Delightful fun for the English major in all of us.

Few games take advantage of an overactive vocabulary the way Scrabble does. In fact, Scrabble is all about knowing difficult words in the hopes of showing up your family with a massive triple word score for something with a Z in it. Apparently, Scrabble is also the proud owner of a sordid past, but let’s not get too hasty! Okay, we can get hasty. Let’s learn about Scrabble!

The History of The Scrabble

Scrabble was created all the way back in 1938 by an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Mr. Butts (yes it’s funny), had previously come up with a game called Lexiko that basically followed the same principle, but he decided to try something different by adding the 15-by-15 tile board and the crossword-style gameplay. And while we can’t think of the world without Scrabble, at the time, Butts had no luck whatsoever getting the game made.

In 1948 another man with an only slightly less-humorous name came along. This was James Brunot. He had bought a copy of Butts’ game, then called “Criss-Crosswords,” and made a deal wherein he would give royalties to Butts in return for the rights to do whatever with the game. The first thing Brunot did was change the name to “Scrabble,” a word meaning “to scratch frantically.” Then he switched some bonus tile locations around and started making some sets with his family to distribute that year. Somehow he lost money on this venture, but then the tale goes that Jack Strauss, the president of Macy’s, played the game and decided this needed to be a hit. Eventually the game would become a household sensation and by the 1950’s Scrabble was here to stay. I’m leaving some stuff out, but really it’s only legal issues that aren’t all too interesting.

On With The Rules

Look familiar? I mean, I'm used to smaller words, but still familiar.

So how’s this game played? You get together some friends or family and each pull seven tiles out from the bag o’ tiles. Each tile has one letter on it that you place on your tile rack. Naturally, don’t show anyone else what letters you have-it’s supposed to be secret. Then someone decides on a word to form out of some of their tiles. A word must consist of at least two letters and go either horizontally or vertically (none of this diagonal nonsense), plus the first word must always go over the center tile, which just so happens to be a double-word scoring tile. It pays to be first, doesn’t it?

As the game goes, players can either pass for the turn, scrap all their tiles for seven new tiles, or play on the current words on the board. If someone sees the word “Biggest” horizontal on the board, they can play the word “Stilts” vertically off the ’s’ or “Imp” off the ‘i’ or any number of things they can think of and create with ...

Scrabble Slam! blends the intellectual challenge of Scrabble with the fast pace of SlapJack. In Scrabble Slam! each player is trying to change the four letter word on the table faster than the other guy and accumulate more points while trying to get rid of all the cards held in hand.

Many of the same rules apply in Scrabble Slam! which made Scrabble so much fun. If there is no word you can create out of what you have, there is always the option to try and trick your opponents into believing you know something they don’t.

But watch out! They can still break out the dictionary and rain on your parade, then again if they’re wrong they get penalized so there’s a chance for your “squabblet” to pass through undetected.

Hasbro states the age range 8 and up. Following the rules of this kids card game this would be appropriate, however rules are meant to be broken and play can be slowed down a bit to make room for the up and coming spellers in the house to take part too.

My son has become a better speller recently which makes playing Scrabble Slam! more fun for the whole family each time we play. He gets a little faster each time we play and I feel pretty good about having fun and watching him develop such good reading habits....