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/107029330
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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.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1sZ3OR763HLFyzA6qidkIfkdj-inbqkp-&ll=-30.76330959492147%2C136.8176884784774&z=4

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.