Scrabble
June 11th, 2008Scrabble is a game in which players win points by forming words with individual tiles on a grid of size 15 X 15 tiles. Only dictionary words are recognized and the words should be either formed across a row or along a column. A minimum of two players and a maximum of four players can play a game. Most games are usually played between 2 players.
The word Scrabble is a trademark of the toy and games company Hasbro Inc in USA and Canada. Mattel is the trademark holder for Scrabble in other parts of the world. Funworder, Skip-A-Cross, Spelofun and Word for Word are some of the other names for Scrabble. It is a popular board game worldwide and more than one hundred million sets of the game have been sold in 121 countries in 29 language versions.
There are 100 tiles used in a scrabble game of which 98 correspond to a letter in the alphabet and 2 tiles are blank. The number of points corresponding to each tile depends on its frequency in the English alphabet. More common letters like “E” and “O” are worth a single point and letters which are used infrequently in written and spoken English are worth more points. “Q” and “Z” are worth 10 points.
The two blank tiles do not carry any point value, but can be used as substitutes for any letter. However, once they are placed on the scrabble board, the value of the blank tiles cannot be changed.