KARACHI: The two-day 18th Horlicks Inter-school Scrabble Championship concluded at the BVS Parsi School here on Sunday with the remaining categories being played.

With another 635 players contesting on day two, the tournament attracted a total of 1,394 players, easily the largest gathering of wordsmiths in Pakistan and probably the largest in the world. The tournament’s participation has been growing exponentially since the last few years with this tournament attracting almost double of last year.

This tournament truly had a national flavour with players from Quetta and Lahore participating besides players from schools, colleges and universities in Karachi. Such flavours have been witnessed at the nationals but very rarely at this level.

Billed as the tournament that identifies potential world champions from among the winners, this tournament too will have around a 100 players called for the national junior training camp that will eventually be shortlisted for trials to be held for the Pakistan team to be selected for the upcoming Junior World Scrabble Championships.

It must be noted that current junior world champions Moonis Khan, Syed Imad Ali and Hasham Hadi are the finds of previous editions of this championship. The current national champion Waseem Khatri and former junior world champion Moizullah Baig are also finds of such championships.

The players were divided into 10 age categories with the first day seeing players aged eight to 10 taking part.

Second day’s results:

Division F: M. Hamza Naeem (Happy Home School) 1st; Teham Ahmed (Arts and Science Academy) 2nd; Huzaifa Zafar (Jaffar Public) 3rd.

Division G: Ali Wasif (BVS) 1st; Mustafa Aslam (BVS) 2nd; Noorun Nisa Shaukat (Beaconhouse) 3rd.

Division H: Basil Ali Khan (Jaffar Public) 1st; Zaeem Hafiz (Happy Home School) 2nd; Abdul Khaliq (Jaffar Public School) 3rd.

Division I: Simal Linjara (Defence Authority School) 1st; Mohammad Umer Naeem (Adamjee College) 2nd; Fatima Siddique( KGS) 3rd.

Division J:

Mirza Abbas Baig (Bahria University) 1st; Syed Ali Akber Zaidi (Commec)s 2nd; Ali Reza Pabaney (KGS) 3rd.

First day’s results:

Age category 8:1.Huzaifa Mania (Beaconhouse); 2.Hassan Mustajab (Brooks Grammar) 3.Umme Rehman (Army Public).

Age category 9:1. Misbah ur Rehman(BVS Parsi); 2. M. Owais Lakho (Arts & Science Academy); 3. Rahim Damani (BVS Parsi).

Age category 10:1. Muzammil Asim (BVS); 2. Habiba Farhan, (Happy Home); 3. Rishit Kumar (BVS)

Age category 11: 1. Zehra Zaeem (Arts & Science Academy); 2. Momina Riazuddin (Arts & Science Academy); 3. Mustafa Ali (Froebel).

Age category 12: 1. Saim Waqar (Happy Home); 2. Usman Shaukat (Beaconhouse); 3. Eshaal Basit (Happy Home).

Published in Dawn January 30th, 2017