#27 - Scrabble | April 13, 2020

10 Facts About Today

10 Facts About Today - Podcast

April 13, 2020 - 10 Facts About Scrabble

Here are 10 wordy facts about scrabble that you didn’t know, that you didn’t need to know:

1. Scrabble wasn’t invented by a writer, reach or librarian, it was invented by an architect.
   1. Alfred Butts
2. Scrabble wasn’t always named Scrabble.
   1. Originally named Lexico
   2. Then called Criss-Cross Words
   3. Friend and eventual business partner James Brunot came up with Scrabble in 1930’s
3. Scrabble can be found in 3 out of every 5 American households.
4. The points are based on letter frequency in the English language.
   1. Q is the letter that occured least often It’s worth 10 points
   2. Used dictionary and other available literary sources to manually calculate frequency.
5. There is a robot equipped with arms, a camera and AI. It never loses.
   1. Made by Taiwanese Company called ITRI
   2. Maximizes obscure words with high letter values
6. No one wanted to buy scrabble
   1. When Butts was trying to sell the game he couldn’t find a manufacturer that wanted to pick it up
   2. It got bought and sold a few times until finally it got acquired by hasbro games
   3. The first company to mass produce it only printed a few hundred sets for the first run
7. The game hasn’t changed since it was invented
   1. There are different ways to play now like
   2. Ecological (you can replace and reuse the black tile)
   3. Speed scrabble which is just like how it sounds
   4. Or Tag Team where you have a partner and you take turns
8. During Scrabble tournaments they use non-standard pieces
   1. They are the same letters, but they are not engraved
   2. People used to feel the pieces in the bag to pick good letters
9. The best word to play is OXYPHENBUTAZONE
   1. If you play this in the right spot you can get 1782 points
   2. You would hit 3 triple words and get 7 downward crosswords
10. Even the iphone app is extremely popular
    1. According to the iphone app store
    2. Its in the top 25 most popular games in the country