New Zealand crowned its newest Scrabble Master over Easter Weekend, but the champion for 2022 is no stranger to glory.
Of 38 Masters championships, Jeff Grant has claimed 10 and taken home another 16 national titles.
With his latest win, he has earned himself the nickname 'the Roger Federer of Scrabble'.
Photo: Creative commons
Listen to the full interview here
Grant, who has been doing Scrabble since the ‘80s, has shown he still has what it takes to be at the top by winning without even studying this time.
“It came as a bit of a surprise because I haven’t studied for over 10 years probably," he told Afternoons.
“When I was playing more than I am now, I studied hard for the major tournaments, I’d probably spend a couple of months studying before a tournament.
“But now I do basically no study, I’m just relying on my memory and trying to play confidently and hope the bit of luck goes my way!”
One word that helped him win the Masters near the end was ‘durndest’, an American colloquialism, similar to ‘darndest’.
“Slang and colloquial words and non-standard English are still words. People come to us and say ‘but that’s slang’, well doesn’t matter, slang is part of the language.”
Grant’s love for play of words started in primary when he played around with anagrams and word squares.
Then he became hooked on a ‘fun worder’ set – which was New Zealand’s version of Scrabble back in the day before there was in international copyright – that had been gifted to one of his cousins.
“After that, I went to high school where I started to play it a bit more seriously with some of my mates who also liked the game and it just grew from there.
“I played my first tournament after seeing the results in the first national championship in 1980 … on a bit of paper around my fish and chips.”
While he’s flattered by the ‘Roger Federer’ nickname, and has actually played tennis for longer than Scrabble, Grant says he’s not on the same international scale.
“Although, we are a very good Scrabble country. We’ve got many top players in the world.
"The current world champion, Alastair Richards, is a Kiwi. He won that title last year in an online world championships, which was something a bit different because of Covid.
“But the greatest player of all time, Nigel Richards, who has won five world championships plus multiple other major tournaments, is a Kiwi who lives overseas … so we’re very proud of him.”
Nigel made headlines when he managed to win the French-language Scrabble world championship in 2015 without speaking a word of French.