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2010 King's Cup Commentary: Round 15

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For the opening ceremony, some of the seating in the main hall is converted to accommodate the students who will be playing in the adjacent hall later today, so everyone can see the show. It begins with His Excellency, Mr. Ampol Senanarong, Privy Councillor, greeting the organizing committee on stage, with everyone posing for photographs. Representing the event sponsor, Brand's, is Dr. Lackana Leelayouthayotin, Executive Vice President and CEO, South East Asia, for Cerebos (Thailand) Ltd., the owner of the Brand's trademark. Dr. Leelayouthayotin took a personal interest in the Crossword Game Open, and I was honoured earlier to give her a tour of the our website and explain how our event works.

We then watched the latest version of the promotional video for the event, this year including a segment on the Sudoku competition, before the Crossword Game and Sudoku players paraded by country up onto stage one at a time to pay their respects to a portrait of His Majesty the King, and to His Excellency Mr. Ampol Senanarong.

The confetti guns fired, clouds of dry ice soared, and the competitors paraded away to the accompaniment of a marching band to bring the ceremony to an end. Next time, I'll be more careful about where I'm standing when the confetti goes up.

Back to play. Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (THA) faced Siu Hean Cheah (SGP) at Board 1, and beat him 442-392 to open his lead to two games, 13-2 +1166, and knock Cheah down to third, 11-4 +596. Jason Katz-Brown (USA) beat Chollapat Itthi-Aree (THA) at Board 3 by 444-400, enough to climb to second place at 11-4 +699. Also at 11-4 is David Eldar (AUS), after beating Panupol Sujjayakorn (THA) 440-393 at Board 2.

We now break for lunch, and will resume play at 1:45 local time. I envy the players who are heading down to the ground floor of the Siam Paragon mall; "food court" really doesn't do justice to the scale and quality of what they offer there. I could live there and die happy.

Thank you to Jason for sharing some mangosteen (mangostan#) with me avid anagrammers may want to find the scientific term in MANGOSTEEN+W (#), or the common word in MANGOSTAN+I.

I thought there would be fewer passersby at my desk here, but was surprised to be approached by a young Filipina (sadly, Ravee is off getting me lunch, so no photos), asking about setting up a school Scrabble programme in her country. Funnily, it took several minutes for us both to realize that the other was not Thai.