Craig Beevers is an English professional ''

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a Board game, game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, re ...

'' player and former World Scrabble Champion.

Professional career

2014

In the World Championship, or Scrabble Champions Tournament (SCT) as it was dubbed that year and in 2013, Beevers defeated Alastair Richards 2–1 in a best-of-three quarter-finals. He went on to beat Dave Wiegand 3–2 in a best-of-five semi-finals. After securing a 3–1 win against Chris Lipe in a best-of-five finals, Beevers became the 2014 World Scrabble Champion, and only the second Englishman to do so after

Mark Nyman Mark Nyman (born 14 October 1966) is an English professional Scrabble player originally from London, England and now a resident in Cheshire. At the end of 2002, he was rated 205 and was top-rated in the ABSP ratings. As at 7 September 2015 he i ...

(1993).

2015

Beevers won the UK National Championship, and hit a peak rating of 2161 (World No. 7), but failed to defend his title at the 2015 World Scrabble Championship, at which he finished 9th.

2016

Beevers finished in 57th place (amongst a field of 72) at the MSI World Scrabble Championship 2016. He also lost his title of National Champion to Phil Robertshaw at the 2016 National Scrabble Championship in October, ending up in 14th place.

Other endeavours

Beevers is a former contestant of the television programme. ''

Countdown A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and eve ...

''. He won series 57 of this game show, which involves finding anagrams up to 9 letters and calculated mathematical problems. He is also the webmaster for the websites of both the

World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association The World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association (WESPA) is the overarching global body for English-language national Scrabble associations and similar entities. Formation WESPA was formed in the course of a players' meeting at the ...

(WESPA) and the

Association of British Scrabble Players The Association of British Scrabble Players oversees competitive Scrabble in the UK. It was formed in 1987 by agreement with J. W. Spear & Sons, the game's trademark owner, who were subsequently bought out by Mattel Inc. in 1993. It currently ha ...

(ABSP). He and fellow Scrabble player Ray Tate attempted to break the world record for most points scored in 24 hours of Scrabble in 2012, but the effort had to be shelved after Tate "keeled over with dehydration after 15 hours of play". The duo "unofficially" broke the record a year later, according to ''GazetteLive''. In May 2015, Beevers guest-wrote an

oped An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted aud ...

for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' titled "As world Scrabble champion, I think new words are obvs lolz", in response to the addition of some 6,500 new words to the official lexicon used in competitive Scrabble, Collins Official Scrabble Words published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

. Beevers authored a book on how to "(p)lay like a Scrabble world champion" titled ''Word Addict''; it was published by

in 2015. The same year, as part of World Scrabble Day celebrations, Beevers took part in a 24-hour Scrabble marathon that was streamed online.

Personal life

Craig Beevers was born and raised in Norton,

County Durham County Durham, officially simply Durham, is a ceremonial county in North East England.UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. The county borders Northumberland and Tyne an ...

, England. He attended the

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...

References

Bibliography

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beevers, Craig British Scrabble players Living people People from Norton, County Durham Sportspeople from County Durham World Scrabble Championship winners Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of the University of Sheffield