Braconid, quixotry and ... felty – the greatest Scrabble moves of all time

Braconid: a parasitic wasp and winning 176-point, eight-letter, triple-triple scoring word in the 2016 World Scrabble Championship. In the final at Lille’s Grand Palais, Londoner Brett Smitheram beat fellow Briton Mark Nyman with this perfectly obscure, delightful Scrabble specimen. How does it contend with other championship Scrabble moves?

Quetzals (365) Guatemala’s national bird and one of its monetary units.
In 1986, Cathy Evans, from Essex, won the highest-ever score for a single move during the Letchworth Open Scrabble Tournament. This one is all about placement, using all seven letters of your rack, with Q and S on a triple word score and Z on a double letter.

Quixotry (365) a visionary idea or scheme.
Stretching the word between two triple word squares, Michael Cresta made Scrabble history in 2006 during a game in a church basement between a carpenter and a deli worker. Cresta’s final score of 830 remains the greatest number of points held in a game by a single player.

Caziques (392) Caribbean tribal chiefs or a black and red or black and yellow tropical birds.
Karl Khoshnaw set the record for the highest single word score in a 1982 competition in England with this, played across two triple word squares.

Flatfish (239) any fish of the order Heterosomata (Pleuronectiformes), including halibut, sole, flounder.
Another Cresta triple-triple from that hallowed 2006 tournament. This one was unusual because it contains infrequently occurring letters – two Fs and an H.

Muzjiks (126) Russian peasants.
The highest possible opening move score in Scrabble, played by Jesse Inman at the 2008 National Scrabble Championship in Orlando.

Cothurni (92) Footwear worn by actors in ancient Greece.
At the UK National Scrabble Championships in 2010 Mikki Nicholson’s highest score may have been for UPDATES (105), but COTHURNI was a more pleasing example of Scrabble skullduggery, played by a champion who had only turned to the tiles five years earlier.

Felty (36) resembling felt.
It is only worth 36 points and looks a little made up, but it’s a historic Scrabble word nonetheless for being the winning one in the 2015 World Championship final, when Nigeria’s Wellington Jighere became the first African to win the title. “It was a battle between one man and a whole continent,” Jighere wrote on his Facebook page after the victory.

Oxyphenbutazone (1778) Anti-inflammatory medication used to treat arthritis and bursitis.
OK, it has never actually been played but it’s thought to be the highest scoring word possible under American Scrabble rules.