This is probably news to most of us, but we're guessing that the cool Malaysian teens that won fifth place at a global Scrabble competition recently already knew this little fact.

The teens, Tengku Ariff Shah Tengku Shahrir, Jareth Mah Zhen Seong, Eirfan Razman, Kyan Teo Ching-Wei, Ali Imran Hisham Talib, Anna Natasha Mohd Khairil, Ariana Onyinyechukwu Daniel and Dresden Lim Zhan Le, defeated the teams from the United States and Nepal to make it to the quarter-finals before losing to India.

A proud achievement

Team Malaysia’s astounding performance in the Gladiators Wespa Youth Cup 2021, was lauded by Malaysia Scrabble Association president Mohammad Ali Ismail.

“We knew that Team India would be formidable but hoped to upstage them although we knew it would be tough for our young Team Malaysia players.

“All in all, it was a very good and challenging match that could have gone either way,” he said as quoted in a report by Malay Mail.

This is the first time the World English-language Scrabble Players Association (Wespa) organised the competition virtually due to COVID-19.

To ensure everyone was in compliance to the regulations (basically no cheating lah), participants were also told to record themselves from the side so that the technical team could monitor them throughout the competition.

A total of 96 teens from 16 countries and five continents took part this year.