Scrabble is a fun game to play at home. You just need a scrabble board, some letter tiles and two or four people. It is a word game. Basically, what you have to do is to make words with the tiles.
This game is played with a board with a 15×15 grid of cells (individually known as 'squares'). That makes the total number of those squares 225. Players (or teams, if you wish to do something like a tournament) sit on the opposite sides of the boards and make words in turns.
Generally, there are 100 letter tiles to make words — there are ample spaces between words so they do not get jumbled up.
The tiles are commonly made of wood or plastic. But, sometimes, magnetic tiles are used, too.
Playing this game is, as said before, simple. Players have to put the tiles on the squares of the board, side by side, and make words that can be found in a standard dictionary. The letter tiles can be put both vertically and horizontally — but not diagonally.
A point is assigned to each of the 98 tiles (except 2, which are valueless). The more common a letter is, the less value is assigned to its tile. For example, articles are worth 1 point only, as they are used a lot more frequently than any other letter. On the other hand, uncommon letters like 'Z' and 'Q' score 10 points.
And what more is, all the squares of the board are not equal. There are 'premium' squares — squares that multiply the number of points awarded for the tiles put on them. There are 24 light blue 'double-letter' squares, 12 dark blue 'triple-letter' squares, 17 pink 'double-word' squares (one which is the square situated at the centre of the board, usually marked by a star symbol), and 8 dark red 'triple-word' squares.
There are some rules that developed through the ages. Some of them are like this:
- Words can be played through single letters already on the board.
(That means, if the word 'apple' has already been made vertically, the word 'cap' can then be made horizontally over it because they share a letter 'p'.) - A player can pass his/her turn, doing nothing.
- There is a loss-of-turn penalty for challenging an acceptable play.
And a few more. Play today and find out.
This is really an amazing game, which enables one to build up a good vocabulary, and also gives us an opportunity to show off one's knowledge of words!
So, what are you waiting for? Set up the board with your friends or siblings (or even parents) and start a friendly war of words.
Let’s Scrabble!