Scrabble

As football is the “beautiful game”, one might as well call it as “the intellectual game”. Infact, Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of Romania during the 1960’s actually banned it because he deemed it too intellectual. It has become a favorite of a number of people since its launch in 1930. Originally called Lexico, it is widely popular by the name Scrabble.

Scrabble is a board game that is all about words.  Players start off with forming words, to which more words are linked, within the rules of the game. A good scrabble player must possess a good vocabulary. But one with a good vocabulary is not necessarily a good scrabbler. It also involves a lot of skill in placing words, in order to get maximum scores, or to prevent the opposition player from doing so. Today, it is widely played with two dictionaries recognised worldwide, the TWL(Tournament Word List) and the SOWPODS(an acronym formed by a merger of the OSW (Official Scrabble Words) and OSPD (Official Scrabble Players Dictionary).

A popular website called scrabulous.com until recently provided an interface for thousands of users to play scrabble online against each other. However, it has been pulled down due to legal issues. Now rechristened as lexulous, it provides an ideal platform for lovers of the game to play with people of similar interests worldwide.