrabble as a teenager. "It was a family game. But I started competing in clubs while studying in the U.S." It is quite easy to play the game but quite a task to master it. A lot of hard work and practice goes into making a champion. "The prerequisites are a strong vocabulary and sound arithmetic skills. If you can't add, then you can't play scrabble."

The Chunkaths are book-lovers and that helps a lot. " We pick up quite a lot of words by reading," says Anuttama, who loves to read just about anything... mystery, science fiction or biographies, and enjoys a swim.

Another interesting facet of Mohan is his love for crossword puzzles, which he has been solving since the age of 14. He compiles the crosswords for Businessline and The Financial Express, and can complete a crossword puzzle in The Hindu or The Indian Express within ten minutes flat! "The record finish was five minutes for a London Times puzzle," Sheela proudly discloses. Anuttama is also a crossword buff.

Commenting on the controversy over scrabble not being recognised as a sport, Mohan says, "Scrabble is a proprietary game as there is a copyright holder (Mattel India, in this case). Hence it is difficult to promote it as a non-controversial game. But I see no reason why it should not be promoted as a sport."

"It is a game that deserves to be encouraged and Indians have a very good chance of winning in the international circuit, as this is a game made for them," concludes Mohan.

Here's a family that has shown that scrabble is not just about a strong vocabulary.

It is also about concentration and above all, love for words. Scrabble is indeed a thinking game that is waiting to be discovered and explored. But will it be, is the question.

SAVITHA PADMANABHAN

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