Interesting Facts About Scrabble Letters July 28, 2013 | | Add a Comment Scrabble has been around since the 1940s and is currently sold in over a hundred countries with 29 language versions available. With its easy game play of forming words with Scrabble letters, it is understandable why it is highly appealing, resulting in several Scrabble-inspired word games. Clearly, the stars of the game are its letter tiles and the following are some interesting things about them. History of Scrabble letters Alfred Butts created Scrabble based on another word game he also made, Lexiko, which had the same letter tiles. The frequency and distribution of the Scrabble tiles were determined by a close inspection of different sources, most particularly the New York Times. At first, Butts used his penknife to cut the original set of wooden letter tiles. Later on, when manufacturing became much easier, the Scrabble letters began to be made from Vermont Maple wood. Originally, there were only one hundred letter tiles, but the addition of two blank tiles made the total 102. Letter Distributions and Point Values Each language has a different letter frequency rate, so the letter distribution in Scrabble varies across the globe.

However, generally speaking, the rarer a letter is used, the higher point value it has and vice versa. For example, in English, vowels are frequently used especially the letter E, so they are worth only a point each. The following is a list of the distribution of Scrabble letters in English versions of the game: K, J, Q, X, and Z – 1 tile each B, C, F, H, M, P, W, and Y – 2 tiles each G is the only letter with three tiles D, L, S, and U – 4 tiles each N, R, and T – 6 tiles each O is the only letter with 8 tiles A and I – 9 tiles each E has the most tiles at 12 (it is the most frequently used letter in the English language) Because K, J, Q, X, and Z aren’t that frequently used, they carry higher point values at 5, 8, 8, 10, and 10 respectively. Aside from the vowels, the letters N, R, T, L, and S are also worth one point each.

D and G are worth 2 points each, while B, C, M, and P are worth 3 points. F, H, V, W, and Y are worth 4 points each. Finally, the blank tiles that can represent any letter carry no points. The most number of letter tiles is 120 and they are used in the Italian and Portuguese versions of the game. In the Malayan version, the letter A has the most number of tiles at 19, which is nearly a fifth of the total number of letter tiles. Using all seven letters in one move is called a bingo (in France and Spain, it is called “scrabble,” while in other countries, “bonus” is used), which rewards you with extra points. The highest-scoring 7-letter word is “quartzy,” as long as it is formed across a triple-word square and the Z is strategically placed on a double-letter square. The Spanish word “etario” is a seven-letter word that will most likely appear in a player’s Scrabble rack. Theoretically speaking, the highest score that can be obtained when playing in a US tournament is 1,778 points.

The move will involve joining 8 tiles that are already on the board with new ones to form the word “oxyphenbutazone.” Three triple-word squares are also required to obtain this high score. Records and Other Trivia In 2008, Scrabble celebrated its 50th anniversary alongside Britain’s Prince Charles’ 60th birthday. To honor both occasions, black, brown, and white Scrabble tiles were used by Lizzie Sanders to create a portrait of the prince. In addition, the biggest Scrabble game was played at the Wembley Stadium, also in Britain. Every tile was a 6×6 feet square, approximately the size of a dining room table! At least two strong men were needed to lift each square. With over 150 million Scrabble sets sold, it is no surprise to know that there are at least 1 million missing letter tiles all over the world! Moreover, if all the Scrabble letters ever made were to circumnavigate the planet, it would do so eight times! If you have a vowel-rich letter rack, don’t panic. There are two-letter words that consist of only vowels!

These are “aa,” “ae,” “ai,” “oe,” and “oi.” Also, there are more than a hundred acceptable two-letter words that use every letter in the alphabet, save for one: the letter V. Scrambling for information about Scrabble letters is a fun thing to do and you can share what you learn to your opponents while playing this classic and well-loved word game! 14 Fun Scrabble Facts | Mental Floss 14 Fun Scrabble Facts Hasbro Like us on Facebook To celebrate the release of the fifth edition of Merriam-Webster’s The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary, out today, here are a few fun facts about the game and the competitions it has inspired. 1. SCRABBLE was invented by an architect. In 1933, New York City architect Alfred Mosher Butts created an early version of the game we know as Scrabble. To determine how many tiles there should be and how many points each letter should be worth, he calculated letter frequency on the front page of the New York Times.

So, for example, “Q is a letter that occurs least often in English text, so it should be a letter that there is only one tile of, and that tile should be worth 10 points,” says John Chew, co-president of the North American SCRABBLE Players Association (NASPA). 2. It wasn't always called SCRABBLE. Getty Images Butts named his game Lexico, then changed the name to Criss-Cross Words. His friend and eventual business partner James Brunot came up with the name SCRABBLE in the late 1930s. 3. Initially, no game manufacturers would buy SCRABBLE. Hasbro So Butts made the games himself in his garage with Brunot's help, says Chris Cree, co-president of NASPA. “Around 1957, the president of Macy’s saw a game or became familiar with one and placed a huge order that Brunot and Butts couldn’t really fill,” Cree says. “Butts had to sell it to Brunot, who had to sell it to Selchow and Righter, who were the manufactures of the game when I started playing.

And they held it until they sold it to Coleco Industries, which sold it to Hasbro.” 4. Despite its long history, SCRABBLE hasn’t changed much. Getty Images “The previous squares are exactly what they were when I first started off—the same 100 tiles and the same distribution,” Cree says. “That’s something pretty neat about the game. It hasn’t changed one iota and it’s still popular.” Still, there are crazy variations that people play, including one called Clabbers. “That’s the anagram of Scrabble,” Cree says. “You can play words in any order you want to and play the letters in any order you want to as long as the letters can make an anagram of a word.” 5. But the game might not stay the same for much longer. “There was some controversy last year over whether or not—given how much the nature of the game has changed based on the expansion of its playing lexicon in the 60 years that the game has existed—we should still be playing with the same tile values as they get increasingly out of whack compared to the original statistics on which they were based,” Chew says.

“To be specific, there was a major change in the strategy in the game when the word qat was introduced, I think in the 1980s, and more recently, when the word qi was introduced. Playing the game before you had either of these words as options, if you got the Q, you were pretty much stuck with it until you got a U. And even then, you weren’t sure you could score a lot with it. So we would think that whoever got the Q on average was going to get ten or fewer points in their game. Now the Q is a much less negative tile to hold on to, so there are some people who think it should be worth 8 points instead of 10 points.” 6. You can use the word Bingo while playing. Getty Images When players use all seven of their SCRABBLE tiles to make a word, it’s called a bingo. Yell it out to confuse your opponent! 7. NASPA uses different tiles for competition. Charles Goldstein/NASPA “If you reach your hand in a bag of wooden set of tiles, you can kind of feel what doesn’t have anything on it and know it’s a blank,” Cree says.

“We play with smooth tiles to make sure no one can Braille anything.” 8. There are different word lists for different levels of competition. Getty Images If you’re playing at the school level, the competitive level, or the international level, NASPA has different lists. “Those are all sort of inclusively nested so that you just have to learn more words as you get on and on to a higher level,” Chew says. “The nature of the vocabulary changes—if you’re playing at a school level, you’re not allowed to play words that could possibly cause offense, even if used in the most polite situations. If you’re playing at an adult-level, you’re supposed to be able to play any word a well-read college educated person should have seen in print in some way. And then if you want to compete at an international level, you have to memorize things like misprints in Shakespearian manuscripts and Syrian texts, names of various obscure animals and plants from around the world and words in Indian and things like that.” 9. The game is played competitively in other languages—which can make things complicated. Getty Images Chew says he thinks the game is best played in English, though, for a number of reasons.

“Some of the aspects of the board and the rules in terms in the spacing of the bonus tiles and the way you build words is best utilized in English,” he says. “For instance, in French, it’s a little bit too easy to make words because most French words they can stick an E or an S at the end of so, every time you make a word, your opponent just sticks more letters and gets more points. It’s kind of frustrating that way; everyone scores more points overall.” German SCRABBLE players have the opposite problem, Chew says; it’s hard to turn an existing German word into a longer German word, which creates a looser word grid—and led to a debate about whether they should use the standard seven tiles or up it to eight. “There was a substantial body of players who felt that there are relatively few words that are interesting in German that are less than eight letters long,” he says. “There’s no point to playing with just seven letters.” Eventually the dispute was resolved, and today, Germans play with seven letters, just like the rest of the world does. There are also tiles specific to certain countries. “In Spanish, there’s a single tile that has two Ls on it,” Chew says.

“Or Catalan, which has two Ls with a dot in between it, or Dutch, which has an I and a J on it that look a little bit odd to our eyes.” Professional linguists have determined the values of those tiles. 10. NASPA’s Rule Book is 50 Pages Long. Getty Images “Basically every rule that you look at is a result of someone coming up with a weird interpretation or weird situation,” Chew says. If two games are happening at one table, they try to use different colored tiles so they don’t get mixed up (although that sometimes still happens). Each player has 25 minutes total to play his game, and opponents shouldn’t address each other. And there’s computer adjudication of words, too. 11. There have been a few scandals. Charles Goldstein/NASPA Before players start a game, they lay out the 100 tiles—in four groups of 5x5 squares—to make sure all the letters are there. One player, says Cree, allegedly saw the blanks and made sure to pick them out and hide them under his leg. “Various times during the game he would introduce them from underneath his leg to his rack,” he says.

“He was suspected first year of doing so, and it was reported he drew both blanks in 29 out of 31 games. The next year, people were looking for him and he was caught.” There’s also something Chew referred to as the “strip search incident," which occurred during a world championship. "In the world championship, we get a huge cultural divide between the way the people play SCRABBLE in different countries,” he says. “The rules are slightly different around the world, and definitely the etiquette is different around the world." In this particular incident, a Thai player was facing off against a British player. It was near the end of the game "to the point where there were few enough tiles in the bag that they were keeping track of all the tiles they didn’t play, all the tiles that were sitting in front of them on their rack, and tried to figure out what tiles were still in play and work out all the possibilities and maximize their score regardless of what tiles were in the bag," Chew says. "And they realized that there was a tile that was missing from the game.” The players assured the officials that they had counted the tiles as they were supposed to, but that this tile was gone.

“It’s not unheard of for this to happen,” Chew says. “Sometimes people turn the board too energetically or brush up against it and a tile falls off. In this case, whether or not the missing tile was in the bag, or was active in the game, affected the win/loss of the game. It was played in the tournament, so there was a lot riding on it. So the emotions were quite heated because the two players didn’t know each other, and the Thai player didn’t really speak English and couldn’t express himself in English to his opponent. It was a situation where if the tile was not discovered or brought back into play, the Thai player would win and if not, the English player would win.” So someone asked the Thai player to turn out his pockets, which made him very angry; he wanted his opponent to turn out his pockets, too—which the Brit didn’t feel like he should have to do, because there was no advantage for him to hold on to the tile. “Then this escalated to well, maybe it’s not in their pockets, maybe it’s down their pants,” Chew says. “Maybe they should be strip searched. Maybe they should be taken to the bathroom and undergo a thorough examination at that point.

At which point, the British press got a hold of it and I don’t think they ever reported who ended up winning the tournament, but for several days all the tabloids wanted to talk about the missing G.” The missing tile was later found in the coat pocket of a player who had played in the game before. “What happened was, instead of making four 5x5 squares for the players to verify that there are a 100 tiles, these guys made one 9x11 square,” Cree says. “Which when you just sit down and look at what you think is a square and it’s actually a bit of a rectangle, 9x11, 10x10, you just glance at it, it looks fine.” 12. The most valuable tiles depend on your level of play. Getty Images “When you’re at a lower level, you probably want to hang on to higher value tiles because you don’t know enough about board strategy to get double or triple value for the high value tiles," Chew says. "At the lowest level, if you get a blank, all you’re going to score with it is 0.

But if you get even to the bottom rung of competitive play, then the blank becomes by far the most important tile to hang on to. It lets you occasionally make the 50 point bonus for playing all of your tiles. In theory, if you’re paying at your best, or if you’re a computer program, then that blank is worth about 25 points to the average future value of your score.” S is also a good tile to save, Chew says, and a good combination to keep on your rack is “ER or ERS or as many letters in the word RETINAS as you can hold on to.” 13. There are tons of new words getting added to the dictionary this year. Charles Goldstein/NASPA They include geocache, chillax, beatbox, frenemy, hashtag, joypad, mojito, selfie, soju, texter, vodcast, vlog, and yuzu, among others.

But the ones that will make the most difference are the two letter words, Cree says, the addition of which "allows words to fit on the board that otherwise wouldn’t have." The two-letter words being added are gi, po, te, and da, which is actually making a comeback—it was in the first edition of the Scrabble dictionary, but Chew had it removed for the second edition. “I’m a little bit relieved and nervous about da coming back into the dictionary,” he says. “I got [death threats] for about 10 years after it was removed. I’ve learned that if there’s one thing Scrabble players can really get united on—despite the fact that they disagree about everything else—it’s that they don’t want anyone messing with their words. Add new ones if you want, but don’t take away the old ones. Ever since then, I’ve made sure we don’t delete words except in extremely unusual situations, and we definitely don’t mess with the two letter words.” 14. It’s possible to score 1782 points on a single word.

iStock That word is OXYPHENBUTAZONE, and to get the points, player Benjamin Woo played it across the top of the board, hitting three Triple Word Score squares while making seven crosswords downward. More from mental_floss... Bananagrammer: Letter distributions in Bananagrams and other games Letter distributions in Bananagrams and other games What determines how many of each letter there are in various word games? The inventor of Scrabble designed the frequency of his tiles around the frequency of letters used on the front page of the New York Times. (Somebody must have sat and done a lot of counting back in 1938.) The distribution for Snatch is said to be based on the frequency distribution of letters in the English language as calculated by World War II cryptographers. This photograph visually displays the letter distribution for Bananagrams. (Click for a larger version.) The following table gives the letter distributions for Bananagrams, Scrabble (without the blanks), and Snatch: Game 3 1 By comparing the Bananagrams and Scrabble sets, we learn that the Bananagrams set of tiles is a superset of the Scrabble set of tiles (except for the blanks).

In fact, for each letter of the alphabet, the Bananagrams set has at least one more tile than the Scrabble set. Since there are 100 Scrabble tiles and 144 Bananagrams tiles, this additional 26 tiles explains a lot of the discrepancy. It also gives a hint as to how the inventors of Bananagrams may have derived their distribution. The Snatch set, on the other hand, is NOT a subset of the Bananagrams set. If you want to try to play Snatch with a Bananagrams set of tiles (and if you are kind of a stickler), you can get close to the right distribution by throwing out these letters in these numbers: (A,7), (E,5), (I,6), (O,4), (R,3).

(I am reducing each difference by one to allow for a slightly larger Bananasnatch set (121 tiles instead of 100).) You can remember this with the mnemonic lAttIcEwORk and noting that you start by throwing out 7 tiles lettered A, decreasing the number by one for each of the vowels, and finally setting aside 3 tiles with the letter R on them. UPDATE: I found the letter distribution for Spanish Bananagrams here and the French Bananagrams letter distribution here . Here is the revised table, in vertical format (to accommodate the extra letters): B Scrabble | Letter Tile Games Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Letter Tile Games Wiki Scrabble brand logo by Mattel, Inc., used throughout the rest of the world |250px]] No Title No information Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary . Official reference works (e.g. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary ) provide a list of permissible words.

The Collins Scrabble checker can also be used to check if a word is allowed. [1] The name Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States and Canada. Elsewhere, Scrabble is trademarked by Mattel . The game is sold in 121 countries; there are 29 different language versions. One hundred and fifty million sets have been sold worldwide, and sets are found in roughly one-third of American homes. [2] [3] [4] Contents File:Alfred Butts letter frequencies.JPG In 1938, architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game 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 performing a frequency analysis of letters from various sources including The New York Times . 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.

[5] In 1948, James Brunot, [6] a resident of Newtown, Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – 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," a real word which means "to scratch frantically." In 1949, Brunot and his family made sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown , a section of Newtown. They made 2,400 sets that year, but lost money. [7] According to legend, Scrabble's big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy's , played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game.

He placed a large order and within a year, "everyone had to have one." [8] In 1952, unable to meet demand himself, Brunot sold manufacturing rights to Long Island-based Selchow and Righter (one of the manufacturers who, like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company , had previously rejected the game). Selchow & Righter bought the trademark to the game in 1972. [9] JW Spears began selling the game in Australia and the UK on January 19, 1955. The company is now a subsidiary of Mattel , Inc. [5] In 1986, Selchow and Righter sold the game to Coleco , who soon after went bankrupt. The company's assets, including Scrabble and Parcheesi , were purchased by Hasbro . [9] In 1984, Scrabble was turned into a daytime game show on NBC . Scrabble ran from July 1984 to March 1990, with a second run from January to June 1993. The show was hosted by Chuck Woolery .

The tagline of the show in promo broadcasts was, "Every man dies; not every man truly Scrabbles." In 2011, a new TV variation of Scrabble, called "Scrabble Showdown", aired on "The Hub" cable channel, which is a is a joint venture of Discovery Communications, Inc. and Hasbro. Game details File:Scrabbletileset.png The game is played by two to four players on a square (or nearly square) board with a 15-by-15 grid of cells (individually known as "squares"), 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). The board is marked with "premium" squares, which multiply the number of points awarded: dark red "triple-word" squares, pink "double-word" squares, dark blue "triple-letter" squares, and light blue "double-letter" squares [In 2008, Hasbro changed the colors of the premiums squares to orange for TW, red for DW, blue for DL, and green for TL].

The center square (H8) is often marked with a star or logo, and counts as a double-word square. In an English-language set the game contains 100 tiles, 98 of which are marked with a letter and a point value ranging from 1 to 10. The number of points of each lettered tile is based on the letter's frequency in standard English writing; commonly used letters such as E or O are worth one point, while less common letters score higher, with Q and Z each worth 10 points. The game also has two blank tiles that are unmarked and carry no point value. The blank tiles can be used as substitutes for any letter; once laid on the board, however, the choice is fixed. Other language sets use different letter set distributions with different point values. Template:See Edit 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 forms words in each direction, one of the words is arbitrarily chosen to serve as the main word for purposes of notation. When a blank tile is employed in the main word, the letter it has been chosen to represent is indicated with a lower case letter, or, in handwritten notation, with a square around the letter. Parentheses are sometimes also used to designate a blank, although this may create confusion with a second (optional) function of parentheses, namely indication of an existing letter or word that has been "played through" by the main word. Example 1: A(D)DITiON(AL) D3 74 (played through the existing letter D and word AL, using a blank for the second I, extending down the D column and beginning on row 3, and scoring 74 points) The parentheses can be omitted, though, if each play states how many tiles were laid on the board in that play. Sequence of play File:Scrabble1.JPG Next, players decide the order in which they play.

The normal approach is for players to draw tiles: the player who picks the letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first (with blank tiles ranked higher than A's). In North American tournaments, the rules of the US-based North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA) stipulate instead that players who have gone first in the fewest number of games in the tournament have priority, or failing that, those who have gone second the most. In the case of a tie, tiles are drawn as in the standard rules. At the beginning of the game, and after each turn until the bag is empty (or until there are no more face-down tiles), players draw tiles to replenish their "racks", or tile-holders, with seven tiles, from which they will make plays. Each rack is concealed from the other players. During a turn, a player will have seven or fewer letter tiles in their rack from which to choose a play.

On each turn, a player has the option to: (1) pass, forfeiting the turn and scoring nothing; (2) exchange one or more tiles for an equal number from the bag, scoring nothing, an option which is only available if at least seven tiles remain in the bag; or (3) form a play on the board, adding its value to the player's cumulative score. A proper play uses any number of the player's tiles to form a single continuous word ("main word") on the board, reading either left-to-right or top-to-bottom. The main word must either use the letters of one or more previously played words, or else have at least one of its tiles horizontally or vertically adjacent to an already played word. If words other than the main word are newly formed by the play, they are scored as well, and are subject to the same criteria for acceptability. When the board is blank, the first word played must cover H8, the center square. The word must consist of at least two letters, extending horizontally or vertically. H8 is a premium square, so the first player to play a word receives a double score. A blank tile may take the place of any letter.

It remains as that letter thereafter for the rest of the game. Individually, it scores no points regardless of what letter it is designated and its possible placement on a premium square. However, its placement on a double-word or triple-word square does cause the appropriate premium to be scored for the word in which it is used. While not allowed in official or tournament play, a common " house rule " allows players to "recycle" blank tiles by later substituting the corresponding letter tile. After playing a word, the player draws letter tiles from the bag to replenish their rack to seven tiles. If there are not enough tiles in the bag to do so, the player takes all of the remaining tiles. After a player plays a word, their opponent may choose to challenge any or all the words formed by the play. If any of the words challenged is found to be unacceptable, the play is removed from the board, the player returns the newly played tiles to their rack and their turn is forfeited. In tournament play, a challenge is to the entire play rather than any one word, so a judge (human or computer) is used, and players are not entitled to know which word or words caused the challenge to succeed.

Penalties for unsuccessfully challenging an acceptable play vary within club and tournament play, and are described in greater detail below. Under North American rules, the game ends when (1) one player plays every tile in their rack, and there are no tiles remaining in the bag (regardless of the tiles in their opponent's rack); or (2) when six successive scoreless turns have occurred. (For several years, a game could not end with a cumulative score of zero-zero, but this is no longer the case, and this has occurred a number of times in tournament play. [10] ) When the game ends, each player's score is reduced by the sum of his/her unplayed letters. In addition, if a player has used all of his or her letters, the sum of the other player's unplayed letters is added to that player's score; in tournament play, a player who "goes out" adds double this sum, and the opponent is not penalized. Scoreless turns can occur when a player passes, when a player exchanges tiles, or when a player loses a challenge. The latter rule varies slightly in international tournaments.

Scoring Orange Each word formed in the play is scored this way: Any tile played from the player's rack onto a previously vacant square that is a "double-letter" or "triple-letter" premium square has its point value doubled or tripled as indicated. Add the normal point value of all other letters in the word (whether newly played or existing). For each newly played tile placed on a "double-word" premium square, the total of each word containing that tile is doubled (or redoubled). For each newly placed tile placed on a "triple-word" premium square, the total of each word containing that tile is tripled (or re-tripled). Premium squares affect the score of each word made in the same play by constituent tiles played upon those squares. Premium squares, once played upon, are not counted again in subsequent plays. Players occasionally achieve quadruple (4x) or nonuple (9x) word scores by spanning two double-word (called a "double-double" or two triple-word premium squares (called a "triple-triple") with a single word. Septenviguple (27x) word scores spanning three triple-word squares are possible, if only in constructed games.

(A hexuple [6x] or octodecuple [18x] word score is also possible under the rules, but only remotely so, since it would require that the opening play have missed the center square and not have been challenged off as a result. Game-construction enthusiasts have disavowed this ruse.) If a player uses all seven of the tiles in the rack in a single play, a bonus of 50 points is added to the score of that play (this is called a " bingo " in Canada and the United States, a "Scrabble" in Spain and a "bonus" elsewhere). These bonus points are added after totaling the score for that turn. When the letters to be drawn have run out, the final play can often determine the winner. This is particularly the case in close games with more than two players. The player who goes out first gets the sum of all remaining unplayed tiles added to their score. Players with tiles remaining on their rack have the sum of their remaining tiles subtracted from their score. Acceptable words Edit Acceptable words are the primary entries in some chosen dictionary , and all of their inflected forms.

Words that are hyphenated, capitalized (such as proper nouns), or apostrophized are not allowed, unless they also appear as acceptable entries: "Jack" is a proper noun, but the word JACK is acceptable because it has other usages as a common noun (automotive, vexillological , etc.) and verb that are acceptable. Acronyms or abbreviations, other than those that have been regularized (such as AWOL, RADAR, LASER, and SCUBA), are not allowed. Variant spellings, slang or offensive terms, archaic or obsolete terms, and specialized jargon words are allowed if they meet all other criteria for acceptability. Foreign words are not allowed in the English language Scrabble unless they have been incorporated into the English language – for example, the words "patisserie" and "glace". Proper nouns and other exceptions to the usual rules are allowed in some limited contexts in the spin-off game Scrabble Trickster . There are two popular competition word lists used in various parts of the world: TWL and SOWPODS (also referred to as "Collins").

OWL2 and OSPD4 Edit The North American 2006 Official Tournament and Club Word List, Second Edition (OWL2) went into official use in American, Canadian, Israeli and Thai club and tournament play on March 1, 2006 (or, for school use, the bowdlerized Official Scrabble Players Dictionary , Fourth Edition (OSPD4)). Early printings of OWL2 and OSPD4 have to be amended according to corrigenda posted at the National Scrabble Association web site. North American competitions use the Long Words List for longer words. The OWL2 and the OSPD4 are compiled using four (originally five) major college-level dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster (10th and 11th editions, respectively). If a word appears, at least historically, any one of the dictionaries, it will be included in the OWL2 and the OSPD4. If the word has only an offensive meaning, it is only included in the OWL2.

The key difference between the OSPD4 and the OWL2 is that the OSPD4 is marketed for "home and school" use, with expurgated words which their source dictionaries judged offensive, rendering the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary less fit for official Scrabble play. The OSPD4 is available in bookstores, whereas the OWL2 is only available from the National Scrabble Association 's retail website wordgear.com (as of July 2009, NSA membership is no longer required to purchase the OWL). Collins Scrabble Words Edit In all other countries, the competition word list is the Tournament and Club Word List (Collins), also known as Collins Scrabble Words. It was published in May 2007 (see SOWPODS ) and it lists all words of length 2 to 15 letters and is thus a complete reference. This list contains all OWL2 words plus words sourced from Chambers and Collins English dictionaries. This book is used to adjudicate at the World Scrabble Championship and all other major international competitions outside of North America.

Collins Scrabble Words 2012 Edition will be used from 1 January 2012 for countries currently using the Tournament and Club Word List (Collins). Challenges Main article: Challenge (Scrabble) The penalty for a successfully challenged play is nearly universal: the offending player removes the tiles played and forfeits the turn. (However, in some online games, an option known as "void" may be used, wherein unacceptable words are automatically rejected by the program. The player is then required to make another play, with no penalty applied.) The penalty for an unsuccessful challenge (where all words formed by the play are deemed valid) varies considerably, including: "Double Challenge", in which an unsuccessfully challenging player must forfeit the next turn. This penalty governs North American (NASPA-sanctioned) tournaments, and is the standard for North American, Israeli and Thai clubs. Because loss of a turn generally constitutes the greatest risk for an unsuccessful challenge, it provides the greatest incentive for a player to "bluff", or play a "phony" – a plausible word that they know or suspect to be unacceptable, hoping their opponent will not call them on it.

Players have divergent opinions on this aspect of the double-challenge game and the ethics involved, but officially it is considered a valid part of the game. "Single Challenge"/"Free Challenge", in which no penalty whatsoever is applied to a player who unsuccessfully challenges. This is the default rule in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, as well as for many tournaments in Australia, although these countries do sanction occasional tournaments using other challenge rules. Modified "Single Challenge", in which an unsuccessful challenge does not result in the loss of the challenging player's turn, but is penalized by the loss of a specified number of points. The most common penalty is five points. The rule has been adopted in Singapore (since 2000), Malaysia (since 2002), South Africa (since 2003), New Zealand (since 2004), and Kenya, as well as in contemporary World Scrabble Championships (since 2001). Some countries and tournaments (including Sweden) use a 10-point penalty instead. In most game situations, this penalty is much lower than that of the "double challenge" rule. Consequently, such tournaments encourage a greater willingness to challenge and a lower willingness to play dubious words.

Historic evolution of the rules The North American "box rules" (that are included in each game box, as contrasted with tournament rules) have been edited four times: in 1953, 1976, 1989, and 1999. [11] The major changes in 1953 were as follows: It was made clear that: words could be played through single letters already on the board. a player could play a word parallel and immediately adjacent to an existing word provided all crosswords formed were valid. the effect of two word premium squares were to be compounded multiplicatively. The previously unspecified penalty for having one's play successfully challenged was stated: withdrawal of tiles and loss of turn. The major changes in 1976 were as follows: It was made clear that the blank tile beats an A when drawing to see who goes first. A player could now pass his/her turn, doing nothing. A loss-of-turn penalty was added for challenging an acceptable play. If final scores are tied, the player whose score was highest before adjusting for unplayed tiles is the winner. The editorial changes made in 1989 did not affect game play.

The major changes in 1999 were as follows: It was made clear that: a tile can be shifted or replaced until the play has been scored. a challenge applies to all the words made in the given play. Playing all seven tiles is officially called a "Bingo". A change of wording could be inferred to mean that a player can form more than one word in one row on a turn. Club and tournament play Main article: English language Scrabble Tens of thousands play club and tournament Scrabble worldwide. The intensity of play, obscurity of words, and stratospheric scores in tournament games may come as a shock to many parlor players. All tournament (and most club) games are played with a game clock and a set time control . Although casual games are often played with unlimited time, this is problematic in competitive play among players for whom the number of evident legal plays is immense. Almost all tournament games involve only 2 players; typically, each has 25 minutes in which to make all of his or her plays. For each minute by which a player oversteps the time control, a penalty of 10 points is assessed.

The number of minutes is rounded up, so, for example, if a player oversteps time control by two minutes and five seconds, the penalty is 30 points. Also, most players use molded plastic tiles (of which Protiles is one major brand), not engraved like the original wooden tiles, eliminating the potential for a cheating player to "braille" (feel for particular tiles, especially blanks, in the bag). Players are allowed "tracking sheets", preprinted with the letters in the initial pool, from which tiles can be crossed off as they are played. Tracking tiles is an important aid to strategy, especially during the endgame, when no tiles remain to be drawn and each player can determine exactly what is on the opponent's rack. The most prestigious (regularly held) tournaments include: The World Scrabble Championship : held in odd years, the last was in Johor Bahru , Malaysia in 2009. [12] The National Scrabble Championship : an open event attracting several hundred players, held around July/August every year or two, most recently in Dallas, Texas on August 7–11, 2010. The Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup : the largest tournament in the World.

Held annually around the end of June or beginning of July. Other important tournaments include: The World Youth Scrabble Championships : entry by country qualification, restricted to under 18 years old. Held annually since 2006. The National School Scrabble Championship : entry open to North American school students. Held annually since 2003. The Canadian Scrabble Championship : entry by invitation only to the top fifty Canadian players. Held every two to three years. Clubs in North America typically meet one day a week for three or four hours and some charge a small admission fee to cover their expenses and prizes. Clubs also typically hold at least one open tournament per year. Tournaments are usually held on weekends, and between six and nine games are played each day. There are also clubs in the UK and many other countries. There are a number of internationally rated SOWPODS -tournaments. [13] During off hours at tournaments, many players socialize by playing consultation (team) Scrabble, Clabbers , Anagrams , Boggle and other games. Computer players Edit Maven is a computer opponent for the game, created by Brian Sheppard.

The official Scrabble computer game in North America uses a version of Maven as its artificial intelligence and is published by Atari . Outside of North America, the official Scrabble computer game is published by Ubisoft . Quackle is an open-source alternative to Maven of comparable strength. [14] Console and computer video game versions The Nintendo DS version of Scrabble 2007 Edition made news when parents became angry over the game's AI using potentially offensive language during gameplay. [15] Scrabble on the Internet Edit A number of sites offer the possibility to play Scrabble online against other users. The game is available to play for free at part of Electronic Arts. The Internet Scrabble Club (ISC) , which is free of charge, is frequented continuously by thousands of players, including many of the game's most renowned experts. The social networking site Facebook had offered an online variation of Scrabble called Scrabulous as a third-party application add-on. On January 15, 2008, it was reported that Hasbro and Mattel were in the process of suing the creators of Scrabulous for copyright infringement .

On July 24, 2008, Hasbro filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the creators of Scrabulous. [16] On July 28, 2008 the Scrabulous Facebook application was disabled for users in North America, [17] eventually re-appearing as " Lexulous " in September 2008, with changes made to distinguish it from Scrabble. On December 20, 2008 Hasbro withdrew their lawsuit against RJ Softwares. [18] There is also a version in Turkish as a Facebook application named "SKRABL Turkce" which offers only 2 player game. [19] Mattel launched its official version of online Scrabble, Scrabble by Mattel on Facebook in late March 2008. [20] [21] The application was developed by Gamehouse , a division of RealNetworks who has been licensed by Mattel. [21] However since Hasbro controls the copyright for North America with the copyright for the rest of the world belonging Mattel, [20] the Facebook application is available only to players outside the United States and Canada.

[21] Ownership of the rights to Scrabble by multiple companies is limiting the introduction of the game to Facebook [21] and, between its launch date and April 6, 2008, fewer than 2000 users had registered, compared with 600,000 registered Scrabulous users. [21] As of November 3, 2008, the official Facebook Scrabble game has 203,644 monthly active users. The new "official" application has been heavily criticised in Facebook reviews, particularly by former users of the Scrabulous application which allowed American and Canadian users to play opponents in other countries, which is no longer possible: the Scrabble Beta application is only available in the USA and Canada, whereas Scrabble Worldwide is only available to other countries. Some have complained that they have been unable to use the new application due to technical bugs and glitches, and many have criticized Hasbro for failing to reach an agreement with Scrabulous developers. [22] In addition, the Facebook version only allows automatic verification of words, making it impossible to play invalid words, and making challenges redundant.

RealNetworks has stated that the application is currently in its beta stage and there have been reports of a number of bugs and limitations. [21] The Original Scrabble now exists on Facebook, and was developed by Electronic Arts . Scrabble "TV game show" board game versions Main article: Scrabble (game show) In 1987, a board game was released by Selchow & Righter, based on the Scrabble game show which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1990 (and for five months in 1993). Billed as the "Official Home Version" of the game show (or officially as the "TV Scrabble Home Game"), game play bears more resemblance to the game show than it does to a traditional Scrabble game, although it does utilize a traditional Scrabble game board in play. On September 17, 2011, a new game show based on Scrabble, called "Scrabble Showdown", premiered on the The Hub . The show is hosted by Justin "Kredible" Willman .

[23] Super Scrabble Main article: Super Scrabble A new licensed product, Super Scrabble , was launched in North America by Winning Moves Games in 2004 under license from Hasbro, with the deluxe version (with turntable and lock-in grid) released in February 2007. A Mattel-licensed product for the rest of the world was released by Tinderbox Games in 2006. This set comprises 200 tiles in slightly modified distribution to the standard set and a 21×21 playing board. Records Edit The following records were achieved during competitive club or tournament play, according to authoritative sources, including the book Everything Scrabble by Joe Edley and John D. Williams, Jr. (revised edition, Pocket Books , 2001) and the Scrabble FAQ. [24] When available, separate records are listed based upon different official word lists: OSPD or OCTWL, the North American list also used in Thailand and Israel; OSW, formerly the official list in the UK; SOWPODS, the combined OSPD+OSW now used in much of the world.

To date, new editions or revisions of these lists have not been considered substantial enough to warrant separate record-keeping. High game (OSPD) – 830 by Michael Cresta (Mass.), October 12, 2006. Cresta defeated Wayne Yorra 830-490. [25] [26] High game (OSW) – 793 by Peter Preston (UK), 1999. [27] High game (SOWPODS) – Nicholas Mbugua set a new Kenya record with 789 on June 3, 2007 at the 2nd WSC Qualifier in Machakos. Russell Honeybun set a new Australian record with 764 in August 2007. High combined score (OSPD) – 1320 (830-490) by Michael Cresta and Wayne Yorra, in a Lexington, Mass., club, 2006.

[25] [26] High combined score (OSPD) in a tournament game – 1134 (582-552) by Keith Smith (Tex.) and Stefan Rau (Conn.), Round 12 of the 2008 Dallas Open. (Rau's losing score of 552 included three phony words which were not challenged.) [28] High combined score (OSPD) in a tournament game with no phony words played – 1127 (725-402) by Laurie Cohen (Ariz.) and Nigel Peltier (Wash.), in a tournament in Ahwatukee, Arizona, February 16, 2009. [29] High combined score (SOWPODS) – 1157 (627-530) by Phillip Edwin-Mugisha (Uganda) and Vannitha Balasingam (Malaysia), at the 2009 World Scrabble Championship.

[30] Highest losing score (OSPD) – 552 by Stefan Rau (Conn.) to Keith Smith's (Tex.) 582, Round 12 of the 2008 Dallas Open. [28] Highest tie game (OSPD) – 502-502 by John Chew and Zev Kaufman, at a 1997 Toronto Club tournament. [31] Highest tie game (SOWPODS) – 522-522 by A Webb and N Deller, at the Peterborough Free Challenge Event 2009 [32] Highest opening move score (OSPD) – MuZJIKS (with a blank for the U) 126 by Jesse Inman (S.C.) at the National Scrabble Championship , 2008. [33] The highest possible legal score on a first turn is MUZJIKS 128, using an actual U rather than a blank. Highest opening move score (SOWPODS) – BEZIQUE 124 by Sam Kantimathi (1993), [34] Joan Rosenthal.

[35] BEZIQUE 124 by Sally Martin. [35] Highest single play (OSPD) – QUIXOTRY 365 by Michael Cresta (Mass.), 2006. [25] [26] Highest single play (SOWPODS) – CAZIQUES 392 by Karl Khoshnaw. [36] Highest average score, multi-day tournament (OSPD) – 474 by Suhas Rao (N.C.) over 29 rounds at the 2011 National Scrabble Championship . [37] 471 by Chris Cree (Tex.) over 18 rounds at the Bayou Bash in Houston, Tex., 2007. [38] Highest average score, multi-day tournament (SOWPODS) – 499.94 by Nigel Richards (MY) over 16 rounds at the 7th Lim Boon Heng Cup, Singapore, 2009.

[39] In the absence of better documentation, it is believed that the following records were achieved under a formerly popular British format known as the "high score rule", in which a player's tournament result is determined only by the player's own scores, and not by the differentials between that player's scores and the opponents'. As a result, play in this system "encourages elaborate setups often independently mined by the two players", [27] and is profoundly different from the standard game in which defensive considerations play a major role. While the "high score" rule has unsurprisingly led to impressively high records, it is currently out of favor throughout the world; associating its records with normal competitive play is misleading. High game score of 1,049 by Phil Appleby of Lymington, Hants, UK , on June 25, 1989 in Wormley, Herts, UK. His opponent scored just 253 points, giving Appleby a record victory margin of 796 points. High single-turn score of 392, by Dr. Saladin Karl Khoshnaw [36] in Manchester , UK, in April 1982.

The word he used was CAZIQUES , meaning "native chiefs of West Indian aborigines". Hypothetical scores in possible and legal but highly unlikely plays and games are far higher, primarily through the use of words that cover three triple-word-score squares. The highest reported score for a single play is 1780 (OSPD) and 1785 (SOWPODS) using oxyphenbutazone . [40] When only adding the word sesquioxidizing to these official lists, one could theoretically score 2015 (OSPD) and 2044 (SOWPODS) points in a single move. [40] The highest reported combined score for a theoretical game is 3,986 points using OSPD words only. [41] Other records are available for viewing at Template:PDFlink , an unofficial record book which includes the above as sources and expands on other topics. International versions Edit Template:See Versions of the game have been released in several other languages. The game was called Alfapet when it was introduced in Sweden in 1954.

However, since the mid-1990s, the game has also been known as Scrabble in Sweden. Alfapet is now another crossword game, created by the owners of the name Alfapet. A Russian version is called Erudit. Versions have been prepared for Dakotah , Haitian Creole , Dakelh ( Carrier language ), and Tuvan . [42] For languages with digraphs counted as single letters, such as Welsh and Hungarian , the game features separate tiles for those digraphs. Variations Main article: Scrabble variants Variations of the game include AlphaJax, Literati, Alfapet, Funworder, Skip-A-Cross, Scramble, Spelofun, Square-write, Palabras Cruzadas ("crossed words"), Word for Word, Lexulous, Wordipelago, Wordfeud, and Words With Friends . While these games are similar to the original Scrabble game, they include minor variations. For example, Literati draws random tiles instead of providing a finite number of tiles for the game, assigns different point levels to each letter and has a slightly different board layout whereas Lexulous assigns eight letters to each player instead of the customary seven.

Duplicate Scrabble is a popular variant in French speaking countries . Every player has the same letters on the same board and the players must submit a paper slip at the end of the allotted time (usually 3 minutes) with the highest scoring word they have found. This is the format used for the French World Scrabble Championships but it is also used in Romanian and Dutch . There is no limit to the number of players that can be involved in one game, and at Vichy in 1998 there were 1485 players, a record for French Scrabble tournaments. In one variation of Scrabble, blanks actually do score points corresponding to the letter which the blank is used to represent. For example, if one played blank to represent a "Z", it would get ten; a blank to represent a V or an H would get four; a blank to represent a D would get 2 and blank to represent a T, N or any of the vowels would get one. Game board formats The game has been released in numerous game board formats appealing to various user groups. The original boards included wood tiles and many "deluxe" sets still do.

Travel editions Edit Editions are available for travelers who may wish to play in a conveyance such as a train or plane, or who may wish to pause a game in progress and resume later. Many versions thus include methods to keep letters from moving, such as pegboards, recessed tile holders and magnetic tiles. Players' trays are also designed with stay-fast holders. Such boards are also typically designed to be folded and stowed with the game in progress. Production and Marketing Company, 1954 – metal hinged box, Bakelite tiles inlaid with round magnets, chrome tile racks, silver colored plastic bag and cardboard box covered with decorative paper. The box, when opened flat, measures 8½″ × 7¾″ and the tiles measure ½″ × ½″ each. Spear's Games, 1980s – boxed edition with pegboard, plastic tiles with small feet to fit snugly in the pegboard. Racks are clear plastic, allowing some sorting while holding tiles fairly snugly. Set comes with a drawstring plastic bag to draw tiles and a cardboard box. It is possible to save a game in progress by returning the board to the box.

There is risk of players' trays being mixed and upset, and the box lid, held on by friction, is subject to upset. Selchow & Righter, 1980s – pocket edition with plastic "magnetic" board and tiles. Tile racks are also plastic with asymmetrical shape to provide handhold. All elements fit in a plastic envelope for travel and to permit a pause in the game. Plastic letters are very small and tend to lose their grip if not placed with slight lateral movement and if they are not perfectly clean. Game format is extremely small, allowing Scrabble games for backpackers and others concerned about weight and size. Hasbro Games, 2001 – hinged plastic board with clear tile-shaped depressions to hold tiles in play. Board is in a black, zippered folio such that board and tiles may be folded for travel, even with game in play. Reverse side of board contains numbered mounts for racks, holding tiles face down, allowing secure and confidential storage of tiles while game is paused. Some versions have tile racks with individual tile slots, thus not permitting easy sorting of tiles in rack. Deluxe editions Edit At the opposite end, some "deluxe" editions offer superior materials and features.

These include editions on a rotating turntable so players can always face the board with the letters upright and a raised grid that holds the tiles in place. More serious players often favor custom Scrabble boards, often made of Lucite or hardwood, that have superior rotating mechanisms and personalized graphics. Large print edition Edit An edition has been released (in association with the RNIB ) with larger board and letters for players with impaired vision. The colours on the board are more contrasting and the font size is increased from 16 to 24 point. The tiles are in bold 48 point. Works detailing tournament Scrabble An introduction to tournament Scrabble and its players can be found in the book Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis . In the process of writing, Fatsis himself progressed into a high-rated tournament player. There have been numerous documentaries made about the game, including: Word Wars (2004) by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo, about the "tiles and tribulations on the Scrabble game circuit".

Scrabylon (2003), by Scott Petersen, which "gives an up-close look at why people get so obsessed with that seemingly benign game..." Word Slingers by Eric Siblin and Stefan Vanderland (produced for CBC , 2002), which follows four expert Canadian players at the 2001 World Championship in Las Vegas. See also

Question: In the English version of Scrabble there are 100 tiles. The letter E has most tiles. How many
Answer: 12