Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, bearing a single letter, on to a gameboard which is divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words which, in crosswordfashion, flow left to right in rows or downwards in columns. The words must be defined in a standarddictionary. Specified reference works (e.g., the Official Club and Tournament Word List, the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) provide a list of officially permissible words.
The name Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States and Canada; elsewhere, it is a trademark of Mattel. The game is sold in 121 countries and is available in 29 languages; approximately 150 million sets have been sold worldwide and roughly one-third of American homes have a Scrabble set.
Game details[edit]
Further information: Scrabble letter distributions
The game is played by two to four players on a square board with a 15×15 grid of cells (individually known as "squares"), each of which accommodates a single letter tile. In official club and tournament games, play is between two players or, occasionally, between two teams each of which collaborates on a single rack.[citation needed]
The board is marked with "premium" squares, which multiply the number of points awarded: eight dark red "triple-word" squares, 17 pink "double-word" squares, of which one, the center square (H8), is marked with a star or other symbol; 12 dark blue "triple-letter" squares, and 24 light blue "double-letter" squares. In 2008, Hasbro changed the colors of the premium squares to orange for TW, red for DW, blue for DL, and green for TL. Despite this, the original premium square color scheme is still the preferred scheme for Scrabble boards used in tournaments.[4]
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.
Tiles are usually made of wood or plastic and are 19 by 19 millimetres (0.75 in × 0.75 in) square and 4 mm (0.16 in) thick, making them slightly smaller than the squares on the board. Only the rosewood tiles of the deluxe edition varies the width up to 2 mm (0.08 in) for different letters. Travelling versions of the game often have smaller tiles (e.g. 13 mm × 13 mm (0.51 in × 0.51 in)); sometimes they are magnetic to keep them in place. The capital letter is printed in black at the centre of the tile face and the letter's point value printed in a smaller font at the bottom right corner.
History[edit]
In 1938, American 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 by performing a frequency analysis of letters from various sources including The New York Times. The new game, which he called "Criss-Crosswords," added the 15×15 gameboard 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.[6]
In 1948, James Brunot,[7] a resident ofNewtown, 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;[citation needed] 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 inDodgingtown, a section of Newtown. They made 2,400 sets that year, but lost money.[8] 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."[citation needed]
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 Brothersand Milton Bradley Company, had previously rejected the game. In its second year as a Selchow and Righter-built product, nearly four million sets were sold.[9]
Selchow and Righter bought the trademark to the game in 1972.[10] JW Spears began selling the game in Australia and the UK on January 19, 1955. The company is now a subsidiary of Mattel.[6] In 1986, Selchow and Righter was sold to Coleco, who soon after went bankrupt. The company's assets, including Scrabble and Parcheesi, were purchased byHasbro.[10]
In 1984, Scrabble was turned into a daytime game show on NBC. Scrabble ran from July 1984 to March 1990,[11] 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."[12][not in citation given] In 2011, a new TV variation of Scrabble, called Scrabble Showdown, aired on The Hub cable channel, which is a joint venture of Discovery Communications, Inc. and Hasbro.
Scrabble was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2004.[citation needed]
Evolution of the rules[edit]
The "box rules" included in each copy of the USA/Canada edition have been edited four times: in 1953, 1976, 1989, and 1999.[13]
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; in tournament play, a tie is counted as half a win for both players.[citation needed]
The editorial changes made in 1989 did not affect game play.[citation needed]
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[vague] to mean that a player can form more than one word in one row on a turn.
