How Montrealer Josh Sokol won North America’s biggest Scrabble tournament

This interview originally aired on Menschwarmers_, The CJN's podcast about Jews and sports. Hear the full episode and subscribe at thecjn.ca/menschwarmers_

On July 19, Josh Sokol, a 29-year-old Scrabble influencer from Montreal, won the top prize of US$10,000 at the 2023 North American Scrabble Players Association championship in Las Vegas. But, as Sokol explains on this episode of Menschwarmers, he isn’t even the first Jewish Montrealer to win this competition—one of his local club colleagues took home the top prize last year. What is it about Montreal that’s producing such high-quality gamers with encyclopedic memories of the dictionary? And why are so many of them Jewish?

To give answers and insight into the world of professional word gaming, Sokol joins our podcast about Jews and sports—because, you know what, it’s summer, and board games are competitive enough that we consider them a sport. Subscribe to Sokol’s channels on YouTube or Twitch to watch him play.