Scrabble Trivia
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This Scrabble trivia quiz has 59 free questions with answers and covers the whole game, from the out-of-work architect who tallied letter frequencies from a newspaper front page to the 2024 double-sided board. There are questions on the board and the tiles (how many squares, which letters score 10, why there are only four S tiles), the rules (the centre star, the seven-tile bonus, who goes first), record plays like CAZIQUES, QUIXOTRY and the mythical OXYPHENBUTAZONE, the world championships and the New Zealander who won the French title without speaking French, and the long-running arguments over which words belong in the official dictionaries. It suits family game night, pub quiz rounds, club players who think they know the history, and anyone who has ever argued over whether QI is a word. The easy questions are answerable by anyone who has opened a box; the hard ones ask what the game was called in Sweden and which state made a million tiles a day. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which out-of-work American invented the game in the early 1930s in Poughkeepsie, New York?
Alfred Butts
Alfred Butts, out of work in Poughkeepsie during the Depression, reasoned that every game was a number game, a move game or a word game, and blended the last kind with crossword puzzles.
Q 02Before the crossword-style board was added, the inventor's earlier tile game went by what name?
Lexiko
Lexiko was the inventor's first tile game and had no board; adding a crossword-style grid produced its successor, Criss-Crosswords, the direct ancestor of Scrabble.
Q 03In what year did James Brunot buy the rights to manufacture the game from its inventor?
1948
James Brunot bought the rights in 1948 in exchange for a royalty to the inventor on every set sold; in 1949 his family hand-made 2,400 sets and lost money.
Q 04James Brunot renamed the game Scrabble, a real English word that means what?
To scratch frantically
The dictionary sense of scrabble is "To scratch frantically" or grope about with the fingers; Brunot chose the name when he took over the game and rearranged the premium squares.
Q 05Early orders from which department store helped the game take off around 1952?
Macy's
Macy's president Jack Straus played the game on holiday in 1952 and ordered it for his store; demand soon outran the converted Connecticut schoolhouse where the sets were made.
Q 06In 1952, which Long Island game maker took over manufacturing after having earlier rejected the game?
Selchow and Righter
Selchow and Righter had turned the game down before licensing it in 1952; the Long Island firm bought the Scrabble trademark outright from Brunot in 1972.
Q 07Which company owns the rights to make Scrabble outside the United States and Canada?
Mattel
Mattel holds the rights everywhere except the United States and Canada, having acquired J. W. Spear & Sons in 1994; that split is why editions differ across the Atlantic.
Q 08Hasbro gained the North American rights in 1989 by buying the assets of which bankrupt company?
Coleco
Coleco had bought Scrabble's American maker only three years earlier, then went bankrupt in 1988; Hasbro's 1989 purchase of Coleco's assets also brought it Parcheesi.
Q 09How many squares does the standard board contain?
225
The board is 15 by 15, giving 225 squares, 61 of which are premium squares of one kind or another.
Q 10How many triple word score squares are on the board?
8
All 8 sit at the four corners and the middle of each edge, which is why a word covering two of them scores nine times its face value.
Q 11How many tiles, including blanks, are in an English-language set?
100
An English set has 100 tiles: 98 carry a letter and a value from 1 to 10, while the two blanks are worth nothing but can stand in for any letter.
Q 12Which two letters carry the maximum value of 10 points?
Q and Z
Q and Z are the only 10-point tiles; J and X are worth eight apiece and K is 5, the values being set by how rarely each letter appeared in newspaper text.
Q 13Which letter has the most tiles in the English set, with twelve?
E
E has twelve tiles, the most of any letter; A and I come next with nine each, and every one of those vowels is worth a single point.
Q 21Michael Cresta scored 365 points with which single play in his record 2006 club game?
QUIXOTRY
QUIXOTRY, played by the carpenter across two triple word squares, scored 365 points, the highest single play recorded in North American club or tournament Scrabble.
Q 22How many points did Michael Cresta score in his 2006 record club game in Lexington, Massachusetts?
830
Cresta finished with 830 points; his opponent Wayne Yorra added 490, so the pair also set the record for the highest combined total in a game, 1,320.
Q 23Which seven-letter word yields the highest possible opening play, 128 points, without using a blank?
MUZJIKS
MUZJIKS, a plural of the Russian word for a peasant, has 29 face-value points; with the Z on a double letter, the centre doubling and the seven-tile bonus it reaches 128.
Q 14What is the combined point value of all the tiles in an English set?
187
The 98 lettered tiles add up to 187 points; the two blanks contribute nothing, and the two 10-point tiles alone supply 20 of that total.
Q 15Playing all seven tiles in one turn earns how many bonus points?
50
Using all seven tiles earns a 50 point bonus on top of the word's value; experts routinely score three or more such plays a game, and much of advanced strategy is about keeping a rack that can produce one.
Q 16North Americans call a seven-tile play a bingo; what is it called in French?
Un scrabble
In French the seven-tile play is called "Un scrabble"; outside North America, English-speaking players usually say simply a bonus rather than a bingo.
Q 17For the opening play, the star on the centre square doubles the value of what?
The whole word
The centre star is a double word square, doubling "The whole word": an opening QUITE with the Q on a double letter and the last letter on the star scores 48 rather than 24.
Q 18When players draw from the bag to decide who goes first, what beats every letter?
A blank tile
A blank tile wins the draw for first move; otherwise the tile closest to A wins, and that blank-beats-A clarification was written into the box rules in 1976.
Q 19Why are the original wooden tiles barred from tournament play?
Players can feel which ones are blank
Engraved wooden tiles mean "Players can feel which ones are blank" while drawing from the bag, a trick known as brailling, so tournaments use smooth moulded plastic tiles instead.
Q 20Which word did Karl Khoshnaw play for a record 392 points in a 1982 Manchester tournament game?
CAZIQUES
CAZIQUES, plural of a word for a West Indian chief, stretched across two triple word squares for a nine-times multiplier, with a 10-point letter doubled and the seven-tile bonus added.
Q 24Which 15-letter drug name is the theoretical maximum play, spanning three triple word squares?
OXYPHENBUTAZONE
OXYPHENBUTAZONE, an anti-inflammatory once prescribed for arthritis, would need eight tiles already on the board in exactly the right places for the full 1,778-point play.
Q 25Who won the first World Scrabble Championship, held in London in 1991?
Peter Morris
Peter Morris, winner of the 1989 US national championship, took the inaugural world title and then largely quit competitive play to write baseball history.
Q 26The Scrabble world champion of 2007, 2011, 2013, 2018 and 2019 represents which country?
New Zealand
The five-time champion was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, and won his world titles in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2018 and 2019, having learned the game only at 28.
Q 27In 2015, who won the French-language World Scrabble Championship despite not speaking French?
Nigel Richards
Nigel Richards memorised the French word list in about nine weeks before the 2015 win, and in 2024 repeated the feat by taking the Spanish-language world title.
Q 28The world's largest tournament, the Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup, is held annually in which country?
Thailand
Thailand hosts it in Bangkok every summer, with thousands of entrants, mostly schoolchildren; Thai player Panupol Sujjayakorn won the world championship in 2003.
Q 29In 2015 Wellington Jighere became the first world champion from Africa, representing which country?
Nigeria
Nigeria's Wellington Jighere beat England's Lewis Mackay 4-0 in the final in Perth, Australia, at the championship organised by WESPA that year.
Q 30Which publisher produces the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, first issued in 1978?
Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster published the first Official Scrabble Players Dictionary in 1978 and has issued every edition since, the seventh arriving in 2022.