2023-11-30 04:13:00
the essential You don’t come across a World Scrabble champion every day. This is Thérèse’s gift for her 100th birthday.
As she celebrated her 100th birthday on Saturday, Thérèse was going to receive a gift like no other. In the middle of her family gathered in the lounges of the Balmain restaurant Les Feuillantines, this inveterate Scrabble player met Benjamin Valor, world champion of classic Scrabble in 2009 and 2017, and champion of France in 2010, 2022 and 2023.
The right opponent
Coming from the Fruges Scrabble club in Pas-de-Calais, the 40-year-old champion crossed France at the invitation of Thérèse’s family to play a high-level game with her. Total surprise for the centenary. “I didn’t expect it at all! I’ve been playing Scrabble for a very long time, probably for over thirty years, and always with passion,” she says. Problem: Thérèse has difficulty finding adversaries equal to her. This is why those close to him offered him this meeting with such a luminary. “I’m sometimes asked for autographs or photos, but this is the first time I’ve been asked to come and give away a game of Scrabble,” smiles Benjamin Valor. Before the meal even began, the two players began a duel which quickly turned to the advantage of the three-time French champion. This mathematics and physical science teacher in a high school in Hauts-de-France discovered Scrabble around twenty years ago. “It was following a car accident. While I was stuck at home for a long time, I was looking online for a game to keep me busy, and that’s when I found Scrabble. Five years later , I became world champion for the first time,” he confides.
“An intergenerational game”, according to the Pas-de-Calais champion. So, what qualities are required to shine in this discipline where we juggle words on a board of 225 squares? “Scrabble champions are first and foremost math people before being literary people. We can always learn the words. Whereas the method, which consists of finding the right locations and combinations, is much more mathematical,” emphasizes -he. Also, Thérèse has a very good mathematical sense, but also a remarkable memory, in which the evening when she blew out her hundred candles will remain engraved.
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