Encouraging a love of reading has been an important goal of mine as a parent, I believe that immersing yourself into a book can open up a whole new world, be it fiction or non fiction. Also inspiring this love, Scottish Friendly have for the past fifteen years sponsored the Scottish Friendly Book Tour. In association with the Scottish Book Trust they have brought leading children’s authors to schools and libraries around the UK. A highlight of the tour was Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman (we love her books in this house) enabling her to reach thousands of secondary school children.

I don’t know about you but it feels as though in recent years there has been a lot of focus on athletes and sporting events; the Olympics, the World Cup, Tennis, Golf… But, let us forget about Olympics and sport for a minute though and start limbering up for, Linguistic Gymnastics! Earlier in the year carrying on with the literary theme Scottish Friendly launched the Scottish Friendly Letterfall UK Championships where people were able to pit their wits against like minded contestants across the country. The competition saw hundreds of people from all over the country compete at playing the popular online, Scrabble®-inspired word game, Letterfall.

Games played by territory

Winner of the Scottish Friendly Letterfall Championships announced

The competition ran over two months with Nichola Leaver, age 20, being named the country’s leading wordsmith after winning the regional championship for Wales. She then went on to the UK Final where she finished the tournament in top spot having used words such as ‘quivered’, ‘cuticles’ and ‘flounder’ to arrive at an impressive score of 62,414 – more than 13,000 points clear of her nearest rival.

 Most interesting words in the final

 On winning Nichola commented: “I’ve always loved word games but to be honest, I never thought I was going to win. Letterfall is an easy game to play, but when the pressure is on, especially when you are closing in on the top score, it did get a little nerve-racking.”

Warning, this game is addictive, I definitely need more practise. It is one of those heart in your mouth games which gets progressively quicker before you run out of time and all the tiles blow up. My children love playing these type of games and it is a great way to get them thinking of words. For me this is a great brain workout!

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This post has been written in collaboration with Scottish Friendly.