A missing letter “G” has led to accusations of cheating, and a demand for a scrabble competitor to be strip-searched at this year’s World Scrabble Championships in Warsaw, Poland. It is the biggest scandal to rock the event since a player accused another of eating a tile.

Chollapat Itthi-Aree, from Thailand, was incensed and demanded officials take Ed Martin, an IT consultant from London, to the toilet and search him for the missing letter.

The 24-year-old maths teacher made the allegation after the letter went missing during their tense game.

Tournament judges disagreed with Mr Itthi-Aree however, and refused to carry out the search, enabling Mr Martin to go on to win the controversial game by a single point.

More than 100 competitors from 44 countries put their lexical knowledge to the test as they competed for the $20 000 first prize.

A bearded 44-year-old New Zealander, Nigel Richards, eventually won the tournament.

For a man of many words, Richards’ acceptance speech wasn’t huge: “Played OK. Nice.”

[Source: Telegraph]