Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Scribble on Scrabble

Transcript

The Scribble on Scrabble · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: should Know, good old fashioned pop culture games edition. Yeah
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: and yeah, here we are finally talking about scrabble. I've
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: been asking for you to do this with me for
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: at least a decade, and you kept refusing. I still
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: don't know why. Even Jerry chimed in and was like,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: will you guys please do scrabble, and finally you relented.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I think just because you wanted me and Jerry to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: stop bothering you about it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: No, it's probably it. A big thanks to Laura for
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: her help on this one.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: What was your nickname for her?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Doctor Claw?
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Doctor Claw? Do you play scrabble? Are you a scrabbler?
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: I just kind of wanted to get that out of
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: the way.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: You know, I wish I were. I'm not, And it's
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: not like I have an aversion to it or anything
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: like that. It's just not part of my world. I guess,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, same, I mean we own it, and I have
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: played scrabble here and there. If somebody's like, hey, let's
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: play scrabble. I won't go like, no, sorry, I'm not
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: going to do it right, but you know, I'll play
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: very occasionally, but I've never been a regular scrabbler, nor
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: am I very good at it at all, especially if
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: I'm playing against somebody who you know, because there's a
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: lot more to it than just like knowing words.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I feel like based on stuff you should know history.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Our best episodes are ones where we explain games that
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: we don't actually play. Soccer, chess, yeah, I mean the
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: list just keeps going on. It feels like we're about
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: to add to it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, surfing, yes, surfing. I mean we should probably just
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: say that scrabble if you don't know, it's a board
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: game in which two to four players use letters little
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: tiles to spell out words on a board and a
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: crossword fashion.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Wow, that was a good description.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: In other words, you know, the words have to intersect
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: each other. You can't just throw a random word out
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: there in the corner if you feel like it. They
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: have to touch and use a letter or I guess
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: a blank space for another word.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: And by the way, I just want to go ahead,
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: and because scrabble people are probably going to get mad
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: at us. But I'm going to go ahead and throw
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: a suggestive rule change. Okay, that there is a word scrabble,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: and that means to as a verb, to scratch or grope,
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: to try and collect something, or as a now in
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: the act of doing that. And I propose that if
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: you play that eight letter word, that not only do
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: you get your bingo bonus for playing a seven letter word,
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I think you should if you play the word scrabble,
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: you should get an extra bonus on.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Top of it of how many points million.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Whatever's fair. That's where I just step back and say,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: you guys, handle it.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, you like to kick the hornet's nest and then
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: watch them go.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: I just think I don't know, if you play the
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: word scrab I will give it a little, just a
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: little bump.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I agree. I think you're right right.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: That's my only suggestion, my only note.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: A little more about it. The scrabble board is fifteen
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: by fifteen squares twenty five two hundred and twenty five
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: total squares. And because it's fifteen by fifteen, you're limited
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: to no more than fifteen letter words.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Sure, and.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I guess just a quick summary of the rules so
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: when you play that first word, you have to play
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: it in the center square. That's where you start, and
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: you can build off of other people's words. You get
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: up to fifteen letter words by building onto other words,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: because you could never spell more than a seven letter word,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: because at no point in time do you ever have
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: more than seven tiles.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Right, And as I said that seven tiles played it
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: once is called the bingo. You add up your score
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: at the end and tack on fifty points at that point, right,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: or however many you get. Apparently experts can play like,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: you know, three, four or five of those in a
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: game sometimes.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, that's a great way to run up
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: scores from what I can tell. And then across the
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: board there's triple word scores, double word scores, double letter scores,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: and triple letter scores. And basically when you lay a
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: tile over that, depending on whether it's a letter or
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: a word, you get bonus points for it. So when
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: you're like, like, if you play a bingo across like
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: a triple word score cooking, you got a bunch of points.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: You basically just dusted your opponent in that one move.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Essentially, Yeah, I mean, if you're just sort of amateur
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: funzies scrabble people, one big bingo like that can seal
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: the game for you.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm called sending a packing with tears in their eyes.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: I think in France, by the way, the bingo is
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: called a scrabble just other nuts and bolts. You know.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: The tiles come in a little their little wooden tiles,
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: little wooden square tiles, and on the tile is a
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: letter and then a point value sort of as a
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: sub script. And then you keep your letters on a
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: little wooden tile rack. And ideally your opponent does not
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: see those like you know, it's they're facing away from
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: you if you're opposite your opponent. And that's a big
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: part of like an expert, or at least an accomplished
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: or experienced scrabbleist is dummies like me and I guess you.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: If you and I played, we just sit down and
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: try and spilt fart every chance we got. If you're
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: an experienced scrabblist, you're almost like counting cards, like you
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: know how many letters are in the bag of like
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: how many of each letter in the bag, and you
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: see them being played, you know how many are on
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: your rack? You know how many are still in the pile,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: so you're sort of trying to figure out mathematical possibilities
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: of what's still out there and what can be played,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Like that's the next level stuff.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And it's not like evenly distributed. For example,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: there's twelve e's, but there's only one J, K, Q,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: X and Z, and then the other letters there is
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: kind of distributed in weird random ways, so that like
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: you could, I guess easily count that stuff. If you
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: play scrabble enough, you're just going to pick up on
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: how many are out there at any given point.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you've also got your blank tiles, which are worth
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: zero points, but that those really help out in making
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: words possible that you couldn't get ordinarily m hmm. And
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: then you've got your one pointers A E, I, L, N, O,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: R S T and you.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: And also just real quick, I did some poking around, Chuck,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: and I found that there's some mnemonic devices that like
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: tournament level players use to remember how many points a
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: particular letter gets.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: You should say that after I list them all.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I was I was going to just do it
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: by by group, if that's okay with you. Sure, So
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the first group one point they use astronauts eat in limbo. No, right,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: silly tiger umbrella.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: All right. The two pointers are DNG, Dave and Gary. Okay,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: I would say dog gone. Three points are BCM and
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: p H.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: That is be chewing and masticating pizza.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: Does someone really suggests like, hey, use these and don't.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Make up your own No, I'm making this up.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: I gotcha. This is all a bit. Okay, four points
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: we got fh VNW and why right?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: So for Heaven's vake? Why you Okay?
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: I get it now. You should have told me this
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: is a bit. Five pointers, you get your k okay, okay, eight.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Pointers jn X Jackson loves and.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: X okay Jackson loves.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you just have to ignore the the l okay.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Then your ten pointer Josh, what are you gonna end
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: up with?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Q and Z quarts and quartz?
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: That's great? I think I got it.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: You got it?
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, give me a quiz in the end. I'll put
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: this away and then you can just quizz me.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Once you learn that, you'll never forget it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: There is a statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon Andrew Thomas,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: who says, if you go first, you have an advantage
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: of fourteen points. If you have that blank tile. Ever
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: in the game, that's an advantage of thirty points if
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: you're good at scrabble, not like me.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Right, there's also like, if you have S tiles, there's
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: a ten point advantage. And the reason why I was
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: like that doesn't make any sense because S, as you
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: remember from your mnemonic device, is only a one point tile.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: You should throw that on the end though, right, Yeah,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: that's the thing. So like if you add if you,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: like I said, you can add on to other words
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: that are already on the board, even once another player
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: wrote out and whatever word score they got for that word,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: if you add an S, you get that same word
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: score plus one point for the ass. So that's a
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: really easy way to rack up some quick points and
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: totally I think also probably annoy other players.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: I wonder about that. I'd like to hear from from scrabblers.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, if it's fair game, it's fair game.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, and there's but there's plenty of rules that are
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: fair game that are also like you're a jackass.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. Let me see here, what
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: else do we have? We have X and Z give
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: you a three to five point advantage even though they're
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: you know, tougher to use, and the Q is a
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: five point disadvantage because I mean, I was about to say,
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: you always have to have that U. But I'm sure
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: there are weird scrabble words that don't have a QU.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: There's two that I know of.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: One is key qi. Yeah, I think I heard of
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: uy or.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: No, sorry, that's chi life force. I think, okay, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: you get eleven points for that one, and then I
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: can't remember. There's one more that's like a Q word
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: that doesn't not require a U. Oh.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: No, Qi is in here because that's the highest scoring
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: two letter word along with za. Is that what you said?
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I looked up za za Yeah, and it's
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: slang for pizza. I'm not certain that that usage is allowed.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: But it's also an archaic word for a B flat notation. Yeah.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I wonder if because I did the same thing you
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: did every time they gave it a Laura found an
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: example of a word that's unusual or high scoring. I
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: always looked it up because I was curious. I wonder
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: if that's part of the love of scrabble, is actually
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: learning what these words mean or they're like I really
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: don't care. I just care how much it's worth.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Well, from what I can tell, scrabble players don't care
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: what a word means. They don't think of them like that.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: And I mean they'll come up later with those controversial words.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Oh sure, yeah, point, Yeah, it's just us. We're curious types.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Grabble players are not.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: That's that's true. The highest scoring three letter word is
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Zach's nineteen pointer, and zek is sixteen is a four
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: letter word worth the most at twenty two.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: That means like a test of sorts.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, and then zippy what does that mean?
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: The pinhead?
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: Zippy the pinhead? What's that?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's a really weird eighties comic strip, you know,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: the clown with the Zippy the pinhead.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: No, I don't know it.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: You should look it up. It's it's weird. It's a
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: weird comic strip.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: Okay, I don't know it.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: But it couldn't be that.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I have to correct myself before all of the
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: scrabble players email in. It couldn't be Zippy the pinhead
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: because Zippy the pinhead would be a proper noun.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Ah. Okay, good point. Things you can't use proper nouns.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: No, you can't.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: Might as well go ahead and say.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: That they're really serious about that stuff too.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: No, I bet. See, I'm a house rules guy, so
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: I can you know, as long as everyone's on board,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: I think you can. You can have your own house
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: rules first. Oh, I agree, don't bring that into a tournament.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: No, get that mess out of here, is what they'll
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: tell you. Yeah.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: But like if I were to play with Ruby, she'd
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: and I'd probably say like, hey, we can use propernouns
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: because she'll want to put our dog's name or something,
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: or maybe I would, right. I did look up the
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: highest scoring bingo, and that is musjiks m u z
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: j i k s, which is a Russian peasant. Wow,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: well that's probably it's probably Moujiku's or something.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it both ways, though musjis. Look at
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: all the muzzjiks toiling in the fields.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So I was confused because there's a lot of like
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: one of the rules is no proper nouns, no words
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: that end an apostrophe or require an apostrophe. Yeah, and
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: then also no foreign words. But clearly some foreign words
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: are allowed in because they're so common in English that
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: they've just basically been adopted into the language. I get that,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: but a musjis is not a common word in English,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: so it must mean that that does appear in some
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: English dictionary somewhere, because that's kind of the great ruler arbiter.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: But I just don't see how it could be. That's
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: just weird to me.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Well, what's weird is your college band I know for
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: a fact was Jake Clark and the Muschicks.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, but we were trying to be exotic, you know.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: And we should also say that scrabble, I think, is
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: now up to thirty languages all over the world, and
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: apparently that can be problematic, like in France you can
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: add an e and an S to many many words,
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: so it can kind of get out of hand with
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: the score totals. There. And our beloved Germany, and I
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: never really thought about this, but German words are long,
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: so there's not a lot of I mean, they're sure. Sure,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: there are obviously words shorter than seven words in Germany,
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: but a lot less than a lot of other languages.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, So it must.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Just be Bingo City or whatever Bingo city is in German.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: There's also Bingo. I don't know what city, Bingo b Shot,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: maybe Bingo Stock. Sure, there's a so in some other
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: countries too. In foreign language versions of Scrabble, there are
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: some adjustments with the tiles, like some have more than
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: one hundred tiles.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Oh right, because of weird little letters.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like double L and double R. In the
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Spanish language version. There's also the N with the till
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: day over it that that's also a tile. Yeah, I
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: think that's worth eight points. Nice, Yeah, but you have
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: to to remember that that's eight points. You have to say. Nice.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Right. Should we take a break? I like how this
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: is headed.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we'll be right back.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: I want to learn about a terror sort of college dactyl,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: how to take an that's a little.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Word up, Jerry.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: All right, we're back. And if you're gonna talk about scrabble,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: you got to talk about Alfred Mosher Butts because he
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: is the gentleman who invented this game. This is in
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight. He was an unemployed architect at the
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: time and just into games. He's from Poughkeepsie. But I
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: believe the game was actually invented Actually I know this
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: for a fact in Jackson Heights Queen's because at eighty
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: first Street and thirty fifth Avenue, I believe is a
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: scrabble style street sign. I think it's. I think it's
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: thirty fifth Avenue has below each of the letters just
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: the little number value subscript, which is kind of just
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: a little nice, fun, cute nod.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Are you sure it's just that that community in particular
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: isn't big scrabble fans.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm positive.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, So he.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Did you say he was an unemployed architect.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, at the time, and he was just into gaming
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: and wanted to invent a game that was part chance,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: part skill.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he did not have a great success with
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: it out of the gate. He initially tried to call
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: it Lexico and criss crosswords, and he took it around
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: to game manufacturers and they were like, nah, I'm not
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: really feeling this. Yeah, And that was the way it
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: went for a good decade before a man named James
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Bruno bought the rights. He saw something in it that
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I guess other people didn't. He renamed it Scrabble. He
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: changed the gameplay a little bit. One of the biggest
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: changes he made was that the way that Moser Butts
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: had come up with is that you just thought the
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: word in like a kind of a mental version of
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the board, and the other player hopefully was able to
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: pick up on the word you were thinking. And so
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Bruneau was like, maybe we should just replace with an
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: actual board and tiles, and that really kind of helped
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: move things along a bunch.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I looked up this James Brunet, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: you know, we get a lot of great information a
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: lot of times from New York Times obituaries. And he
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: was a friend of Butts, and so they used to
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: play scrabble together on occasion, like their homemade version. And
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: once this guy took it over, he and his wife
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Helen like operated out of their house and he was
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: like a certain point, like all that was in our
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: house was boxes of tiles and racks and boards, and
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: we could move around. So they had to. They moved
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: to an abandoned schoolhouse and then eventually a converted wood
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: working shop, and they had thirty five employees working two shifts,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: producing six thousand scrabble sets sets a week by fifty
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: three by nineteen fifty three, So.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Within five years of him buying the rights, that is correct, sir, okay,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: So that the year before that. I've seen it told
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: as a legend or a widely told story. Laura put it.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know why no one's like, yeah, that's what happened.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: But supposedly the president of Macy's came across the game,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure how played it, liked it, ordered a
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: bunch to stock up. Of course, that meant gimbals immediately
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: followed suit, and so the game took off from there.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: So this would have been nineteen fifty two when that
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: supposedly happened.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Bruno was like, we can't possibly keep up
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: with this demand, like this is just skyrocketed, which is great.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: But they turned to a company, a game maker called
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Selcho and Writer, and they took over making the game,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: and they did so for decades. They were the people
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: who made Scrabble for a really long time. And within
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: two years, two years of that great Macy's president story happening,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: four and a half million copies were sold. Like it
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: just hit America, like you know, a giant packet of
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: pop rocks and diet coke formentos.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or like a ton n e of bricks, which
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: is worth more than ton nice Jeff so that's selling
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: pretty good. I think they've sold. They estimate about one
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million total sets as of you know,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: kind of now, even though it's hard to get a
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: real firm number on that. But they bought that trademark
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Selchow and writer I want to say Richter there, but
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: it is Writer bought that trademark from them. In seventy two,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Bruno got a million and a half bucks, which would
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: be about twelve million today. And this, by the way,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: was like he was looking for something to do in retirement.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: So wow, he really scored. That's a triple letter retirement gig,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: I would say, or triple word even. And then the inventor,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: mister Butts, got two hundred and sixty five grand wi
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: should be about two million bucks. Plus he got a
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: very small royalty that he seemed to be pretty happy with.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he sounds like a great This is one of
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: the more heartwarming quotes I've come across in a while.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: He was interviewed in nineteen eighty four about his invention,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and he said people are always asking me if I'm rich.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I used to get two to three cents for each
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: game sold. One third went to taxes. I gave one
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: third away and the other third enabled me to have
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: an enjoyable life. Great, and if there's such thing as heaven,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: I believe that mister Butts is there right now.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: I think so too. He would have been in his
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: eighties then too, because I think he died in the
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: early nineties. In his nineties.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, there you go. He had a great life, apparently.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: So things turned kind of dark when the Cabbage Patch
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Kids bought Selcho and Writer in nineteen eighty six.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: You don't want to hear some funny what. Every time
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: I looked at that word, I said colco oh, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: I was like, well, I was like, that's so weird,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Like I grew up with Calico toys. Yeah, and I
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: just kept seeing it as colc and I was like,
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, dummy, it's Calico.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Well you must be a scrabbleist, because that would just
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: be like the word construct without any right of meaning
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: to it. So you're in there, Chuck. You really did
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: some method research?
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe so so.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Kalico. Yes, bought Selcho and Writer and just did not
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: really give much of a care about scrabble. I mean,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: it was just a money maker. To them. Apparently they
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: were already in trouble, which is nuts that they declared
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: bankruptcy by nineteen eighty nine. I think I can't remember.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Surely we talked about it in our Cabbage Patch Kids
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: episode why that happened. But to go from having one
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: of the hottest toys in the history of toys to
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: bankrupt in the same decade as breathtaking as far as
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: business goes. But when Calico declared bankruptcy, has Bro stepped
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: in and they did seem to care a lot more
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: about Scrabble, and so under their ownership, I think it's
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: still owned by Hasbro if I'm not mistaken. It's been finitid.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: It's ups and downs, as we'll see. But there was
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: also a bidding war for the international rights to produce Scrabble,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: and matel beat them out for that right, and that
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine what a plumb that is. But it
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: also occurred to me, and I know we've done an
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: episode on intellectual property, but there's like there's some fictitious
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: right out there that says this one company is allowed
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: to produce all the games just internationally, this other company
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: has this other fictitious right to produce all of the
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: games just inside of the United States, And it's just
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: so mind blowing to me that we've just kind of
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: created that kind of made up structure for things, and
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: how much just gobs of money that legal fiction creates
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: for people.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Are you pushing for just an open source world?
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: No, not necessarily. I don't have a problem with it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: I was more just astounded behind Yeah, you.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Know, yeah, No, it's interesting. I mean, I mean, have
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: you ever dug into like TV rights for professional sports leagues?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, my god, is that I'll bet that's quite a jungle.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And it's gotten really really expensive. Like
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: when you see the numbers, like you know, Amazon acquires
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: the right to air whatever Sunday Night football.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Or something, it's just like, oh, yeah, yeah.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: I astounding what kind of money we're talking about?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Anyway, I guess we can move on to competitive scrabble,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: because you know, a lot of people just play for
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: fundzies at home. I know, our bud John Hodgman and
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: his lovely wife Catherine play like for decades now because
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: they're high school sweethearts, so they're long, long, long term scrabblers,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: you know, against each other. I kind of wanted to
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: find out if there was a lifetime record that they
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: keep up with surely, but then I just decided not
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: to ask.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Hodgman used to live tweet their games, Oh he did. Yeah,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: it was really cute to just kind of follow along.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: I bet they're both good because Catherine's an English teacher
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: and John is you know, knows a lot of words.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Any anybody who knows Hodgman too, right when they
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: saw the scrabble episode of stuff you should know, knew
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: that there was one hundred percent chance. Yeah, Dodgmen was
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: going to come up at some point in time. For
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: sure he.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Would have complained if we hadn't.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. He's a scrabble scrabble guy for sure.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he would smoke me. In fact, I feel like
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: I might have played him once on one of these
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: trips that I used to do with him for maximum fun.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: But I don't know if we did play, it was
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: not even competitive at all. I'm sure I don't see
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: why he would have played. I don't see why he
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: would have played me, because I'm really just you know,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: I'm like Steve Carell and Anchorman, Like I'll try to
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: spell lamp. It's just because I looked at one.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: You know, hey, man, if to some points, who cares.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you and I probably be pretty good matchup.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too. We should play sometime.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, So that sounded unenthusiastic. I meant hell yeah, buddy.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: All right, Sorry you can't see me, but I'm raising
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: the roof right now.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned competitive scrabble that there are tournaments, which
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: isn't very surprising. I mean, people are into scrabble, so
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: when you start throwing money down for like prize money
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: for tournaments, people are going to flock to them. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: for years, the main the biggest scrabble tournament, what they
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: called nationals, was the North American Invitational Scrabble Players Tournament,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: which had its inaugural championship in nineteen seventy eight and
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: was held every year through to two thousand and nine.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: And Selcho and Writer actually formed the National Scrabble Association,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: which was very smart because that kind of thing generates
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: a lot of interest, enthusiasm. Newspapers cover Oh it's so crazy,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: there's a scrabble championship right now, and like it just
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: helps keep the thing topical, you know, instead of just
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: letting people buy it and crossing your fingers that kind
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: of thing. It was a pretty smart business venture. And then,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: like I said, Callco came along, they did nothing for it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Apparently the Players Association had to shame Kalico into chipping
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: in five thousand dollars for prize money for the national tournament.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: And then when Hasbro came along, they started funding it
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: a lot more lavishly. But then they kind of said,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: you know, this isn't actually worth it anymore. You guys
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: are you know, maybe a few hundred people coming to
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: these tournaments and you all have all of the scrabble
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: boards that you're ever gonna need and I gonna buy anymore.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: So they stopped funding those and they actually shut down
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: that the National Scrabble Association. So an independent version came up,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: the North American Scrabble Players Association, I think back in
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: two thousand and nine is when it was formed.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and before anyone writes in technically they didn't completely
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: shut down the Nssay, they just stopped there. They weren't
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: in charge of the tournaments anymore. They just they moved
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: them over to another program called School Scrabble.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, because those kids have a long life of buying
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: scrabble boards ahead of them.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: That's right. You mentioned ups and downs over the years.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: You know. I guess all board games go through kind
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: of boom periods and bus periods, or at least low periods,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: and scrabble is no different. There was an early two
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: thousands boom. There were televised tournaments. It's interesting what drives
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: this stuff. I don't know if they know on the inside,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: but I couldn't figure out why it would have had
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: a boom in the two thousands. Early two thousands.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, a documentary called Word Freaks. I believe, oh that
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: it introduced it to a whole new generation.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Oh okay, well your.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Head and yeah, and it took off like it like
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Hasbro has a lot to be thankful for from that
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: documentary from what I understand.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, I bet the New York Times Crossword documentary to
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: kick that up a notch.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, that was a great one.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: But we're not talking crosswords again, so don't worry.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: It just busted out and sweat.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: You gotta flop, So what happening? There were seventy five
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: thousand rated scrabble tournament games in two thousand and four.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: And that number by twenty nineteen was cut almost in half.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: That went down to forty thousand, and the Nationals went
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: from eight hundred and thirty seven players to two eighty
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: over that same span. So it just seems like that
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: documentary really caused a resurgence, I guess, and then it
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: kind of went back to level set maybe.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. There was also a lot of internal
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: strife to the North American Scrabble Players Association. Didn't make
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of friends. They established a real top down
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: hierarchy of how that association was run, so some other
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: players associations were developed splintered off. There was a lot
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: of fracture I guess in the scrabble community that just
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: kind of came around that time. That surely affected attracting
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: new people. Like I hate to use the word toxic
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: because I feel like it's definitely overused, but it feels
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: like that community got a lot more toxic around that time,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: And you know that doesn't exactly attract people like, Hey,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: I wanted to join that toxic subculture really mix it up.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well some people are into that.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those aren't the people you want to attract your
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: toxic subculture though.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or play scrabble with. Right, if you're in a tournament,
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: you're going to see some big scores they have, you know,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: scores over eight hundred points at times in tournaments. The
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: highest scoring legal word I don't think it's ever been
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: played officially, but that would be yes, one thousand, seven
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: hundred and eighty four point score if that was across
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: three different triple word scorers. That word is oxy oxyfin bututazone.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a now banned and said pain reliever.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: That's right. And since I know you looked it up
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: because I did too, I'll let you give the definition
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: of cazique, which is the highest score ever for a
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: word played in a tournament. Three hundred and ninety two
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: points for cazique.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so that one. From what I could tell,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: I found that as a Spanish word for an indigenous chieftain,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: usually among Caribbean tribes.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I saw that the Taino people like the indigenous Bahamians, right,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: and that was actually played amazing.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's so that's one word for three
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: hundred and ninety two points. To put that into perspective,
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: a good you know, average person's scrabble score. From what
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I could tell couple to a few hundred points. This
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: is like a scrabble score with just a high scrabble
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: score with just one one word. This is like the
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: level that these people are playing at. And Chuck, I
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I say, we take another break and we'll come back
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: and we'll poke around in the brains of those high
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: level scrabble players and see what neurologists have found out recently.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Let's do it. I want to learn about a terror
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: in college dactyl how to take a perg.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Is gone.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: That's another.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Word up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: So we've kind of made mentioned a couple of times
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: that people who play scrabble like think of words differently
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: than normis too, and there have been studies using the
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Wonder Machine, in particular by neurologists of the brains of
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: people who play scrabble, because there's a lot of long
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: standing discussions, rival theories and hypotheses about how we process
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: words and information associated with words, and by studying scrabble players,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: like high level scrabble players, they found that their brains
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: literally work different when it comes to words.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, take it away.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Well, one of the studies, I can't remember what year
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: it was, I actually failed to look now that I
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: think about it. They found that when you put the
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: put a scrabble player through what's called the lexical decision task,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: which is showing people very quickly jumbles of words and
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: saying is there a word in there too late? Is
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: there a word too late? They have to answer really
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: quick and there's always some lab assistant shouting too late
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: and really just mix things up a little bit. Scrabble
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: players use regions of their brains that most people wouldn't use.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: They and they don't use regions of their brains that
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: people normally do use. Say so, like when you think
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: of a word, you think of the meaning. Usually that's
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: how you grasp a word when and you're really kind
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: of processing what the word is, there's a meaning attached
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: to it, there's a symbolism attached to it. With a
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: scrabble player, they do not think like that. They think
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: of words as physical constructs of letters. There's no meanings
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: aren't attached to them. That takes too long. They process
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: them much more quickly because it's just a bunch of
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: letters that you put together. It doesn't matter what it means.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: It just matters that you can get this number of
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: points on a scrabble board. One of the other things
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: they found is that they also use more spatial reasoning
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: than the average person does when they're recognizing and processing
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: words and letters, because they have to figure out how
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: to orient them on the board and how they would
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: intersect with other words on the board. So the brains
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: change in the way they approach words change the more
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: scrabble you play.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's it's almost like Tetris, like in
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: their brains at a certain point, like they might as
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: well just be Tetris blocks that are trying to fit in.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Obviously not Tetris because you can't make you know your
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: own size and shaped things.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: But you know what I mean, Sure, I know it,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: you mean, I think I think it's a good analogy.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: There's some other cool studies that there are, you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: kind of findings they found from different studies. The setup
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: of this one is basically that if you have a
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: college degree, they have found that you're less likely than
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: those without with you know, less education to get age
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: related memory loss in Alzheimer's. But in terms of scrabble,
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: they found that that gap can be closed a lot
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: if you don't have that college degree and you play
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: a lot of scrabble, you can close that gap to
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: where it's almost the same as people with higher levels
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: of education as far as acquiring that memory loss in
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Alzheimer's pretty great.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Take that, college boy.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: What about the Ruskies? That was interesting too.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: I thought, Yeah, they studied Russian engineering students, and by they,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I mean the people who conducted this study. And they said, here,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Russian engineering students, we're going to teach you scrabble and
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: you're going to play it for a year, and then
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: we're going to test you. We're going to have you
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: play teachers who teach English as a foreign language. So
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: they're Russian, but they know a lot of English, and
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: we're going to play the English language scrabble by the way,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: So there's all the pieces on the board right there.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: And what they found is that the engineering students who
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: didn't speak that much English were able to i think,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: in the words of the study, smoke the English as
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: a foreign language teachers in scrabble.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: That's incredible.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even though the teachers knew more English than the
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: engineering students did.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's super cool. They've also found that for tournament
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: play men dominate tournament scrabble tournaments generally speaking. But they've
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: done studies of this and they're like, hey, it's not
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: because men have big brains and women have little, tiny brains. Yeah,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: it's not because guys can learn words better than women.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Has nothing to do with any of that. It has
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: to do with the fact that in general, overall, men
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: start younger than women do. Boys, I guess start younger
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: than girls when it comes to scrabble, and women generally
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: and girls play more scrabble. But they say that's not
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: necessarily how to get better at scrabble. They're playing for
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: fun and just having a good time, Whereas to get
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: better at scrabble, what these boys and men seem to
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: be doing more of is like anagramming stuff and analyzing
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: everything and instead of just like, hey, let's just play
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: some scrabble and have some fun, Like, let me research
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: and analyze this stuff so I can dominate in a
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: tournament exactly.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: But I mean, that's how you get better at apparently
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: anagram It was a huge thing to do if you
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: want to get better at scrabble, because when you look
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: at the you know, there's seven tiles on your tileholder,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: it's just a jumble of letters, and you have to
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: find the words in those letters. That's part of the game.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: So if you go practice that, yeah, you're gonna get
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: a lot better. But I saw that among just the
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: population in general, just people who play scrabble for fun,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: it's much more closely divided. It's more like sixty forty
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: men to women.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's changed a lot over
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: the past couple of decades too.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that documentary probably helped quite a bit.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when it comes to like, all right, what words, Like,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: what dictionary do you use? There is a Scrabble Dictionary.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: It's called the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, was released in
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, again by Selchow and Writer, even though
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: they worked with Merriam Webster to produce the game, because
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: you know, they're dictionary people, and this has caused a
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: lot of controversy over the years because words have been added,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: words have been taken away, and every time that happens
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: the scrabble community, you know, some people are like, great,
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: great change, and some people are like, no, I hate that.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because to them they're just words. The meaning has
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: no purpose or point whatsoever in the game. It doesn't matter.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: So why would you take any words out that we
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: could potentially use and score with.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: Some of the worst and the worst racial slurs out
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: there have been in the Scrabble Dictionary.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, do you want to tell some people?
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I'm not gonna say those, but there
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: is a list. I think there was a woman named
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: Judith Grad in the nineties who kind of got on
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: her I don't want to say got on her soapbox
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: because that indicates a bad thing. She got a campaign
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: going to have these slurs removed. The Anti Defamation League
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: got involved. Hasbro eventually said, all right, we're gonna remove
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: these words from the next edition of the dictionary. Booby gringo, farted, honky,
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Whitey's pissed, fatso redneck, and wazoo.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: And Jerry best of luck beeping all those out.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: This should be pretty easy.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: So yeah, So there were a lot of scribble players
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: who were like, this is outrageous. Who cares about offensiveness?
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: And other people are like, this is kind of society
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: evolving in real time right here. So I guess has
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Bro made a compromise and they said, well, how about
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: this for tournament level, We'll keep the original. We won't
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: take these words out. We'll have a separate book called
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: the Official Word List. Among players, it's called TWL ninety eight.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: That's when it came out as nineteen ninety eight. But
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: for everybody else. And that, by the way, the TWL
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety or ninety eight is just available to Players
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Association members, so it's not like available in general public.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: And then the other one, the toned down version, that's
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: the one that the public will be able to get
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: their hands on.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was in the early two thousands, and
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: then in twenty twenty, the Official Tournament removed a lot
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: of those slurs that they previously allowed for tournament play. Right,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: and I also mentioned, you know, adding words. Over the
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: past few years, they've added hundreds of words. Jedi subtweet
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: vacs have been added. Beria as in Beria, tacos has
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: been added.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Oh and I discovered a new dish from this too,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Chuck cuckhumber usually spelled with a K, but apparently it's
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: also okay to spell with the C. It's an Indian
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: dish featuring cucumbers. It's like a fresh tomato cucumber salad.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: And actually I should correct myself. I think it could
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: be Indian, but it's also possibly like Anatolian. I'm not
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: a hunt okity, sure, but it sounds delish. I'll send
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: you the recipe, all right, do it.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: They also had slang from time to time, apparently I'm
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: a I am m A as in I'm going to
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: like I'm about to do something right.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: You can play that, yeah, you could. You could also
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: play yeat, which is that I don't know many you know,
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: I really feel like I've outed myself in the last
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: couple episodes as skimbity to it buddy, not the edge
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: lord that people assume that I am edged lord.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: There has been some cheating over the years. We'll talk
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: about a couple of these incidents. Incidents. In twenty eleven,
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: there was a World Scrabble Championship between a tie player
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: named cholapot et Ari and a British guy named Ed
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Martin because it was a missing G E tile. And
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of versions of this story. Apparently Time
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: Magazine and some scrabble websites say that Etri called for
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Martin to be strip searched for that g and the
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: tournament officials were like, no, we're not going to do that.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: We don't want to.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: In mental floss, they said that, you know, they asked
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: them to turn their pockets inside out, and that eventually
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: just escalated to like, hey, maybe they hit it in
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: their pants, they should be stripped searched.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's yeah, that's why you strip searched.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, is that is that in the Scrabble dictionary.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: There's no way that it's not. As a matter of fact,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: you keep talking, you tell the story, and I'm going
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: to look it up.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: Uh. And then what they eventually found out was that
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: the missing G was in the pocket of another player
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: from a previous game. And what I want to know is,
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: like who who's running these tournaments? Like how are you
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: not counting the letters before the game or cracking up
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: in a brand new scrabble seal factory sealed Scrabble, Like
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: you got to count those letters, You got to make sure.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: That's like playing chess without like a pawn and just
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: being like, oh it looks good to me.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nuts. It's also nuts. Just how how many
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: players do cheat in like high level tournaments.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: Like that kid, Yeah there was a kid.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: He was thirteen, so he's unnamed as far as I
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: can tell.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: He's of age. Now we should find him out in dots.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: He was playing down in Orlando at the Scrabble Nationals
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, and he got caught palming blank tiles.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: And I don't know that we even mentioned what blank
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: tiles are good for, but they well, they can stand.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: They're like a wild card. They stand in for any
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: letter that you want, so they can really come in
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: handy when you have like a bunch of letters but
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: you just can't quite connect them. That blank tile comes
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: in there and you say, thanks, blank tile. So if
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: you have that, you have a huge advantage. So finally,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: this kid was caught cheating. But this was on the
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: heels of a year before when he won the two
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars prize for winning, even though apparently statistically the
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: percentage of blank tiles that he came up with across
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: the game or the games that he played throughout that
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: tournament where it just doesn't add up. But they let
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: that win stand. But for twenty twelve he got booted.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they should have made that kid pay that money
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: back with interest.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they should have.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: What else there there was a they had their own
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: little met too incident at one point too, didn't they.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's I don't want to say well regarded a
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: well known player named Sam Kantamathi. And he is not
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: just a player. He also has a side business of
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: like custom equipment like kile holders boards. Timers is another
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: one because in tournaments they used timers like chess. So
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: he's got his whole line. He's like really integral to
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: the current like scrabble World, tournament world. And for a
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: long time, especially before Me Too came along, he just
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: got away with it, Like the Players Association president would
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: make a point of escorting women who went up to
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Kennamthe's hotel room to pick up equipment that they bought
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: from or were buying from him, like you just didn't
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: go alone, like it was an open secret. And then finally,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: like he just groped the wrong woman, Me Too came
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: along and I think at least fifteen named women came
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: forward and put their story already on the record about him,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: and the response from the Players Association was essentially like Okay,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: don't do it again. Yeah, and he had already been
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: banned for cheating. He palmed tiles too, he was a
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: national champion. He palmed tiles too. He got suspended for
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: four years for cheating, but for the allegations of sexual misconduct. Nothing,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: just a warning essentially, So that really ticked off a
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: lot of people, especially high level women players too, who
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: were like, you know what, we have, we hold our
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: own tournaments, and he's not invited any longer. So he's
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: kind of been ostracized. But I have the impression that
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: he's still very much.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Around, still making those those custom racks.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I can tell.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: By the way we live update. We did text John
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Hodgman just to find out. I was kind of curious
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: about a couple of things, and about his highest scrabble
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: total ever and if he and Catherine have a running
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: record between them, and he says, we have old notebooks
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: full of score sheets, but we never go back and
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: look at them, because I said, you know, John Hodgmen
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: only looks forward. Time does not go backward.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: No, Nostalgia's a toxic impulse. According that's right, Hogman.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: We were both consistently in the three hundred to three
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: point fifty pretty good mode. Okay, that's that sounds high
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: to me. Yeah, same here, he said, this's good enough
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: to make me happy. He said we have both probably
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: broken four hundred a couple of times. I remember words
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: better than scores. Twenty five years ago, I added st
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: er to joke to make jokester on a triple word
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: square while playing with some of my with some friends
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: of my parents, And I don't remember the points, but
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: I was really proud of myself.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: I'll bet, I'll bet. Every once in a while you
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: can peek in on Hodgmen sleeping and he's got a
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: big smile on his face because he's dreaming about that.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: I haven't a live update as well. Chod is not
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: in the Scrabble really allowable word.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: Oh man, this opens up a whole new world of
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: possibilities for the show live updates.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Scrabble being the arbor of what words we
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: can and can't use now exactly. So Scrabble, of course,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: is popped up in pop culture here or there. Rosemary's
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Baby very famously used Mia Pharoh used well, Rosemary uses
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: scrabble a bunch of scrabble tiles to try to figure
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: out that some suspected witches were actually witches by using
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: the tiles to figure out anagrams. Yeah, same with sneakers.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: I couldn't find that that I saw the movie. I
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: never saw the movie, and I couldn't find the clip
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: with the scrabble. I just saw mention of it in
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: a couple of places.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: I don't remember scrabble. It was a long time ago.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: I love this one. Frank, Oh, Frank, the chairman of
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: the board, mister Sinatra in his version of the Twelve
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: Days so Christmas added nine games of scrabble. Yeah, that's right,
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: which is actually Joe Piscopo doing Frank.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Which that's all you need to do. That's better than Frank,
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: I think. And then Seinfeld and Calvin Hobbs both kind
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: of famously had scrabble made up high value scrabble words
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: in their shows. In the first season of Seinfeld, I.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Don't remember who was it, do you know?
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Seinfeld's mom played quone quo n e and like, Seinfeld
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: calls her out on it and it's not actually a word,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: but Kramer's like, yeah, quone whatever. But the biggest thing
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: that stood out to me in this scene that I
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: watched it today, they had the original dad just did
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: not work.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And then they brought in I can't remember his name,
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: but he was the dad and Arthur.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Oh was he the dad in Arthur?
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: He was e Liza Minelli's father and Arthur Okay.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah he was. He was Morty Seinfeld.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: His first name is Barney. I think god I.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Used to know his name because Arthur's you know, one
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: of my top ever comedies.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: And then Calvin and Hobbes. I think Calvin played z
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: q M or zeq FMGB and said it was a
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: type of worms from New Guinea.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: That's funny.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: And then lastly, Chuck, we can't forget scrabble led to
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: trivial pursuit being created, because remember they went and got
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: a new scrabble board, and we're like, how many scrabble
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: boards have we bought over the years? We should make
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: an end game. That's right, And that's it. Scrabble has
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: not appeared in any other part of pop culture except
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: for those things, right, that's right. You got anything else, no, sir?
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: All right, well let's scrabble everybody. Thank you for finally
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: doing it, Chuck. And since I thank Chuck for finally
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: relenting and giving in on doing an episode I've wanted
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: to do for years and years and years, it's time
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: for a listener mail.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Oh you hi, guys, or basically just the voices that
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: live in my head permanently, because I listened to you
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: two all the time nice a while back. I have
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: no idea where the idea came from. I wonder whether
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: everyone sees concepts the same way in their head as
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: I do. And started asking around because she's referencing like
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: the Inner Dialogue app where people don't hear words, they
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: see images, and Daisy says this, and this is very interesting.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: I think I noticed that for me, the calendar months
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: of the year in my brain are arranged like this January, February, March, April, May, June, July, December, November, October,
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: August on the line below, like it's very important the
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: way it's spaced out, I think. And it's also indented,
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: So December, November, October August is on the line below
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: and dented and dented to about mid February, so going
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: from left to right and then making a curve to
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: continue from right to left. No need to point out
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: how weird this is, guys, because no calendar ever was
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: drawn this way. However, this is how it is normal
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: for me in my head. You can imagine the weird
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: faces I got when asking this question enthusiastically to find
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: out about other people's head calendars, especially when I told
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: them about mine. Anyway, all this to ask, when you
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: picture a yearly calendar in your head, what does it
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: look like? Immediately when I read that, the only thing
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: that popped into my head was a like the back
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: of a of a like a wall calendar you would
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: get as a teenager, where I had all all of
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: them listed. That's what I picture.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: Oh nice, So what are the what are the monthly
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: centerfolds over?
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, but I guess it would just
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: be four four and four. Okay, that's how I pictured
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: it in my head January, February, March, April, and then
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: four more than four more in order.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Because I'm not weird, I don't know. I'm trying to
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: come up with it now, and I don't really think
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I keep a calendar in my head. I'm just too
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: like in the present, you know, like in the now. Yeah, baby,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: sorry to let you down. Who is that? Uh?
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: That is Daisy and Daisy is from Belgium. Thanks Daisy,
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: that's the problem.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: That's from Belgia. There's your problem. Thanks a lot, Daisy,
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: that was wonderful. I feel like also that somebody can
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: make a T shirt of like the visual representation of
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: the calendar in Daisy's head, and it would be the
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: most arcane, deep cut stuff you Should Know te shirt
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: of all time.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if you want to get in touch with
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: this like Daisy did and share your mental whatever, we
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: would love that. You can send us an email to
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,