Darryl Francis (born 16 April 1948) is a British author, mainly of books on ''

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 ...

''. He was a co-compiler of Chambers' original Official Scrabble Words publication in 1988 and consultant on all future editions, along with ex ABSP chairman

Allan Simmons Allan Simmons (born 27 July 1957) is a British scrabble expert who was one of the founder members of the Association of British Scrabble Players and succeeded Peter Finley as its chairman. He was the first chairman of the World English-language ...

. He is also co-compiler on the Collins Official Scrabble Words publication in 2007 and 2012, again along with ex ABSP chairman Allan Simmons. Darryl Francis co-hosted a series of five short programmes for the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

on the

World Scrabble Championship The World Scrabble Championship (WSC) is played to determine the world champion in competitive English-language Scrabble. It was held in every odd year from 1991 to 2013; from 2013 onwards, it became an annual event. The most successful player i ...

in 1991, alongside TV presenter

Alan Coren Alan Coren (27 June 1938 – 18 October 2007) was an English humorist, writer and satirist who was a regular panellist on the BBC radio quiz '' The News Quiz'' and a team captain on BBC television's '' Call My Bluff''. Coren was also a journalist ...

. He has also ghost-written many ''Scrabble'' books for well-known personalities, most notably ex-MP

Gyles Brandreth Gyles Daubeney Brandreth (born 8 March 1948) is a British broadcaster, writer and former politician. He has worked as a television presenter, theatre producer, journalist, author and publisher. He was a presenter for TV-am's '' Good Morning Bri ...

. In 1985, he was the series 6 champion for the UK game show ''Countdown''. In 2013, he returned to the programme to participate in the 30th Birthday Championship, where he was the earliest series champion in the field. He has also written extensively for the American journal '' Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics'', having contributed nearly 200 articles as of 2010. His articles on wordplay, word puzzles and all manner of word recreations have appeared regularly since 1968. Francis has also appeared on '' Turnabout'', '' BrainTeaser'' and '' Eggheads''.

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External links

* 1948 births Living people British male writers British non-fiction writers British Scrabble players Contestants on British game shows Word Ways people British male non-fiction writers {{UK-writer-stub