Games - Scrabble

	Games - Scrabble

Scrabble is a popular word board game, in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a 15×15 game board. The words are formed across and down in a crossword fashion, and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works (e.g. The Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, now in its 4th edition) which provide a list of permissible words, some of which are rarely found in standard English writing, are also available.

Each letter is worth a set number of points, with the value depending on the letter's frequency in standard English writing; commonly-used letters such as E or O are worth one point, whilst less common letters score higher, with Q and Z each scoring ten points. The board is marked with "premium" squares, which multiply the amount of points awarded. Some premium squares multiply the value of an individual letter, whilst some multiply the value of entire words.

The name Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the US and Canada and of J. W. Spear & Sons PLC elsewhere. Scrabble was a trademark of Murfett Regency in Australia, until 1993 when it was acquired by Spears.

History

The game was created by architect Alfred Mosher Butts in 1938, as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. The two games had the same set of letter tiles, whose distributions and point values Butts worked out meticulously by counting letter usage from the New York Times and other sources. The new game, which he called "Criss-Crosswords", added the 15-by-15 game board and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day.

In 1948, lawyer James Brunot bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game (including the distribution of letters) unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the "premium" squares of the board and simplified the rules; he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble", and sold sets to, among other customers, Macy's department store, which created a demand for the game.

In 1953, unable to meet demand himself, Brunot sold manufacturing rights to Selchow and Righter (one of the manufacturers who, like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company, had previously rejected the game). J. W. Spear & Sons began selling the game in Australia and the UK on January 19, 1955. They are now a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc.

In 1986, Selchow and Righter sold the game to Coleco, who soon after sold the game to Hasbro.

The game is commonly known as Alfapet in Sweden.

In 2005, a Welsh language version of Scrabble was launched, with separate tiles for Welsh letters such as ch (digraph), dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th.

Game details

The game is played with two to four players on a square (or nearly square) board with a 15-by-15 grid of cells, each of which accommodates a single letter tile. In official club and tournament games, play is always between two players (or, occasionally, between two teams each of which collaborates on a single rack).

An important feature of the game is the presence of color-coded "premium squares" affecting scoring: dark red "triple word" cells, pink "double word" cells, dark blue "triple letter" cells, and light blue "double letter" cells. The center cell (H8) is often marked with a star or logo, and counts as a double-word cell.

For information on tiles, see Scrabble letter distributions.

Notation system

In the notation system common in tournament play, columns are labeled "A-O" and rows "1-15". A play is usually identified in the format xy WORD score or WORD xy score, where: x denotes the column or row on which the play's main word extends; y denotes the second coordinate of the main word's first letter, and WORD is the main word. Although unnecessary, additional words formed by the play are occasionally listed after the main word and a slash. In the case where the play of a single tile formed words in each direction, one of the words is arbitrarily chosen to serve as the main word for purposes of notation.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Scrabble ]

Games - Scrabble

History

Game details

Notation system

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay