00:00Okay, let's turn from there to our good news today story and that is a pretty special one.
00:06It's a historic moment for Indian scrabble lovers as a 14-year-old scrabble prodigy.
00:12Madhav Gopal Kamath has won the 2025 World Youth Scrabble Championship in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur.
00:20With this victory, Madhav becomes the first Indian ever to claim a major global scrabble title,
00:26a Delhi teen competing with 218 players from 18 nations to win that big prize.
00:33And guess who's joining us as our special guest today?
00:37Madhav Gopal Kamath, India's first World Youth Scrabble Champion.
00:41Madhav, congratulations.
00:43Tell us what it takes to become a scrabble champion for those of us who play scrabble but are not world champions at it.
00:50What's made it so special? I'm told you started playing it at the age of six.
00:56Yes, that's correct.
00:59So, the first thing it takes is a lot of commitment, a lot of dedication to the game.
01:04It's not as easy as just reading a bunch of books or reading the dictionary.
01:09It takes quite a bit of dedicated effort and practice and studying.
01:13But the other thing you need to do is just enjoy the game as much as you can
01:18because the more you enjoy it, the more you'll be able to play it and the better you'll get at it as a result.
01:24But Madhav, you're a school student. You've got school studies, exams.
01:27How many hours a day do you practice?
01:29Do you need to practice scrabble day after day to become a world champion?
01:33And who do you practice with?
01:34Yeah. So, I practice for about half an hour to one hour a day.
01:42That's the minimum I try to do a day.
01:45And I practice mostly by myself.
01:47So, there's online apps and programs for it.
01:49So, I'll practice by myself but I'll also play games with my father who's also a scrabble player
01:54and with some of the other kids from India who play scrabble.
01:56You know, we've seen people compulsively playing games now, all these online games,
02:02Wordle, Sudoku, but scrabble is a bit of an old world game.
02:07So, what made you take to scrabble?
02:09What is it about scrabble that excites you so much?
02:16So, scrabble might be seen as an old world game and in a way it is because
02:21each individual game of scrabble can take up to an hour but
02:24it's still very fast-paced, it's very mind-sport focused so in that sense it's quite similar to chess
02:31and it's at the intersection of English and Maths which are two of my most favorite things.
02:39And are there lots of young scrabble…
02:40Like how it combines strategy and just…
02:43And like we have chess clubs, do we have lots of scrabble clubs across the country?
02:47Are you playing with people of your age or do you end up playing with, say, people like me in their 60s?
02:54So, there's a wide variety of people of ages playing scrabble but…
03:01Yeah, the majority would be adults. It's still not that common amongst kids.
03:06There are definitely other kids but that's not that concentrated.
03:08And yeah, there are scrabble clubs all over India but mostly situated in metro cities.
03:14So, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore have very active clubs.
03:17The majority of members would be adults but there are a good number of children and that's increasing.
03:22Can I ask you, give us two of the highest scoring hard-to-play words in scrabble.
03:28If I… you know, what for you are some of the hardest words, what were some of the words that helped you win the world championship?
03:34So, yeah, there's a lot of archaic or obscure words that you have to play.
03:47Do you remember any of them?
03:49Yeah, so, I think the funniest or the weirdest word in a way that I played was the word cow tree.
03:55It's a specific type of tree that has some relation to a cow, but it's an interesting word, yeah.
04:01Cow tree. Okay, I'm going to tell you one as I end.
04:04The word is literally just…
04:05Do you know… I'm going to ask you a question, Madhav.
04:07Do you know what is the highest scoring word ever possible in scrabble?
04:10Yeah.
04:12What is it?
04:14Yeah, I do know that one. It's oxyphen butazone. It's a chemical, but…
04:19That's right. The highest scoring word ever possible in scrabble is oxyphen butazone for 1,778 points.
04:30But Madhav, you made us proud as India's first ever scrabble champion.
04:35May you become a… take your sport to greater heights.
04:40And it's great to see India right there on the scrabble map.
04:43Thanks very much, Madhav, for joining me on the show tonight.
