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Commentary: Round 24

[ Congratulations to the new World Scrabble® Champion, Adam Logan (CAN), and the runner-up Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (THA). ]

Go to: Registration, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24.

Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (THA) plays Gareth Williams (Wal) at Board 1, Naween Fernando (AUS) plays Ganesh Asirvatham (MYS) at Board 2. If Pakorn wins, he plays Adam. If Gareth wins big, he may do so. If Naween or Ganesh win and Pakorn loses, they may get to play.

With 22 tiles left, Pakorn and Gareth are in a close game, with Gareth leading 295-288. The board is open, Gareth has the blank and 13 minutes, Pakorn has an X and only 3 minutes.

The game goes down to 35 seconds on Gareth's clock and 19 seconds on Pakorn's. The onlookers were tenser than the players, as Pakorn's paper annotator (for redundancy, each player has a paper annotator who records the moves, and an online annotator who copies the moves to the web site) had misrecorded a rack, leading them to believe that there were still tiles left in the bag that neither player was aware of.

Pakorn ends up winning 428-425 (though the computer says the score should have been 428-427), and will face Adam for the best-of-five match to determine the new World Champion tomorrow here at 10:00 A.M. UTC.