Robin Daniel was bitten by Scrabble bug over 20 years ago after using the board game's small, lettered tiles to spell the word: "FELLATIO."

Other than feeling the thrill of using a sexual term to get the upper hand during a casual game at her neighbour's house, the then-24-year-old became hooked on using smarts, vocabulary and creativity to win one of North America's most beloved and well-known board games.

Today, the Toronto resident excels at the game. The 49-year-old is now a world-class player, and set to compete in the Scrabble National Championships in Dallas, Tex., from Aug, 6-10. She is also a favourite to take the championship which would make her only the second woman to wear the Scrabble crown.

"You don't have an idea of the intricacy and beauty of the game until you start playing it at a competitive level," said Daniel. "That's when I realized there was something beautiful about the game."

Daniel, who has won around $6,000 over her years of competitive Scrabble, divides her time between being a psychologist, looking after her husband and two sons, playing in Scrabble tournaments and practising her vocabulary chops on various word-puzzle websites.

According to Katie Schulz, spokeswoman for the National Scrabble Association, the average good score for a casual, "living-room" player of the game would be somewhere between 150 and 200, An "expert" player such as Daniel could score around 400, or even as high as 700, according to Schulz.

Scrabble is a game where points are scored for forming words from the letters of other words, similar to that of crossword puzzles.