Yiddish: It gives you an excellent advantage in Scrabble.

Nigel Richards is living proof. A New Zealand native now residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Richards won the 2008 National Scrabble Championship held July 25 through July 29 in Orlando, Fla., after 28 rounds of play. The 30-something security engineer got a great assist from Yiddish in the form of a rarely played word: “shuln.” The prize: $25,000.

“It was a good strategic play trying to keep the board closed and not let Brian [Cappelletto, his opponent] score,” said John D. Williams, executive director of the National Scrabble Association.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

In the nail-biting final round, Cappelletto, who hails from Chicago, opened with “enow” for 14 points. Richards immediately pulled ahead with “libido.” On his third turn, Cappelletto “bingo’ed” (won 50 extra points for using all his letters) with “serrying,” grabbing the lead. But then Richards bingo’ed with “penates” on his ninth turn, bringing his score to 370. Cappelletto put down “bather.” Tie score. But for his next hand, he drew a frustrating A-A-A-E-I-U-U. Richards held the remaining tiles: D-L-N-U. With the H in “bather” lined up just below the S in “penates,” Richards pounced, laying U-L-N to spell “shuln,” plural of shul, or synagogue, for 16 points and a score of 397. On his next turn, Richards played out his hand, placing D on the end of “innerve.” Final score: Richards 412, Cappelletto 401.

Ranging in age from 11 to 90, and coming from all over the world, 660 other players also participated in the championship tournament.

A surprising number of Yiddish, Hebrew and Yinglish words are officially kosher for Scrabble, including shlep, shlub, shlumpy, shmaltz, shmo and our personal favorite, shmooze.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount