News Archive

It’s all-Scrabble-all-the-time in the home of Jegatheva “Jay Jay” Jegathesan, our school manager in the School of Physics. Jay Jay’s sons, Rahul, 14, and Radheya, 16, are competing in this year’s World Youth Scrabble Championships, which are being hosted by UWA this Saturday, 31 October.

Rahul and Radheya are among 130 of some of the world’s brightest young minds who will be testing their language skills against one another in the Bayliss Building this weekend.

“It’s very exciting,” said Jay Jay. “My sons have been studying word lists and practicing online with Zyzzyva.” (Zyzzyva is a Scrabble program, named for a tropical American weevil and the last word in many English-language dictionaries.)

Jay Jay said he was confident his sons would “carry the Aussie flag proudly” in the competition.

UWA’s involvement in events like the World Youth Scrabble Championships is an important way the University reaches out to future students, both international and domestic. It’s something Jay Jay is keenly interested in, having founded and managed several student outreach programs for the School of Physics.

“I’m really proud of our outreach,” he said. “We bring in students from high schools from places like Japan, China and Singapore. They spend a week with us here in Physics; they spend time working with research groups and gain a cultural experience too.”

“We give them a feel for the research, a feel for the campus and get them interacting with Australian researchers and PhD students. Hopefully when they go back, they take the name of UWA back with them.”

Jay Jay estimates the School of Physics’ program reaches 60-70 international students and hundreds and hundreds of domestic students a year.

“We run our 'Phantastic Physics' hands on outreach programme for twenty to thirty schools a year, not just for schools based in Perth but for a number coming down from regional areas such as Albany and Busselton too.”

In the hands-on sessions, the students get to work with liquid nitrogen and the School’s magnetic levitation track.

Jay Jay also hosts Year 10 work experience students from high schools around Perth to produce the Particles Newsletter , which gives students the opportunity to have real experience in science journalism.

“The students come away from our programs feeling positive about science, physics and, hopefully, UWA too,” said Jay Jay.

Jay Jay is certain that the students competing in the World Youth Scrabble Championships will also come away with a positive impression of UWA.

“I mean, how could you not with a campus like ours?” he said, laughing.

UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson will present awards to the best young Scrabble players together with three-time world champion and the highest-rated Scrabble player in history, New Zealander Nigel Richards.

“You may remember Nigel from the news a few months ago,” said Jay Jay. “ He was the person who won the French World Scrabble Championship without knowing a single word of French .”

Jay Jay had the opportunity to play against Nigel once, back in 2003. “I’m pleased to say I beat him,” he said, grinning. “I was lucky the tiles went my way. If I played him 100 times, I’d win only once or twice. He is absolutely remarkable, and I am thrilled to be seeing him again after more than a decade."

Despite chalking it up to luck, Jay Jay is still proud of his win over the World Champ. “Every time I see he’s won another championship, I say to myself ‘Yes! I have a 100% record against that guy!”