Scrabble is one of the world’s most popular games. It can be played by all age groups. Much like Chess, Scrabble is a serious game too and players all over the world are of different levels of skill. There are beginners, intermediates, experts and professional players. Read on to find out some interesting facts, news, updates and titbits on Scrabble.

Did you know that Scrabble celebrated its 60th birthday in 2008?! Prince Charles’ 60th birthday also coincided in the same year. A portrait of Prince Charles was made from Scrabble tiles. Scrabble has come a long way, indeed!

Now, at least 30,000 scrabble games are started every hour! There are a little more than 4000 scrabble clubs in the world. Alfred Butts who was an architect originally invented Scrabble which was called Lexico back then.

Ganesh Asirvatham, a Malaysian player holds the world record for playing maximum number of games simultaneously. He played 25 games spanning two and a half hours out which which he won 21! Inspiring, indeed!

Another inspiring scrabbler is Olivia En of Wellington who is visually challenged but nothing deters her from Scrabbling avidly. She has a personal Braille note computer and does not miss any opportunity to top her opponent by grabbing points. She knows her way around the Scrabble board and manages to hit good scores each time.

There was a tournament held in the Gulf recently and rules have been made more stringent. To avoid tile picking controversies that have occurred in the past, this time players had to keep the tile back at eye level with their heads turned away and draw strictly one tile at a time.

Another interesting new rule introduced was where a player can ask the opponent to wait before drawing new tiles after his play to prevent fast bagging, ie. Playing a phoney word and drawing tiles immediately after thereby validating the move even before the opponent can have a chance to challenge the legitimacy of the word.

The Scrabble game is now available on ipods and can be purchased from itunes! It is a downloadable game on the third-generation iPod nano, iPod classic, and fifth-generation iPod.

Hasbro had earlier filed a suit on two Indian programmers over a copycat Facebook application called Scrabulous. Hasbro withdrew the case filed for which the Indian brothers had to make some minor changes in the application and changed it’s name to Wordscrapper.

Did you know that Scrabble is sold in 121 countries in 29 different languages? Sting, Keanu Reeves, Moby, Madonna, The Queen, John Travolta and Carol Burnett are big fans of Scrabble! Ever wondered what Scrabble letter tiles are made of? It is made of Vermont Maple wood!

Here’s an interesting prediction based on some calculation – If all the scrabble tiles ever produced until date were placed end to end, it would be long enough to go around the world eight times!!!

Ironically, there is a town called Scrabble in West Virginia in USA that does not have a Scrabble club! If you love Simpsons, you’re going to love this – there is a version of Scrabble themed to the Simpsons TV program!

If you are not a Scrabbler yet, get start. The game is sure to entangle you in awe. If you are a Scrabbler, keep Scrabbling!