Stewart Holden

Stewart Holden (born 5 September 1979) is a competitive Scrabble player from Nottingham in the United Kingdom who represented England at the World Scrabble Championship 2003. He is consistently ranked inside the top 16 competitive Scrabble players in the UK and was the runner-up in the 2007 National Scrabble Championship [ [http://www.centrestar.co.uk/uknsc/2007/ 2007 National SCRABBLE® Championship ] ] . Holden is an active committee member of the Association of British Scrabble Players [ [http://www.absp.org.uk/profiles/stewart.html Association of British Scrabble Players] profile of Holden - URL accessed 05/11/06.] and in October 2005 established his own business, Tilefish, selling Scrabble equipment and resources; the enterprise was sold to a fellow ABSP committee member Amy Byrne in July 2008.

In 2004, Holden was the overall winner of Series 51 of the long running British television game show Countdown. Holden won eight games to become an octochamp, including a score of 137 in his last preliminary match which was, at the time, the third highest score in the history of the programme. His eight-game score of 870 was also the third highest score since the introduction of the 15-round format in 2001.

Holden returned for the series finals as the number one seed, beating Steve Graston in the series final with a scoreline of 104-81. He was invited back for the twelfth Champion of Champions series but declined due to the conflicting dictionaries used in Countdown and competitive Scrabble affecting his performance in the latter game. [ [http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/c4countdown/message/3928 c4countdown] message with Holden declaring his not taking part in the Champion of Champions series - URL accessed 05/11/06.]

References

External links

* [http://www.absp.org.uk/ Association of British Scrabble Players]
* [http://www.tilefish.co.uk/ Tilefish]