Scrabble board. Two tile racks. One hundred letter tiles in an opaque bag. Played among two to four players, the goal is to score more points by forming letters individually. Each player draws seven letter tiles and places them on the tile rack. Words could be formed on the board either horizontally (left to right) or vertically (top to bottom). After each turn, players should fill their rack again. If you could play all seven of your tiles in a single turn, you would receive a Bingo. Each letter is assigned to a point value, also with special squares that could multiply the value of the letter or an entire word. The game ends when all tiles are drawn and one player empties their rack and the player with the maximum score wins the match. This is the regular Scrabble. A game most of us may be familiar with. But the game is also played with a certain seriousness, where moves are perfectly timed and strategies are executed.
As the city is gearing up for Chennai Open Scrabble Tournament 2026 next month, CE talks to ‘Master’ Ranganathan Chakravarthy, an international scrabble player about the intricacies of the sport.
When Ranganathan was simply reading through Adyar Times one morning in 1998, he found that a Scrabble tournament was being held in Anna University. “This surprised me because I had not seen any Scrabble tournaments before in my life,” he says. Explaining his first tournament experience, “I was shocked to learn that there were so many words which are unknown to me, like AA (a type of lava in Hawaiian), CWM (Welsh word for valley), TWP (Welsh word for dim-witted),” he exclaimed, pointing to these words which appear in the official Scrabble dictionaries used for gameplay. Ranganathan came second in that tournament. He then went on to win the Bengaluru championship 2003, the Goa championship thrice in 2004, 2014, and 2016, and two international championships, in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
Getting into the game
He learnt Scrabble from his father when he was in class 4. Now, Ranganathan introduces and teaches Scrabble to young minds all over Tamil Nadu. He says, “It’s an easy game to learn; it’s like playing Ludo. It has simple rules,” and yet strategically playing will help you score points. The main challenge of the game is learning words. Beginning with two-letter words, it encompasses a wide range of vocabulary. After playing the game for so many years, Ranganathan says he has a knowledge of over one lakh words, including Gen-Z slang like ‘Finna’ and ‘Hella’ which are getting added to the dictionary. “You have to know only the word; you don’t have to know the meaning; that lessens the burden,” he adds.
The turning point for him was in 2013, when a boy from Pakistan won a Scrabble championship. It inspired Ranganathan to focus on the game. “It (Playing the game) is a matter of country’s pride because it is a game that we (Indians) can also play very well. That alone made me quit my job as a lawyer,” he says. He founded the Madras Scrabble Foundation in 2014 in Adyar. Encouraging people to join the club without any registration fee, he asked them to “just walk inside.”
Ranganathan likens Scrabble to chess. Besides word knowledge, it also helps the players to think critically and analyse the points. “Scrabble is not just vocabulary; it is also about choosing the right move at the right time,” he says. With the wider knowledge of words, players should analyse the probability of tiles and position as well. “If you don’t want to give your opponent a better chance, you have to think one step ahead,” he explains.
Taking it to students
At a time when youngsters are cooped up at home with studies on one hand and social media on the other, Ranganathan decided to introduce them to the game. He visited several schools and colleges to introduce Scrabble, but only a few took interest in it. “I actually learned sales from it,” he quips. He then went to his alma mater, Sankara Se ior Secondary School in Adyar, in 2014, to get students involved in the game. Since then, he has introduced Scrabble in more than 20 schools and colleges across Tamil Nadu. “The year 2022 brought a drastic change. Queen Mary’s (QMC) was one of the colleges I introduced Scrabble to. We conducted Scrabble literacy programmes for 5,000 students,” he shares. Ranganathan is involved in conducting the Alfred Butts Intercollegiate Scrabble Tournament in association with QMC, where young talents from various colleges participate.
Having competed in the first Alfred Butts tournament in 2023, Jebrish, a former student of MSc Zoology and now a PhD scholar at Presidency College, shares, “Scrabble wasn’t as tough a game as I feared. Winning is about just getting one point more against my opponent, and that became my concentration. Now, I want to teach students and encourage them to participate in competitions.” Following his teacher’s footsteps, Jebrish has already taken initiatives to introduce Scrabble to his juniors. But he continues to harbour a dream, “I wish to win, at least, once against my mentor, Ranganathan Chakravarthy,” he smiles.
Bhavani, a BSc Statistics graduate from Presidency College, shares, “My first tournament was at Vivekananda College in 2024, and I did not win. Participation gave me a good experience.” After losing in the next three intercollegiate and open tournaments, she began taking her Scrabble lessons seriously. She won the third place in the Alfred Butts competition in February 2026, which was her first ever victory. “I am improving my skills for upcoming tournaments,” she says. “Ranganathan sir has helped me greatly to learn strategies to score higher points and bingos. My goal is to become a Scrabble champion like my mentor, and teach others.”
Now, Ranganathan confesses to being more focused on introducing the game to students from the south of the state. “Bright minds can be found everywhere,” he wraps up.