World Scrabble Champion Nigel Richards Roger Cullman For most of the hundreds of millions of Scrabble players around the world, spelling a word worth 20 points is a decent turn. The very top tournament players, however, aren't happy unless they can score around 35 or more — and that's when playing with time limits and ruthless competition.

Photographer Roger Cullman, who has played competitive Scrabble for 12 years, began taking portraits of top players four years ago at a tournament in Canada.

While the portraits, which feature players holding up their names or initials in Scrabble tiles, went viral as soon as they were posted, he has continued updating the series.

Scrabble's elite look a lot like you and me, with some quirkiness including the enormous beard of World Scrabble Champion Nigel Richards.

"I found it fascinating to observe the cross-section of players and variety of faces that I was able to capture," Cullman told BI over email.

With permission, we've republished some of his best Scrabble portraits.