Board Games Codexery

Scrabble

Every man dies; not every man truly Scrabbles.

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Scrabble

Zintosch7 · CC BY-SA 4.0

As of 2008, over 150 million sets had been sold worldwide, and the game was available in more than 30 languages across 121 countries.[1][2] The game uses a board with 225 squares arranged in 15 rows and 15 columns, and a total of 100 letter tiles are placed in a bag at the start.[3][4]

Making and release

In 1948, James Brunot bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for a royalty to Butts.[5][2] Brunot renamed the game Scrabble, rearranged the premium squares, and simplified the rules.[6] In 1952, Brunot licensed manufacturing rights to Selchow and Righter, who had previously rejected the game.[7] Nearly four million sets were sold in 1954, the second year of Selchow and Righter's production.[7][8]

Hasbro now owns Scrabble rights in the U.S. and Canada, while Mattel holds rights elsewhere.[1][9] Butts arrived at the letter distribution and their associated point values by studying how frequently letters appeared in publications such as The New York Times.[6][10] Butts named his new game Criss-Crosswords, which incorporated a 15-by-15 playing surface and required players to form words in a crossword pattern.[6] Butts produced a small number of game sets on his own, but could not convince any large game companies to purchase his invention.[6]

What the cited sources add

A 2008 Guardian article notes that the highest possible single-turn score is for the word "oxyphenbutazone," though it has never been achieved in tournament play.[2] The same article reports that 30,000 Scrabble games are started somewhere in the world each hour.[2] A 2022 blog post states that most estimates place the influence of luck on a Scrabble game at around 10-15%.[11] The post also notes that over three-quarters of players agree Scrabble is predominantly a skill-based game.[11]

That article also recounts that Butts' wife once scored 284 points on a single word: QUIXOTIC.[10] A 2012 article reports that the North American Scrabble Players Association has a 53-page rulebook governing tournament play.[8]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "History of Toys and Games: Scrabble", history.com; "The History of Scrabble", Mind Sport Olympiad; "Spell bound", The Guardian, 2008-06-28; "Scrabble: 60 facts for its 60th birthday", The Daily Telegraph; "Scrabble: 60 facts for its 60th birthday", The Daily Telegraph (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. "Spell bound", The Guardian, 2008-06-28. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
  3. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Official Tournament Rules - NASPAWiki", scrabbleplayers.org (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Scrabble_Rulebook.pdf", Official Game Rules (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "James Brunot entry on Board Game Geek", boardgamegeek.com (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Fatsis, "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players", Penguin Publishing, 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Fatsis, "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players", HMH, 2001-07-07, p. 171–172; Fatsis, "The Case of the Stolen Blanks", August 17, 2012; Fatsis, "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players", Penguin Publishing, 2002; "History of Scrabble", Scrabble-assoc.com, 2003-04-26 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Fatsis, "The Case of the Stolen Blanks", August 17, 2012. facts only, no text reused. slate.com
  9. Wikipedia, "Scrabble" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "History of Scrabble", Scrabble-assoc.com, 2003-04-26; Fatsis, "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players", Penguin Publishing, 2002; "History of Scrabble", Scrabble-assoc.com, 2003-04-26 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Heintz, "Three shifts at the Scrabble factory: The inventor", Vtdigger.org, December 26, 2019. facts only, no text reused. vtdigger.org
  11. "How Much of Scrabble is Luck? - The Word Finder Blog!", Thewordfinder.com, June 7, 2022. facts only, no text reused. thewordfinder.com

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Scrabble (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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