Mattel Scrabble Original

Every one every where must have heard about, played, or, like me, owned a certain word game called Scrabble, considering that the game of scrabble has been around since the early 1930’s, although way back then it wasn’t played on a board.

Firstly, a bit of history about the game, which I found about on line…
Scrabble was first thought of back in the early 1930’s by a Mr Butts, (apparently), who played with himself for nearly 20 years,_(stop it….!!!)_ before deciding to manufacture the game for the general population to enjoy. To this date Scrabble is one of, if not the most popular word game ever, with competitions and even world tournaments being held to find out who is the champion of Scrabble.

Anyway that’s the history lesson over with, now for the game itself, and a brief description of it for those people who have never heard of the game of scrabble, let alone how to play the game.

The game itself, these days, consists of 100 tiles, plastic, although some older sets are wooden tiles, four tile holders, or racks, a green cloth bag, a score sheet pad and a playing board.
The tiles themselves aren’t the size of your average bathroom tiles, they’re only around a centimetre squared.
Each of the tiles has a different letter of the alphabet on it, with each letter having a number value. Such as the five vowels and the more popular letter, such as S, T, N, R and other are worth 1 point whilst the least popular letters, such as Q and Z are worth a massive 10 points, with point values in between, J and X being 8 points, K being 5 points, F, H, and other being 4 points and so on, (the points are printed on the tiles).
There are also two blank tiles which can be used for any letters although these tiles have no value at all, but they do come in handy to finish off, or even to join onto, a word.
Then there’s the board itself, which is 15 squares by 15 squares, and has different point values on it, such as double word score, being a pink colour, triple word score being a red colour, double letter score being a light blue colour and triple letter score being a darker blue. These scoring squares are symmetrically positioned on the board, with the starting square being a light pink colour with a black star in the centre.

So how do you play the game then?

Firstly, all the tiles are dropped into a green bag and the bag is given a good shake, then each player is given a green tile holder, these tile holders all eight tiles.
The player who’s chosen to go first then proceeds to take 7 tiles out of the green bag, then each player in turn then takes 7 tiles each out of the bag until they all have 7 tiles.
Then the first player tries to make the best word they can out of the 7 tiles, placing the tiles onto the board, crossing the black star in the centre. The numbers on the tiles are added up and recorded on the player score sheet. This player then takes tiles from the bag so that they have 7 tiles at all times, for example, if they placed five tiles down they then would take five tiles out of the bag.
Then next player to have a go places their tiles onto the board but their word has to cross over the previous players tiles, anywhere, so long as it makes a word of course.
Again this player takes tiles out of the bag so as to have 7 tiles on their tile holder. Then the next player does the same, and so on, and so on, with each player making words on the board and the scores adding up.
This word making, tile taking continues until either there are no tiles left in the bag or there are no places left on the board that a player can make a word.

How do you gain score?

Scores are accrued by not just making words with the higher value tiles, for example Quiz for 22, but it’s down to where you actually place the tiles too. For example, if you can place the word Quiz onto a triple word score square then the value is then tripled to 66 points, (quiz is a simple example you understand). The same rule applies for positioning tiles onto triple letter scores, and the double letter/word scores.
If a player managed to use all their tiles then that player gets an extra 50 points bonus on top of the score that they have just accrued.

Who wins?

The winner of the game is the one that has accrued the most points after either all the tiles have gone from the bag or there is nowhere on the board to make a word.

That’s it really, that’s how to play the game, make a word and pray that it fits onto the board, joining onto someone else’s word, making the best word you can with the highest score possible.

What about rules..?

Well there are rules, with some of these rules being upheld stronger than a court of law, depending on whether you’re in a world championship or not.
Some of the rules are that you can’t use certain words, such as names of places, countries or counties, nor can you have words not used in your native tongue.
All words must join onto another word and no words can be made up nor abbreviated.
There are other rules too but if you’re that interested then you can read the rule book.

My opinion…

This is a brilliant game for all the family that not only helps bring you all together but also teaches you how to spell and also maybe learning a few new words as well.
It doesn’t take a genius to play it as even the easy words earn points and points all add up towards the end scores.

When we play as a family we try and stick to the rules, by that I mean that we can’t make up words just because one of us has a row of rather dodgy letter on their rack, including a ’Q’, ’Z’, a ’P’ and all the vowels apart from a ’U’.
My youngest, who’s 9, really likes playing this and tried to make the best words she can, even without cheating, although we have to watch her as she does tend to make up some rather strange words.

Each game can take quite some time, depending on how slow a player is during the game, which in my case can be quite some time trying to get a word to fit on the board, especially towards the end of the game when the board is almost full and all I’m left with is one vowel and a load of bad consonants. But it’s not one of them games that you need to rush, as long as no one cheats by looking at other peoples tiles on their rack, or maybe even snatching a letter from the board and replacing it with a ‘Q’, (or is that just something I do).

Note:
There are several different versions of this game, some where the colours of the squares may vary, a junior version, a deluxe version and even a chocolate version, but they are all based on the same playing format.
Apart from a latest version one, called Scrabble Trickster, which breaks all the rules and allows words which were previously forbidden and even allows words being placed anywhere on the board, even backwards too, although this game sounds like it’s on the verge of ruining the fun of the game that is scrabble.

The build of the game is pretty good, with this version having plastic tiles whilst other older versions had wooden tiles, but these plastic tiles are well built and look like the will last forever. The only thing that may fall apart first is possibly the board itself, if previous board games are anything to go by, with the bend of the board looking like it is the first thing that could go, but the one I’ve been playing for a while now is still bending quite well without any trouble so far.

As for the price, well, this fun family game is on sale for just under the £20.00 mark, with some places selling it for a lot less, but even for the higher price of £20.00 it’s still cracking value for money and will make any rainy day fun filled and family based.