‘Anniversary’ gets triple-word score
TEXT OF STORY
Steve Chiotakis: In these days of iPods and condensed books, an ever-expanding vocabulary is about as hard to find as a triple-word score under the letter Q. How about this one: longevity. The popular word game Scrabble turns 60 today. As Marketplace’s Jennifer Collins reports, its not showing its age.
Jennifer Collins: It seems so simple. Just a bag of letters and a board. But more than a hundred million Scrabble sets have been sold in 29 languages. Scrabble has fans from Queen Elizabeth to Shaquile O’Neal.
Shaquile O’Neal: “Shaqutastic” — 29 points.
It even spawned a TV spinoff back in the 80’s and 90’s.
TV Spinoff: It’s the crossword game you’ve played all your life, but never quite like this: Scrabble!
Scrabble was a product of the Great Depression and invented by an architect named Alfred Butts, who had a lot of time on his hands. After a decade in development, the game got its copyright on this day in 1948.
Today, the game’s gone online with social networking sites. Hasbro just dropped a copyright suit against an online spin-off known as Scrabulous.
Hard copies of the game are also seeing a resurgence. Scrabble is now the best selling game in the U.K.
I’m Jennifer Collins for Marketplace.
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