Thais master Scrabble with no English
Print Edition
KOMOL Panyasophonlert struggles to string an English sentence together, but the 31-year-old Thai computer programmer is still hoping to be crowned champion of the wordsmith’s favorite boardgame, Scrabble, this week.
Komol, the world No. 3, is one of several top-ranked Thais hoping to showcase their talents in the King’s Cup tournament, which kicked off in Bangkok on Thursday.
While he claims to have memorized “more than 90 percent of the dictionary” in English, he can only tell you what a few of those words mean.
“I memorize small words first, then big words later,” he explained in Thai, adding that he tries to spend at least half an hour each day hitting the books.
With some 6,000 players set to attend, the King’s Cup is the globe’s biggest Scrabble competition and an indication of its wide popularity in Thailand.
The game is a favorite among schoolteachers who use it as a language-learning tool, and the kingdom is the only Asian country to field world champions, despite the country’s notoriously low levels of English proficiency.
Amnuay Ploysangngam, who founded Thailand’s first Scrabble association in the 80s and is credited with popularizing the game, said today nearly three quarters of schools have Scrabble clubs.
“We never expected that one day we would become world champions,” he said.
Yet the success of Komol and other elite Thai players — none of whom is a fluent English speaker — is testament to what really drives victories in the top tier: an analytical mind.
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