Battle to be top man of letters.

Byline: Rebekah Oruye

THERE was a war of words at a Birmingham hotel as more than 50 contestants battled to become the new national Scrabble champion.

Players from across the UK confronted each other at the Great Barr Hotel.

Philip Nelkon, promotions manager at manufacturers Mattel, said: "Up to 300 players enter the regional rounds, from ten years old up to people over 80.

Scrabble spans all generations and is a game that has something for everyone."

Reigning champion Allan Simmons, from Scotland, said becoming a Scrabble master was all about techniques and tactics.

"Part of getting better at playing Scrabble is knowing the smaller two and three letter words."

The former IT manager swapped his nine-to-five job for a specialist role as a Scrabble consultant.

"Not only do I get to play Scrabble all the time, I get paid to do so," he said.

Allan, who has played the game for 34 years, is a firm believer in playing Scrabble the old-fashioned way with a board.

"It is good to play online to practice but until you play face-to-face you don't really know what a buzz you have from playing the game."

The youngest contestant at the event was 19-yearold Aston University logistics student Austin Shin, who thrashed his first opponent by more than 200 points.

"I wouldn't say it was easy, I'd say I got lucky," he said, modestly.

As an eight-year-old he was pitting his wits against adults more than three times his age in national competitions.

Mike Chappell, aged 42, said: "I was always into Scrabble as a child. I was quite nerdy. It was only when I joined a league a few years ago, that I started to take it seriously and began competing."

The first prize was pounds 1,500, with pounds 750 going to the runner-up and pounds 100 for third place.

SCRABBLE FACTFILE The game was invented in 1938 by US architect Alfred Mosher Butts.

Scrabble is currently sold in 121 countries and in 29 different language versions, with 150 million sets bought to date.

In April 1982, Karl Khoshnaw scored a record 392 points with the word CAZIQUES getting Q on a double letter score and the C and S on triple word scores. Caziques means West Indian Chiefs.

The highest total score is 830, achieved by American Michael Cresta in October 2006.

The game contains 100 tiles, 98marked with a letter and the point value based on their frequency in standard English writing. There are also two blanks which are worth no points - but are the most popular bricks.

CAPTION(S):

Three letter word: Aston University student Austin Shin in competition.