While the 2025 NCAA Men’s Final Four games are happening in San Antonio, another fierce competition is taking place: the state scrabble championship.

A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title.

Scrabble is getting a bit of a makeover, at least in Europe.

From just being interested to then a scrabble champ, De Waelsche, the librarian at Burbank High School, won first place in Division Four at the Scrabble Players Championship in Las Vegas this summer.

Here’s the sitch, Scrabble stans.

San Antonio 12-year-old Ricky Rodriguez has always had a way with words and will use those skills at a national Scrabble competition in Washington, D.C..

Ricky Rodriguez was diagnosed with autism at 18 weeks. “I’ll see the word and I am like ‘There is no way that is a word,’” Erin Rodriguez said. “Around this time, my oldest was practicing for the spelling bee,” Erin Rodriguez said. He is really good at losing now and when he wins big, we are all super excited. “I think he can be a really good play one day if he continues to work hard like he is doing.