4 months ago
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Ten-year-old Nathan Tan from Kuala Lumpur has been playing Scrabble since helium was six.
“He won past year’s Malaysia National Youth Scrabble Championship. As a parent, I privation to promote him, arsenic it helps him physique resilience portion helium prepares to vie astatine the World Youth Championships,” says Phillip Tan, begetter of Nathan Tan.
Tan is the youngest subordinate astatine the KSSA Indian Open 2026, an planetary Scrabble tourney that commenced in Bengaluru on January, 23.
Hosted by Karnataka State Scrabble Association (KSSA), the four-day tourney volition spot 168 contestants from 13 countries, and the winners volition person currency prizes totalling ₹11.6 lakh.
Drawing involvement globally
This year, the contestants include the presently ranked 3rd successful the world, Hubert Wee of Singapore, 2017 Scrabble World Champion Akshay Bhandarkar, WESPA (Global governing assemblage of Scrabble) Chairman Lukeman Owolabi, and 16-year-old Bengaluru lad Suyash Manchali, who won the metallic medal astatine the 2024 World Youth Scrabble Championship.
The peculiar Division D connected the archetypal time of the tourney was aimed astatine newbie players, with a strict time bounds of 25 minutes per player.
“I person been playing competitory Scrabble for more than 15 years. I enjoy the crippled due to the fact that of my emotion for speechmaking and words. Winning is not easy, but every nonaccomplishment helps maine larn from my mistakes and amended successful the adjacent game,” said Ela Ghose, one of the contestants.
Live-streamed for the archetypal time
Siddharth Nithyanand, Secretary of KSSA, noted that it is the archetypal clip the matches of the tournament are being live-streamed.
“On January 25, the past time of the tournament, we volition besides behaviour a mini-Scrabble tournament for beginners, to pull caller endowment into the competitory landscape,” he said.
Sunny Bhatia, a top-ranked subordinate from Delhi, hoped for much firm firms to travel guardant to sponsor Scrabble tournaments.
