No-one was less surprised to hear that Prince William and Kate Middleton squabble over Scrabble than Elisabeth Jardine.

“It’s a highly competitive game,” she says and Elisabeth should know. She plays online at her Bournemouth home and travels the world playing for cash and glory, racking up telephone-number scores and vanquishing opponents with fiendish words like syenitic.

“I knew syenite was an ore, and I had awful letters; i, i, e, c and there was a y on the board,” she remembers.

“I looked at it and thought that if I put the i and c at the end, I’m not 100 per cent sure but most ores will have the i c ending as well, so I thought I’ll try it and it came off.”

Her love of Scrabble started in the 1950s when her sister returned from Australia, enthusing about a brilliant new board game.

“We decided to make our own by cutting up Kellog’s cornflake packets to make the letters and carried on from there,” she says.

This sounds deliciously quaint but there is nothing quaint about the modern world of Scrabble which consists of governing bodies, leagues, championships, online contests and local groups, like the Bournemouth Scrabble Club, of which Elisabeth is one of the leading lights.

She is kind enough to credit its initial success to the Bournemouth Echo explaining: “When I moved here in 1987, I had just qualified for the national Scrabble finals and the Echo wanted to do a write up. I said they could, provided they put in that I was going to start a Scrabble club.”

At their peak there were more than 40 members. It’s smaller than that now, at 16, and new members are always welcome to their weekly meet.

Elisabeth plays at club level but is also in three different leagues and plays online through Facebook. She’s in the middle of a game as I speak to her, contemplating her next move.

“It’s a completely different game when you play in a tournament compared to what you play with your granny at home,” she says.

“You have to know all the two and three-letter words and if you’re very good, the four, five and six-letter words.

“I know a fair few of them because I’ve been playing a while but I’m getting to the stage where I don’t learn new words easily. If someone plays a good word against you, you tend to remember it.”

Her highest game score was 712 at a regional final and she has a certificate for scoring 176 in a league match for the word ‘foregoers’. And she has a photo of a recent online triumph; “My opponent started with a seven-letter word and I managed to put a seven-letter word right underneath it, making eight words. It was great!”

But things don’t always go so smoothly. Elisabeth is actually a complaints officer for one of the Scrabble organisations; the reason being that some competitors are forever chancing their arm over the rules.

“We have to cover every eventuality because it’s a world-class game with big money involved,” she says.

But don’t let that put you off. You may not be in Elisabeth’s league but you can still play in her club.

“We have all kinds of members and members who play all over the world,” she says.

“The glory of it is that everyone enjoys it whether they are at the top or bottom.” Even, one suspects, William and Kate.

For more details about Bournemouth Scrabble Club, contact Elisabeth on 01202 419708.