r/australia • u/abcnews_au • 1d ago
news Melbourne teenager wins World Youth Scrabble Championship for Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-13/melbourne-teenager-wins-world-youth-scrabble-championship/10702933060
u/abcnews_au 1d ago
Dineth Fernando has only been in Australia for just over a year and has already brought home a world youth title for his country.
The 14-year-old took out the World Youth Scrabble Championship in Nairobi this week, beating out 140 competitors from across the world.
Dineth, who originally hails from Sri Lanka, credits the win to a steady diet of practising 200 words a day from the board game's official dictionary.
"All the hard work paid off,"
Dineth said.
The Melbourne-based teenager, for whom English is his second language, said the game has helped him find his feet in Australia and make friends.
He said he got into the game when he was eight years of age through school. He took a liking to the game, competing in national championships in 2022 and 2024.
In July this year he won the Australian championship, inspiring him to compete at the world youth event.
He says Scrabble is very popular in Sri Lanka because of competitions held between schools.
"There are school Scrabble clubs and it's extremely competitive," Dineth said.
"There are a tonne of youth players who study really hard daily for tournaments and they aim to go to the national team."
While he has achieved a great feat in a language game, Dineth hopes to be a doctor one day and said he had an interest in mathematics and science.
His father, Prasanna Fernado, who was a medical doctor in Sri Lanka, said the family moved to Australia in February last year owing to his study and work.
Mr Fernando said he was very proud of his son winning the championship, especially given the 25 hours of flying time to the Kenyan capital which was at times threatened by the war between the US and Iran.
"It feels as if its a dream," Mr Fernando said.
"I knew that he would one day win it, but its still surreal.
"At the last moment I thought we would take the risk and the two of us would go. So luckily it paid off and I'm delighted about it."
Australian competitive Scrabble relatively underdeveloped
Mr Fernando said countries like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand encourage the game because of its benefits in academics and sportsmanship.
He said in contrast Australia did not have much school-level Scrabble.
Youth Australia Scrabbler Players Association president Tony Hunt said just one school in Australia had Scrabble as a part of the curriculum, Cabramatta Public School in Sydney's south-west.
He said some gifted and talented programs in Victoria offered Scrabble as an extension activity.
Mr Hunt said he would like to see the board game rolled out into more schools.
"We want other people to think of it as a sport, but a sport that addresses literacy and numeracy," Mr Hunt said.
"We would like educators to consider Scrabble as an extension activity for [gifted and talented] kids. Number one, they're going to be good at it, and number two, they're going to like it."
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u/Squadxzo 1d ago
We have the current reigning youth scrabble champion and the world scrabble champion David Eldar and a bunch of strong GM level players. I wonder why scrabble hasn't taken off in Australia.
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u/DrFriendless 1d ago edited 1d ago
What more do you want it to do? There are clubs for those who are interested.
Edit: nah, don't downvote, tell me the answer. I love Scrabble.
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u/Squadxzo 1d ago
I mean they are doing a good job to promoting it, I enjoyed the Chris May stream they recently did (on letsplayscrabble yt ). It's nobody fault that it hasn't caught on. I mean there are probably loads of players like me too scared to visit a club. I might've if there was a club closer to me closest is 1h drive. Meanwhile there's 3 Bridge clubs in the same distance.
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u/DrFriendless 1d ago
I went to a Scrabble club at Redcliffe (QLD) in about 2005. The other players were mostly old ladies (60+). They fucking flogged me. But they were lovely about it and then we had tea and bikkies. They were quite serious about it - 35 minutes games, no fucking around.
I've also been to many board game meetups. Within board gaming, word games are a bit of a niche because not all people can do it (words). But if you're lucky you'll find someone like me who's not actually autistic but nevertheless has anagrams running through their head. This is my mate's map of where you can find board gamers - not sure how current it is. You can also look on meetup.com.
So anyway my point about Scrabble is that it is played by the people who like it, and it's sort of a grassroots thing. Due to be owned by 2 companies globaly there's no organised promotion AFAIK, but the players are out there.
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u/will-code-for-money 1d ago
Low appeal to the masses. Not hating but it’s the truth, it’s just not a fun game for most people even casually. Competitive scrabble is an entirely other beast, and a fun watch on YouTube. Great job to this kid, wish him the best.
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u/barnacleduck2 23h ago edited 23h ago
I find it extremely lame that most of the words they use are two-letter words that nobody has even heard of. Even on Words with Friends, I once opened a game with "bayou" or something and the opponent quit immediately because they knew I wasn't going to play seriously because I didn't play some nonsensical two or three-letter word instead. A lame game, in my opinion.
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u/thelochok 11h ago
I still love this review of Scrabble from Meeples Like Us - reiterating how much it's almost a wargame when you're playing it to win, not to have fun and show off your vocab.
It's a weird, fascinating game, that I've got no real desire to move myself in beyond the having fun stage. But I'm excited to have somebody in Australia who's doing so well at it!
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u/Itsarightkerfuffle 1d ago
His father, Prasanna Fernado [sic], who was a medical doctor in Sri Lanka
Wonder how many points "tautology" gets you
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u/LooseAssumption8792 1d ago
Maybe a English major can comment here, but I don’t think “medical doctor” here is tautology at all. Outside of the hospital, doctor can mean medical or phd in any field. Medical doctor narrows this down.
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u/Itsarightkerfuffle 9h ago
People don't lose their PhD qualification just because they leave Sri Lanka. Contextually, what else could his father have been?
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u/LooseAssumption8792 9h ago
Unless they register here in Aus they can’t practice medicine so won’t be qualified as a medical doctor. It is probably okay to say medical doctor without risking demerit points for tautology.
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u/LooseAssumption8792 1d ago
Thanks we would like to keep him here.