Panupol Sujjayakorn Explained

Nationality:Thai
Occupation:Scrabble player, economist

Panupol Sujjayakorn (Thai: ภาณุพล สัจยากร; ; born 1985) is a Thai Scrabble player, an economics graduate at Chulalongkorn University and manager at ExxonMobil.[1] He won the Thailand Matchplay Championship 2002, World Scrabble Championship 2003,[2] Thailand King's Cup 2005 and was runner-up in the American National Scrabble Championship 2005 to Dave Wiegand. He is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of words despite having only conversational English.[3]

In the World Scrabble Championship 2003, Sujjayakorn won his first 8 games and 18 of his first 21 before losing the final three games to finish with 18 wins, 6 losses, first place. He then played fellow countryman Pakorn Nemitrmansuk in the best-of-five final. The final was tied at two wins each before Sujjayakorn won the final game 444-387 to be crowned World Scrabble champion in his first appearance at the tournament. In the 2005 National Scrabble Championship Sujjayakorn won his first 9 consecutive games and 14 of his first 15, but won just 7 of his final 13 games. He qualified in second place for the final where he played Dave Wiegand, and led 2-0 in the final before Wiegand won all of the final three games to win the tournament.[4]

Achievements

Notes and References

  1. Thailand gets the last word in Scrabble newstraitstimes, 6 December 2010 http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/goscrab/Article/ Retrieved 30 April 2011
  2. http://www.wscgames.com/2003/ WSC 2003
  3. Scrabble Kings Vie for Linguistic Superiority, New York Times, Alan Cowell, 21 November 2005 https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/international/21scrabble.html Retrieved 30 April 2011
  4. Portland man spells his way to v-i-c-t-o-r-y The Seattle Times, Victor Greto, 26 August 2005 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002452845_scrabble26.html Retrieved 30 April 2011