Why Nigeria wins at Scrabble

摘要

IN THE hot, golden light of an Abuja afternoon two men spin a rotating Scrabble board, oblivious to the flies buzzing around them. The opening moves in the word-building game are relatively low-scoring: "writer" for 26 points, followed by "pool", "ow", "or" and "li". But the scores soon stack up, including two 50-point bonuses for getting rid of all seven letters for "mediant" (the third note of a diatonic musical scale) and "deracine" (from deracine, a French noun and adjective for someone who has been uprooted). In less than 20 minutes, the time allowed for a professional game, Eta Karo beats Ben Quick-pen by 461 points to 410. Both men are members of the triumphant Nigerian team that last month won the World English-language Scrabble Players Association championship for the second time running. Four of the team's eight players made the top ten, out of 118 competitors.