

The name Scrabble comes from the words Scrabbling, Scrabbled, and Scrabbles – all of which mean to claw or scrape at something frantically.

Scrabble is used all over the world as a means of teaching English.

There are 124 playable two-letter words in the English (language) game, containing every letter in the alphabet except for V. The original version of Scrabble, Lexico, did not have a board and was played with tiles only. Although it has long since sold out, copies of this golden- Scrabble can be found on eBay for roughly £350. In 1992, Franklin Mint commissioned and produced a version of Scrabble featuring 24k gold-plated tiles. Not by choice, mind, as they were both trapped in a crevasse in Antarctica! In 1985, Lieutenant Commander Waghorn and Lance Corporal Gill played Scrabble for five continuous days. The most amount of tiles are in Italian and Portuguese Scrabble, which both have 120 tiles. To get those points, competition player Benjamin Woo played it across the top of the board, hitting three Triple Word Score squares whilst also making seven crosswords downwards.Įnglish Scrabble has 100 tiles. It’s possible to score 1782 points on a single word. If all the Scrabble tiles ever produced were lined up, they would stretch for more than 50,000 miles! Scrabble has quite a celebrity following those celebs who play include Sting, Keanu Reeves, Moby, John Travolta, Carol Burnett, Jimmy Kimmel, Kylie Minogue, Mel Gibson, Joan Collins, Tom Cruise, Kate Hudson, Richard Nixon, and Queen Elizabeth II. Over 150 million copies of Scrabble have been sold worldwide!ĭown the sides of sofas, underneath carpets, eaten by children and pets alike, somewhere in the world, there are over a million missing Scrabble tiles.Įach hour, at least 30,000 Scrabble games are started. The game is sold in 121 countries and comes in 31 different languages.

There is a Braille version of Scrabble produced. Butts died at the age of 93 in 1993.īack in 1931, the original name for Scrabble was “ Lexico,” before becoming “ Criss-Cross Words” and eventually “ Scrabble.” “ Lexico” is a shortened version of the word “ Lexicon,” which is another term for “ Language” or “ Vocabulary.”Īlfred Butts decided on the frequency and distribution of the letter tiles by analyzing the front page of the New York Times. Butts invented the game in an attempt to create a word game that combined anagrams and crosswords, which involved luck, chance, and a great deal of skill. Scrabble was invented in 1931 by New York architect Alfred Mosher Butts. Or do you know why the first-ever World Championships of Scrabble couldn’t be started?įind out why below in these 30 fun facts about Scrabble! Hot worldwide, among the old and young, Scrabble sure is a heavy-hitter in the board game world.Īt over 80 years old, Scrabble is probably older than your parents!īut did you know that the game underwent a few name changes before being settled upon as Scrabble? Scrabble is one of the biggest-selling and most popular board games of all time.
