Words are hard.
And sometimes the best way to cure that problem is to take out the soft little drawstring bag, reach in with eager fingers, and grab seven random tiles to see what you can come up with.
A classic in the board game world, Scrabble, from Hasbro, will likely never go out of style. With friends and family trying to outwit each other with the cleverest of words that garner the most points, the competition is timeless.
In case you’ve never had downtime in elementary school during which the teacher wanted to give the students something educational without having to interact with them, let me explain the basics of Scrabble for you. Everyone starts out with seven tiles picked blindly from the bag and then the players start taking turns forming words on the board crossword-style. Each tile is worth a certain amount of points, and players add up numbers on their tiles to get the total points for the word they just created. Players can get anywhere from 1 to 10 points per tile, with Q and Z each worth the most points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpfevNZyK54
With the game being decades-old — originally invented in 1933 by Alfred Butts — there are many different sets out there ranging from travel sets to deluxe collector editions, but sometimes all you need is the classic board with a few tile racks to set the mood.
Scrabble can be made of it whatever your heart desires. As a kid, our gameplay was limited by our young vocabularies, of course, until we played regularly with our grandparents. And then, as we got older and it became a little easier to bust out double-letter scores, we started making themes to our games. Sometimes it would have a culinary twist or a nature focus, but no matter what it was we would keep the dictionary handy to make sure our questionable words couldn’t be disputed.
Although there’s really no wrong time to play Scrabble, kids can test their extensive vocabulary in a timely manner by celebrating National Scrabble Day on April 13. So break out the gridded board and fill it with as many inscribed tiles as your lexicon allows!
