ORLANDO, Fla. (CNN) -- Officials at the Scrabble National Championship busted a young competitor for cheating. The field was playing for a top prize of $10,000 in Orlando, Florida. You don't have to know what the words mean to win; you only have to know how to spell them.
South Carolina math teacher David Gibson made it to the final game in the Scrabble National Championship, but lost. The winner, Nigel Richards of Malaysia, took home the $10,000 prize.
His last word on the board: wefts. And if you've never heard of a weft, there are more obscure words where that came from. National Scrabble Assoc. director John Williams says, "Zaddick. (It) has something to do with Judaism but I don't know."
And the six-letter word, Eocene, which means a major division of the geological timescale. Competitor Eliza Lieberman says, "ZAX. I played it for 19 points or something."
A zax is a roofing tool, but the pros say there's more to Scrabble than knowing the meaning of the words. Gibson says, "It's a game about thinking skills and strategy and thinking about the odds and the percentages."
And one of the top young competitors tried to improve his odds by cheating. He was caught, taking the two blank tiles, or wild cards from the Scrabble bag, and hiding them on the floor. One woman says, "I think it's a good thing that it was caught and it was dealt with, but I think there's much more to this tournament than that one incident."
The National Scrabble Association didn't release the name or age of the apparent cheat, because he is younger than 18.