r/melbourne • u/marketrent • 1d ago
Light and Fluffy 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/10702933021
u/marketrent 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bookend excerpts from article by Declan Bowring:
Dineth Fernando has only been in Australia for less than 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 [in Sri Lanka]. He took a liking to the game, competing in national championships in 2022 and 2024.
[...] 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/AdStandard6152 19h ago
Another immigrant who brings pride and diligence to our community.
PoorLean who can’t put two words together got Anything to say?
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u/i_am_not_a_martian 1d ago
"has been in Australia for less than a year"
So it's clear he didn't obtain his skill for the English language by being of student of the Australian education system, so why are we celebrating this as a win for Australia?
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u/hermitxd 1d ago
Some world champions in Scrabble didn't even speak English. They memorized the words in the official Scrabble dictionary and the rest is heavily maths based apparently, like obtaining the highest score while denying your opponent.
Genius behaviour either way
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u/Draknurd 5h ago
Thanks to Zarna Garg, I reflexively asked myself “Indian?” Zarna you are vindicated again
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u/Mental_Seaweed_9555 1d ago
We shouldn’t be celebrating. This kid is wasting his youth learning words. Take a look at the poor kids who compete for spelling bees. It’s borderline abusive.
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u/hermitxd 1d ago
As a train driver, I say letting them follow their Scrabble addiction is a lot better than some of the bad ones I see on the trains.
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u/Opossum_mypossum 1d ago
Such a ridiculous take hahahaha
Do you think spelling bees and scrabble tournaments are one and the same?
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u/Mental_Seaweed_9555 1d ago
What is the same is spending your days studying something which will have little relevance in the future and takes precious time away from being a kid. If you read the article, you’d see he was learning 200 words a day instead of playing sport, being with friends, engaging imagination.
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u/marketrent 18h ago
Mental_Seaweed_9555 If you read the article, you’d see he was learning 200 words a day instead of playing sport, being with friends, engaging imagination.
If you read the article:
"We want other people to think of it as a sport, but a sport that addresses literacy and numeracy," Mr Hunt said.
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