Scrabble Trivia – Amazing Facts
Some Amazing Facts about Scrabble®
did you know that……………..?
- In the UK a five year old boy telephoned Leicester Police to complain that his sister was cheating at Scrabble®
- It has not proved possible to play Scrabble® in Japanese or Chinese so the game is played in English with a rule book in the native language
- Scrabble® has featured in many TV shows including Roseanne, Men Behaving Badly, GP, Water Rats, Kavanagh QC, Coronation Street, Eastenders and Brookside
- In the UK amongst the unusual occupations of players competing in the National Championships were monk, button dryer and drystone waller.
- In Thailand there is a daily newspaper column devoted to Scrabble®
- The original name for the game was ‘Lexico’
- The inventor of Scrabble®, Alfred Butts, also invented a similar game called ‘Alfred’s Other Game’
- The original game did not use a board and was played with tiles only
- There is a town in the State of Virginia, USA, called ‘Scrabble’
- A new patient at an old people’s home was thrown out as ‘incompatible’ when she admitted she didn’t play Scrabble®\
- There is a version of the game with gold plated tiles made by ‘Franklin Mint’
- An internet discussion group of over 300 Scrabble® players around the world discuss Scrabble® related themes and controversies every day
- Australian celebrities who love Scrabble® include Derryn Hinch and Kylie Minogue.
- Scrabble® is made in Braille
- Mark Nyman (UK) learnt 10,000 words from the American Dictionary to prepare for his victory in the 1993 World Championship
- Alfred Butts, the inventor of the game, decided on the frequency and distribution of letters by analysing how often letters appeared on the front page of the New York Times
