Move over Monopoly...
In 1953, Life magazine reported:
(SCRABBLE®) has in the past few months become as Mah Jong, miniature golf or Monopoly were in their respective primes (1923, 1930, 1937), and seems likely to surpass them all. At a modest estimate there are about 1.1 million SCRABBLE® sets in the U.S. today and there are perhaps 10 million players.
When the Queen Mother visited New York in 1954 she said she was fond of SCRABBLE® and former president, Richard Nixon, claimed it was his favorite form of relaxation. In 1975 it was voted 'Game of the Year' by readers of Games and Puzzles magazine. Even mountaineer, Chris Bonnington and his colleagues, spent their evenings playing SCRABBLE® while ascending the south face of Annapurna.
Anticipated in the 19th century...
Though SCRABBLE® seems comparatively new, it was anticipated as early as 1880 by Lewis Carroll. An entry in his diary notes that, 'A game might be made of letters, to be moved about on a chess-board till they form words.' And, on New Year's Day in 1895 he wrote to Winnifred Hawke and told her of a game of his own invention which is very similar to SCRABBLE®, right down to the drawing of letters from a bag.
Expert players score more than 400 points...
An expert SCRABBLE® player can regularly score more than 400 points while it has been calculated that it's theoretically possible to score as many as 4,153 points in a single game. This requires the use of words such as, benzoxycamphors, diazohydroxides, and oxyphenbutazone.
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