What is an eight-letter word that is also a great game for those who think they have an extended vocabulary? The answer is Scrabble and April 13 is the day to celebrate the board game that gets you thinking and spelling.
Here are nine fast facts about Scrabble.
1. Inventor Alfred Mosher Butts first got the idea for the word game in 1930, a year before he was laid off from his job as an architect.
2. National Scrabble Day is on April 13. Butts was born on April 13, 1899.
3. Scrabble officially went into mass production in 1948, but didn’t become popular with American families until 1952, when legend states Macy’s started to sell it.
4. The Highest Word Score on record with the North American Scrabble Players Association was played by Karl Khoshnaw during a tournament on April 11, 1982. The word was: CAZIQUES. It was 392 points. It is the plural of cazique, a type of birth in South America.
5. There are 101 "official" two letter words recognized by Hasbro for Scrabble play.
READ THE OFFICIAL LIST OF TWO & THREE LETTER WORDS
6. According to Merriam Webster, there are 136 words without vowels.
7. The 2016 North American SCRABBLE Championship will be held August 6 – 10 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
8. There are 187,179 words available for play in a game of Scrabble.
9. The definition of the word scrabble is to move the hands or feet in an awkward and hurried way in order to find or do something.