India’s Scrabble Prodigy: 14-Year-Old Madhav Kamath Ranks Among World’s Top Players

Scrabble has been a part of Madhav Gopal Kamath’s home for as long as he can remember.

The 14-year-old was first introduced to it at the age of six when he saw his father, Sudhir Kamath, play the game with a friend at home, making completely different words with the same letter tiles.

Madhav was instantly hooked, and his journey with the game that would help him create history began.

Today, he is the number one Scrabble player in the world under the youth category and among the top ten players across categories.

Madhav recently won the Youth World Scrabble Championship 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, becoming the first Indian to win the tournament.

“I used to play Scrabble with a friend at home, and Madhav would stand around watching us play. Once we played a word, Aediles, and Madhav said, ‘You had the same tiles last week, but you made a different word’— which was Deiseal. I was amazed by his memory and understanding, and encouraged him to play with us,” says his father, reflecting on how Madhav started

Deep down, Madhav knew he would win the tournament.

“Even when I knew I had a 100 per cent chance of winning, I was focused on the game instead of thinking about winning. As I had already secured the second position twice in this championship, it was a long time coming. It is a relief to have won this,” Madhav says.

His love for words and mathematical strategy converge in his inherent talent and passion for Scrabble.

“I love playing board games and reading books. Scrabble is the perfect game for me as it brings together critical thinking and language,” he says. His bookshelves house a surfeit of board games, including Catan and Ticket to Ride, and are lined with trophies from spelling bees and Scrabble tournaments. “Professional learning began pretty early for me, at seven, when I started learning Scrabble words beyond regular English. At 12, I played a tournament and then thought of participating in competitions,” he says.

His father is his first and only mentor; the teen has never taken Scrabble classes, as he feels that they pull the fun out of it.

Madhav loves the sense of immersion in a game and dedicates 30 minutes to an hour a day to Scrabble through online apps. When Madhav draws a bunch of lettered tiles from his pouch, a sense of ease is evident, as if he is familiar with each alphabet his fingers glide over, even without looking.

“I started with shorter words, moved on to ‘bingos’ with the bonus, and finally learnt higher scoring tiles with Z and Q. I am intrigued by words that not just look absurd but have interesting meanings behind them, such as the word Abrook, which was actually misspelt in a Shakespearean play. Whenwe, a word that refers to the good old days, has always amused me,” the class 10 student laughs, “Hindi words such as kaamchor and kanjoos have been added to the Scrabble dictionary. I recently played the word badmaash in a game.”

His love for author Agatha Christie is evident in the thrill he gets from all things hidden, secret, and uncertain.

The act of venturing into solving a mystery—be it guessing what tiles his opponent has or reading a murder mystery novel—excites him the most.

“In Scrabble, not everything is out in the open. The game is about odds. It is only towards the end of the game that you know what tiles your opponent has,” he says. The teen enjoys the puzzling process of churning his mind to come up with a word with the tiles he has.

“When I’m thinking of a word, I have to ask myself if it is plausible enough to be a word, or if I am making a phoney. My friends sometimes joke about me being a geek, though I don’t mind it. If this means being a nerd, I’m a nerd,” he adds firmly. Apart from Scrabble, Madhav plays football and loves debating, often participating in the Model United Nations. Whenever he tells people he plays Scrabble, he gets the usual ‘Oh, so you read the dictionary?’ Madhav calls this a misconception. “People think whoever reads the most books wins,” he says, “But that is a misconception.”

Madhav places strategy as important as vocabulary for the game and explains the importance of not creating a hotspot for the opponent on the board. “Whenever you think you’ve found a good play, check for something better, as you may find it most of the time,” he says. The Scrabble champion loves sushi, but finds peace in his comfort food, idli and dosa.

Concentration and patience are his biggest takeaways. According to Madhav, all a Scrabble player needs is a little amount of love for words and a spirit for strategy.
He confesses that pursuing the game only competitively can get annoying as “one shouldn’t take it so seriously that they stop having fun” . Madhav has been winning most games at home now. The next goal, he says, is to play in an adult world championship and win it.

(Article by Samiya Chopra from The New Indian Express)