The mauve colored cardboard container box on the left in the photograph is 19cm wide x 36.7cm long x 3.6cm high, and has the name of the game stamped in gold on the outside of the top and on the four edges of the top. The underside of the top is white, and on it is printed game instructions, examples of word formations, and scoring details. The bottom of the box is white and contains a "platform" (17.7cm wide x 17.3cm long x 1.8cm high. The platform divides the box and holds the racks and pieces in place.
The photograph on the right is of a Standard Edition of the game of Scrabble. This is the edition that has been produced by Selchow & Righter Co. since 1948, and it looks no different than the one in the photograph which incidentally was produced in 1976 and donated to the Museum by Mr. Selchow. The Museum also has a 1948 copy in its collection. A microcomputer version of the standard edition is also available. All versions of the game are designed for 2, 3, or 4 players.
The board is divided into 225 cells or a matrix of 15X15. Each cell is approximately 1.9cm square. On the left side of the open board is a printed table of the distribution of the lettered tiles for the language version that the board will be used with. While most of the cells are a background color, many colored squares throughout the board elevate the player's score when used. Colored cells have the following distribution with these imprinted messages:
24 light blue double letter score
12 dark blue triple letter score
16 pink double word score
8 red triple word score
center star double word score
The 4 "racks" (upper right of photograph) are used to hold a player's tiles. Racks (2.5cm wide x 17.4cm long x 1.9cm high) are made of natural wood and include a ridge running along the width to enable the tiles to stand semi-upright while facing a player. The "tiles" (in a pile on the top left of the photograph) are made of natural wood (2cm long x 1.8cm wide x 4cm thick). Stamped in the center of each tile is a letter of the alaphabet, and in the bottom right corner is a numeric point value for the tile.
The number of tiles and the letter distribution in each set depends upon the language the game is designed to be used for. There are many different language versions of Scrabble - English, French, German, Hebrew, etc., and there are a number of these in the collection.
The Standard Edition was designed for "American English", and includes 100 tiles. The distribution of letters and point values and the number of tiles for each set are:
| Letter | Value | Tiles | Letter | Value | Tiles | Letter | Value | Tiles | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 1 | 9 | J | 8 | 1 | S | 1 | 4 | ||||
| B | 3 | 2 | K | 5 | 1 | T | 1 | 6 | ||||
| C | 3 | 2 | L | 1 | 4 | U | 1 | 4 | ||||
| D | 2 | 4 | M | 3 | 2 | V | 4 | 2 | ||||
| E | 1 | 12 | N | 1 | 6 | W | 4 | 2 | ||||
| F | 4 | 2 | O | 1 | 8 | X | 8 | 1 | ||||
| G | 2 | 3 | P | 3 | 2 | Y | 4 | 2 | ||||
| H | 4 | 2 | Q | 10 | 1 | Z | 10 | 1 | ||||
| I | 1 | 9 | R | 1 | 6 | blanks | 0 | 2 |
Last update June 1, 2010