Ario Ananda was a Gold Medal Winner of Scrabble at Asian English Olympics

Asian English Olympics was the annual event which was held by Binus University. This competition event was followed by one of students of Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Ario Ananda Alifianto. The competition was Olympics in English Language of Asian continental level which consisted of six divisions, namely Debate, Scrabble, Spelling Bee, Speech, Story Telling and Newscasting held on 9 to 14 February 2016. 

In this year, the participants of Asian English Olympics came from 10 countries in Asia namely Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Laos, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, and South Korea. In the event, every institution represented by the delegation fought over the medal of each division, and fought over the overall champion title for one institution which was able to collect the most titles in each division.

In The 2016 Asian English Olympics, Miriam College (Philippines) became the overall champion by collecting 7 medals from the divisions of Debate, Newscasting, Story Telling, and Speech. Whereas, IPB only sent one delegation to the division of Scrabble, namely Ario Ananda Alifianto (MAN 50) who was also a gold medalist at the division. On the division of Scrabble, there were 60 participants coming from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, India, and Vietnam. The delegation of IPB in the division of Scrabble was able to advance to the final round on the fourth day after packing win as many as 21 games of 25 games. In the final round, Ario defeated Alexander Gozali (the delegation of Binus University) three straight games with the scores of 463-430, 562-325, and 464-463.

According to Ario, Scrabble was not just about the ability of vocabulary, but also the ability of anagramming, mathematical, and probability. Previously, Ario was also a national champion in three competitions of Scrabble in the national level and twice representing Indonesia in the world competition of Scrabble in 2014 and 2015 in Kuala Lumpur.

In IPB, Ario was one of the founders of Agricultural Scrabble Community which was established in 2014 together with Rastra Teguh Pratama (BIK 50) and Andri Prastyo (PSP 50). Agricultural Scrabble Community (ASC) had won three international titles namely 3rd Place of Asian English Olympics 2015, 1st Place of Singapore Scrabble Tournament, and 1st Place of Asian English Olympics 2016 and also 7 national titles from various competitions. Ario was also Social Media Coordinator and Website Organizer in Indonesian Scrabble Federation since 2015. Going forward, Ario would follow MSI World Scrabble Championships in Lille, France on 31 August – 4 September 2016 and Causeway Challenge International on 31 November – 5 December 2016 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia representing Indonesia.***