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Welcome to the Quillette podcast, hosted on alternate weeks by me, Jonathan Kay, and by Iona Italia.

Quillette is where Freethought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas

and fearless commentary. You are about to hear a free preview of this week's episode. To hear the

full episode and to get access to all our podcasts and articles,

visit us at quillette.com and click the subscribe button. And this week on the Quillette podcast,

I'll be turning to some lighter fare. Specifically, I'll be talking about the fascinating world

of elite Scrabble, with a true expert in the field.

Toronto-based mathematician, linguist, and Scrabble tournament organizer John Chu.

He's someone who happens to live in my neighborhood, which is how I originally met him,

but he spends much of his life circling the globe, overseeing Scrabble tournaments in such places

as Bangkok, Malta, and this month, Baltimore, Maryland, where John was overseeing the

2025 Scrabble Players Championship. In our interview, John and I discussed Scrabble in the

context of various other classic board games, including chess,

which, by the way, is going to be the subject of a coming Quillette podcast in September.

When I interview Danny Wrench of Chess.com, who's got a new book out called Dark Squares.

For the time being, please enjoy my interview with International Scrabble

...