Transgender Woman Wins British Scrabble Championship

Mikki Nicholson won the British national championship in Scrabble over the weekend, only five years after beginning to play the game on the Internet.

According to The Guardian, Nicholson, 32, won a "nail-biting contest" Saturday in London against Mark Nyman, winner of the more than 20 major tournaments. She will go on to compete in the Causeway Scrabble Challenge in Malaysia in December.

"The best word I played was 'inficete' [not witty] as it changed the flow of the game and my best move was when I played 'tenor', as it allowed me to open up the board for me to play a high-scoring K," she said of her winning performance.

The Guardian reported, "Other words that proved significant in the final included 'oceanaut' [undersea explorer], 'winna' [will not] and 'nads', slang for testicles."

Nicholson, who is from Cumbria, said that success in Scrabble depended on having strong intuition and facility with numbers.