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Heresy! Scrabble has recently announced that it is changing its rules to allow place names, people’s names, and brands.
A spokeswoman for the company said the use of proper nouns would "add a new dimension" to Scrabble and "introduce an element of popular culture into the game".
She said: "This is one of a number of twists and challenges included that we believe existing fans will enjoy and will also enable younger fans and families to get involved."
Do you have an old Scrabble board game abandoned because of a few missing tiles? (Or perhaps because you hate losing at Scrabble) Well, turn it into this marvelous DIY photo frame. Check out the instruction at Photojojo: Link – via DIY:happy
Jane and Keith Crane of Akron, Ohio created an eight-foot square Scrabble board for their yard!
He fashioned the board from pavers laid in a bed of sand — 225 of them, to be exact. He installed them all in one day and had the back pain to prove it.
Jane Crane painted the bonus square in the proper colors and made letter tiles from craft-store wood plaques. She took apart shelves and reconfigured the pieces to make tile racks, and pavers and tiles were sealed to prevent water damage.
Now Scrabble games at the Crane house are a physical as well as mental pursuit. The players have to get out of their seats to place their tiles on the board and pick new ones from the selection spread out face down in the grass.
Link -via mental_floss
(image credit: Ken Love/Akron Beacon Journal)
The board game Scrabble is 60 years old, or maybe 70, depending on where you start counting from. PES created this eye-popping stop-motion ad to honor the occasion. Link (embedded YouTube video)
I love me a good game night. Monopoly gets pretty cut-throat when we’re at my in-laws – cheating bankers, people hiding money, my brother-in-law yelling at people about the free market. It’s a blast, actually. But I love the word games too – Scattergories is probably my favorite, but Catch Phrase is a good time. Especially if there’s alcohol involved. I’ve been itching for a good game night lately, so to satiate my urge until I can convince some friends to come over and be mercilessly beaten at Clue, here are a few facts about some of your favorite (at least, my favorite) games.
• For some reason, I always thought the Monopoly guy was Uncle Moneybags. Nope. But “proper” names for him include Rich Uncle Pennybags, Milburn Pennybags and Mr. Monopoly (his most recent name). Some sources say he’s loosely based on J.P. Morgan.
• Marvin Gardens is actually a misspelling of Marven Gardens, a housing area in Margate City, N.J. In fact, all of the properties on the “classic” Monopoly board are named after places or streets near or in Atlantic City, N.J.
• In the London version of the game, Trafalgar Square is a red property, Piccadilly is yellow, Regent, Oxford and Bond Streets are green and the blue properties are Mayfair and Park Lane. The railroads are replaced by Underground stops (King’s Cross, Marylebone, Fenchurch Street Station and Liverpool Street Station).
• Neiman Marcus once sold an all-chocolate edition. The whole set, including dice, money, hotels and board, was edible.
• F.A.O. Schwarz in NYC sold a $100,000 version, which included 18-carat game pieces, a rosewood board, real money, street names written in gold leaf and various gems scattered across the board.
• The most expensive board even made is a set worth $2 million It’s made of 23-carat gold and has rubies and sapphires embedded in the top of each house and hotel.
• Various versions of Monopoly include Batman, ESPN, Family Guy, American Idol, Nintendo, Sephora, and, honestly, just about any other version you can possibly think of.
What we in North America know as Clue, the rest of the world knows as Cluedo. Would you believe that it was invented by a part-time clown? Totally true. Anthony E. Pratt invented the game in England and it was published for the first time in 1949 by a British company. Bought by Parker Brothers, the U.S. version came out the same year.
• The dead dude is known as Mr. Boddy in North America, but he’s Dr. Black everywhere else. Also, Mr. Green is apparently alias Reverend Green in some parts of the world.
• Also, some of the Clue characters have little-known first names. They are: Colonel Michael Mustard, Miss Josephine Scarlet, Professor Peter Plum, Reverend/Mr. John Green, Mrs. Blanche White and Mrs. Elizabeth Peacock.
• Characters used in other or deluxe versions of Clue include Miss Peach (not to be confused with Princess Peach), Lady Lavender, Prince Azure, Rusty Naylor and Captain Brown.
• The original nine weapons were axe, shillelagh, bomb, rope, dagger, pistol, syringe, poison and poker.
Life has been around since 1861… not in the format we recognize today, of course. Milton Bradley himself invented “The Checkered Game of Life” when his lithography business started to go down the tubes (his major product was a portrait of clean-shaven Lincoln… when Lincoln grew the beard, Bradley went out of business).
He had actually been circulating the game on a smaller scale before his clean-shaven Lincoln lithograph took off, but he abandoned it once demand for his lithograph increased. After that plummeted, he focused more attention on marketing and ended up selling more than 40,000 games in 1861 alone – no small feat for that time period!
• Milton Bradley used a spinner to count the number of spaces people could move because dice were associated with gambing.
• In the original Checkered Game of Life, landing on the “Suicide” square put people out of the game completely. Obviously.
• Other squares on the original game board included Prison, Infancy, Ruin, Gambling, Disgrace, Honesty, Truth, Cupid, Industry and “Happy Old Age” (the goal of the game).
• One interesting variant (among many) is The Game of Redneck Life. Careers include Mullet Salon Operator and Monster Truck Announcer. The goal of the game is to get out with as many teeth as you can – through the various fights and brawls you get into over the course of the game, this can prove to be pretty challenging. I’m dead serious.
Scrabble came about in 1939 when architect Alfred Mosher Butts modified a game he had been working on earlier – Lexiko. At first he called it Criss-Crosswords and based the values of the letters on based on letter usages from the New York Times (and other reputable sources). In 1948, he allowed James Brunot to manufacture the game as long as he got a cut of each board sold… which wasn’t much, at first. They actually lost money the first year they produced it. Legend goes, though, that the President of Macy’s played the game while on vacation and, upon his return to work, was shocked that his store didn’t carry it. When they did start to carry it, sales skyrocketed.
• There are 96 two-letter words that are “legal” in Scrabble… including 10 that are spelled with vowels only. I’m so learning those.
• A typical Scrabble board has 225 squares.
• The highest known score for a single word in competition Scrabble is 392. In 1982, Dr. Saladin Khoshnaw achieved this score for the word “caziques,” which means “Indian chief.”
• The highest possible score a player can get in Scrabble on a first turn is for the word MUZJIKS (128 points).
I realize there’s tons of beloved board games I’ve missed, so maybe I’ll turn this into a series… a three-parter, or something. Sorry!, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Risk, Trivial Pursuit. Lots of options. Have one you’d like to read about? Leave it in the comments and maybe I’ll add it to the list!
