A slew of four-letter words was narrowly avoided at this year’s World Scrabble Championships when a competitor demanded his opponent be strip-searched after the disappearance of a letter ‘G’.
Furious Chollapat Itthi-Aree, from Thailand, demanded officials take Ed Martin, an IT consultant from London, to the toilet and search him believing he had the missing tile about his person.
But judges at the tournament in Warsaw, Poland, disagreed with Mr Itthi-Aree, a 24-year-old maths teacher.
They refused to carry out the search, enabling Mr Martin, 35, to go on to win the game by a single point.
Over 100 word wranglers from 44 countries contested for the $20,000 first prize which was eventually won by 44- year-old New Zealander Nigel Richards.
Richards, who sported a magnificent beard, combined his tiles to form the word ‘omnified’ and score an impressive 96 in his final game against Australian Andrew Fisher, 46.
The score finished up at 476-334.
