This Toronto student just became an international Scrabble champion

Words like fogey, fices or dinar rarely surface in regular conversation, and that makes them as valuable as gold in the world of competitive Scrabble.

Ruth Li, a high school senior in Toronto, knows a lot of words like that — words that can be devastating to any opponent sitting across the board from her. 

And those kinds of strings of letters helped her win the high school division of the 2023 North American School Scrabble Championship in Washington, D.C., earlier this month.

“I don’t usually spend that much time playing Scrabble,” Li said. “It’s not something that I do every day. It’s more so,