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Scrabble for the Right Word

© Sandra Linville

It is a game that generates debates over the merits of quintar, qoph and qua as well as ba, be, bi, and bo - these are all legitimate words for SCRABBLE, a game invented during the American Great Depression by Alfred M. Butts, an out-of-work architect from Poughkeepsie, New York. The history of SCRABBLE is outlined at the Official Worldwide Scrabble Home Page at "http://www.scrabble.com/" by Hasbro. You can watch Rico and Beth play a game of Scrabble while you read Butts' original pitch letter and even a rejection letter from Parker Brothers. In 1948, Butts and friends slowly assembled games at about 12 an hour until he set up a factory and produced 2,400 sets in 1949, but the game was slow to catch on. Finally, in 1952, he returned from a trip to find his factory swamped with orders.

SCRABBLE is now one of the leading board games with a National Scrabble Association at http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrend... and tournaments played throughout the world. The Jerusalem Scrabble Club boasts that it is "probably the biggest Scrabble club in the world with an average weekly attendance of 55 players. Founded in 1983, its ranks today include about 100 active members." Of Scrabble variants, duplicate tournament Scrabble is played in France. You can find those rules at La Federation Francaise de Scrabble at http://www.azursoft.fr/ffsc/ Tournament rules differ from the rules on the box. You can find those rules along with almost anything you wanted to know about SCRABBLE at The Scrabble FAQ and other crossword game resources at http://www.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabbl...

The British are particularly fond of SCRABBLE and the British Scrabble Club recorded the highest score for a single play by Karl Khoshnaw. Khoshnaw played CAZIQUES for 392 points in Manchester, UK, in April 1982. Cathy Evans played QUETZALS for 365 points, achieving the highest word score in a tournament. She was from Redbridge, Essex, UK and was playing during the Letchworth Open Scrabble Tournament in November 1986. The Electronic Scrabble Club at http://www.ozemail.aust.com/~aspa/ is fun and informative.

If you need to upgrade your vocabulary skills for SCRABBLE, consult the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, http://www.m-w.com/book/puzzspec/scrabdi... or you can pump some "word" iron on the Web at a couple of sites. Vocabulary University, http://www.vocabulary.com/ can help you increase your vocabulary for SATs, ACTs, etc. as well as a good game of SCRABBLE or you can go to Word Play, http://www.wolinskyweb.com/word.htm for links to about all you will ever need to know about words and the English language.

The copyright of the article Scrabble for the Right Word in Word Play is owned by Sandra Linville. Permission to republish Scrabble for the Right Word in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.