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And just to show you that cycling doesn’t have the overly-competitive streak all to itself, recent revelations have rocked the usually discreet world of vowels, consonants and blanks. Yes, the dark side of competitive Scrabble has raised its head and Allan Simmons, National Scrabble Championship winner, has received a three-year ban for cheating.
Having apparently been under suspicion for several years, Simmons was finally caught red-fingered in this year’s British Masters putting his unwanted letters back into the bag so he could draw news ones. Well I’ll be triple word scored! When the evidence became undeniable, Scrabble’s governing body had no alternative but to throw the Collins Oxford Dictionary at him. Boom, boom.
In the testosterone-fuelled gladiatorial amphitheatre that is modern Scrabble recent contraventions have included players dropping letters and kicking them away, swallowing them, attempting to alter the letters with marker pen and even trying to remove the letter with boiling water under the auspices of making a brew. Even in this once genteel pastime it’s reassuring to note the Corinthian spirit is conspicuous by its absence!
