Letter G Goes Missing From Scrabble Championship

During the World Scrabble Championships, officials demanded that two competitors at the globally renowned event  turn out their pockets upon discovery that a letter “G” had gone missing. The ‘G’ disappeared in Poland, and the game had to be stopped until the matter could be resolved.  An official confirmed Tuesday that the disappearance of a “G” tile did occur during the international event, a five day championship throw down held in the Polish Capital of Warsaw.

Brian Dede,coordinator of the highly publicized event, said a referee was forced to intervene when opponents Edward Martin from Great Britain and Chollapat Itthi-Aree of  Thailand noticed a missing tile during the last draw of their game.  A search instantly ensued as officials scrambled to find the missing letter’s tile, peering under and around the gaming table, checking the seats, the competitor’s clothing, and all other likely places where a stray tile might be found.  After a thorough search failed to turn anything up, both players were asked to reveal the contents of their pockets.

“How humiliating,” noted one observer who was clearly rattled by the entire disruption.  ”It was rather like being searched for shoplifting, with the players treated like suspected criminals.  It was the last thing one would expect from a civilized championship Scrabble competition.”

After all of the searching failed to yield the letter, it was determined that it must never have been in the bag to begin with, and another letter “G” tile was placed in it.  The game continued peacefully after that, but not before upsetting a few of the spectators of the event who were worried something dreadful might have happened and were not given information until after the matter was settled.

After all was said and done, the winner was Nigel Richards of New Zealand, who defeated Andrew Fisher from Australia with three games to two in the best-of-five finals. Nigel now holds the record for being the first two-time World Scrabble Champion.