The Scrabble Coach of
Kings College, Victoria Island, Lagos, Wale Ilori, has said that consistently playing with a better opponent would improve the skills of any scrabble player.
Ilori told newsmen at the ongoing ‘Scrabbulympics’ competition holding in Lagos from November 4 to 8 at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere.
According to him, when a player continually plays with someone on a higher level than himself, he will be forced to improve his skills and strategies in the game.
“It is a simple theory in life. When you want to become great, challenge those who are better than you in the field you intend to develop yourself in.
“When you engage those who are better than you in a specific field, you unknowingly improve on yourself, to even become better than your superiors,” he said.
Ilori, who represented the country at the 2010 Africa Scrabble Championship in Ghana, said that constantly studying the dictionary would also help to improve one’s knowledge of words.
“When you study the dictionary, you inevitably develop and improve in the volume of words you know,” he said.
Ilori also said that part of becoming a better player would be to understand the concept of hooks, which is a crucial strategy in scrabble.
He described hooks as tiles on the board, which you can add to, in order to create stronger and higher scoring words.
“This will increase your chances of scoring very high points, while using fewer letters on the game board,” he said.
Ilori added that the country had enough talents that could easily master the concept of becoming better players in scrabble.