The Knowledge | Which international fixture would be worth the highest score in Scrabble?

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“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 e.g. ‘Kingdom of …’ – and we’re using the English language Scrabble scoring system.

Iran v Laos (last played in 2004) is the lowest Scrabble score for an international fixture, notes Andrew Hastie.

Pete Tomlin suggests Venezuela v Brazil (38pts) as South America’s highest-scoring fixture, and New Zealand v Papua New Guinea (45pts) for Oceania.

Chris Roe adds that in English football, Sheffield Wednesday v Wolverhampton Wanderers is worth 75 points, opening a whole new can of worms.