“Uzbekistan are playing Kyrgyzstan in a World Cup qualifier this Thursday,” notes Ben Jones. “Is this fixture the highest combined Scrabble score for a pair of Fifa nations? Bosnia and Herzegovina might have something to say, but I’m looking for a combined score from two teams who have actually played each other.”
Uzbekistan (25 Scrabble points) beat Kyrgyzstan (30) 1-0 to close in on a first-ever World Cup qualification – and Ben’s question inspired a flurry of tile-totting emails. Before we dive in, some ground rules. To try and keep things relatively simple, we’ll stick with the country names in English that are used by Fifa. So no long official names eg ‘Kingdom of …’ – and we’re using the English language Scrabble scoring system.
