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THE game was first marketed as Scrabble in December 1948, by US entrepreneur James Brunot. He modified an existing game invented by unemployed architect Alfred Mosher Butts which he called Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words. Each letter of the alphabet has a points value and the aim is to have the highest total by the time the tiles run out by placing them in sequence on a 15×15 grid of squares. In the British version Q and Z have the highest points value at 10. Scrabble is a real word meaning to scratch or scrape. There’s also a town in West Virginia with the name.
Today Scrabble is available in 50 languages including a Welsh set which features double L tiles. In Polish Z is worth only one point. There’s even a version in the Star Trek language, Klingon. Over 150million sets of Scrabble have been sold worldwide. The game was first sold in the UK in 1955 and more than half of British homes have a set. Oxyphenbutazone, a type of drug, is reckoned to be the world’s highest scoring word with
ABLOVERS of Scrabble are being allowed to use 300 new words including “twerk” – 70 years after the iconic board game hit the shelves. From now on players, including celebrity fans such as Madonna, can use words like “OK” and “emoji” to get points, according to the editors of the new Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.
Here JAMES MOORE has scored 20 amazing facts about the game…
1,778 points. The longest word playable with only vowels is “euouae” – it’s used in music.
It has been calculated that
30,000 Scrabble games are started every hour.
Placed end to end, all the tiles ever produced would circle the globe eight times.
An estimated one million Scrabble tiles are missing. London hosted the first World Scrabble Championships in
1991. The reigning champion is Aussie David Eldar who scooped the title in 2017, winning £7,000. The world’s largest game of Scrabble took place at Wembley Stadium in
1998. Each tile measured 6ft square. Fans have been snapped playing it underwater with sharks, and while skydiving too.
MNFamous people who enjoy a night on the tiles include Kylie Minogue, Harry Styles and the Queen. Scrabble tiles have featured on albums by Crowded House and World Party.
A player at a tournament held in America was once accused of cheating by eating the tiles. Scrabble has appeared in TV shows including The Handmaid’s Tale and The Simpsons, where Bart Simpson plays the bogus word “kwyjibo”.
I’m A Celeb star Janet Street-Porter called Scrabble more addictive than cocaine, champagne or group sex. Merriam-Webster put out the first official Scrabble dictionary in 1976. It now has more than 100,000 words.
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