National Scrabble Day
Date of news/blog: 13th April 2024What links tribal chiefs from the West indies with Amazonian tropical birds and a competition held in North-West England in the eighties?
Give up? Well, the word Caziques is used to describe both the birds and the chiefs – a fact demonstrated to great effect by Dr Karl Khoshnaw when he used it at an international Scrabble competition held in Manchester in 1982.
Including a ten-point Z and Q and two triple word squares it was worth a mammoth 392 points and still stands today as the highest ever single word play score.
Whilst most people might struggle to score that in a whole game let alone a single play, we can all still enjoy the benefits that Scrabble and other board games can bring and what better time than on 13th April when National Scrabble Day is celebrated in countries across the world.
Board games are now recognised as a great way for older peopee to enhance cognitive function and Scrabble is one of the best and is available to the ladies and gentlemen in our four homes. For example, at our Brockington House Care Community in Hereford, there’s a weekly Scrabble Club with the games always competitive and throwing up different winners each time.
As well as keeping the mind active, Scrabble aids memory, problem solving and motor skills, it requires the use of literary skills and mental arithmetic and boosts mental well-being through the social interaction involved. You can also get a large print version of Scrabble to make the board easier to read.
The game was invented in 1938 by out-of-work architect Alfred Mosher Butts and National Scrabble Day marks his birth on 13th April
As Scrabble players will know, the key to the game is making words by combining the seven letter tiles in your hand with those already played on the board. Each letter has a value based on Alfred’s studies on the frequency of their use in the New York Times – less used letters scored higher points.
Butts was unable to make the game pay, so he sold the rights to entrepreneur James Brunot whose big break came in 1952 when Jack Strauss, President of the New York department store Macy’s, took a set on a family holiday.
On his return, Strauss was surprised to find Macy’s didn’t stock the game so placed an order – within a year four million sets had been sold, and the rest is history!