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| A game of
English-language Scrabble in progress. |
Scrabble
Scrabble is a game that is played by 2, 3 or 4 people.
It uses a board with squares on it (15x15) and a large
number of letters on small tiles. Each player, when it
is his/her turn, has to put a word on the board, using
any of the seven letters (seven tiles) that they have in
front of them. Their word must join on to what is
already on the board. |
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How to play
The players decide who is going to start by taking one
letter (one tile) from the bag. The person with the
letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet may
start.
Each player takes seven tiles from the bag (without
looking at what they are). The player puts these tiles
on a rack in front of him so that he can see them, but
the others cannot see which letters he has. After each
turn a player can take some new letters out of the bag
so that he has seven letters again for his next turn.
The first player puts a word on the board using some, or
all, of his seven letters as possible. He must include
the square in the middle. It is then the next player's
turn. His word must join on somewhere to what the other
player has already put. Sometimes it is possible to make
two or more words in one turn by touching other letters,
but each word on the board reading horizontally (left to
right) or vertically (top to bottom) must be a proper
word (no names) but abbreviations (shortened forms) are
allowed.
Each tile (each letter) has a number of points. The
common letters such as A, B, T, etc. are worth one
point. Unusual letters such as Q and Z are worth 10
points. There are also two blank tiles which can be used
for any letter. A player must say what the letter is
when he puts it down, e.g. he might say that "C" "A"
"Blank" spells "CAT". During the rest of the game that
blank tile must be treated as a letter "T".
There are several squares on the board where a player
can get extra points. Some squares allow the player to
count that letter twice (light blue) or three times
(dark blue), other squares allow him to count the whole
word twice (light red) or three times (dark red).
The aim of the game is to get as many points as
possible. A long word will not always get as many points
as a shorter word. It depends which letters are used. It
is also a good idea not put a word which will let the
next player make a high score.
There are special Scrabble dictionaries available in
which all allowable words are listed. When playing
according to the proper rules one is not allowed to use
a dictionary to find a word. However, if one of players
challenges another (i.e. if he says: "The word you have
put down is not allowed"), then the players may check it
in the dictionary. If the word does not exist, the
player must take his letters back and he loses his turn.
After a while there are no more letters in the bag. The
game finishes when one player has no more letters. The
other players have to count the points for the letters
they still have in front of them, and take them away
from their total score. |
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Other languages
Scrabble is available in many languages. Even if a
language uses the same letters as English, some of the
common English letters may be unusual in another
language, and common letters there may be unusual in
English. There are versions in languages with other
alphabets, such as Russian. |
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History
Scrabble was invented in 1938 by an architect named
Alfred Mosher Butts. He had previously invented a
similar game called Lexiko. He worked out how many
points should be given for each letter by looking at
books and newspapers and counting how often particular
letters are used in the English language. He called the
game "Criss-Crosswords". However, he was not successful
in selling the game. In 1948 a lawyer called James
Brunot bought the rights to make to game. Brunot made
some of the rules easier, and changed the name to
"Scrabble", which is a real word meaning: “to scratch
around frantically”. Soon other firms around the world
were buying rights to make the game. It had become so
popular by 1984 that it was made into a daytime TV show
on NBC television.
The name Scrabble today is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc.
in the US and Canada and of J. W. Spear & Sons PLC in
other countries.
All over the world people play Scrabble in clubs and
tournaments. People who play in serious tournaments are
given a time limit. They lose points if they spend too
long thinking about their moves.
There are websites where one can play Scrabble online.
On Facebook, there is a version of Scrabble called
Scrabulous. |
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|
 Kiddle: Scrabble
Wikipedia: Scrabble |
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