Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players compete for points by fitting tiles with single letters onto a 1515 grid of squares. The tiles must create words that read left to right in rows or downward in columns in a crossword format and are found in a typical dictionary or lexicon.
In most of the globe, the name Scrabble is a trademark of Mattel, except in the United States and Canada, where it is a trademark of Hasbro. The game is available in more than 30 languages and is sold in 121 countries; around 150 million sets have been sold globally, and nearly one-third of American and half of British households own a Scrabble set. Around the world, there are about 4,000 Scrabble clubs.
The game has 100 tiles in an English-language set, 98 of which are marked with a letter and a point value ranging from 1 to 10. The quantity of points awarded to each lettered tile is determined by the frequency of the letter in standard English. Letters that are commonly used, such as vowels, are worth one point, whereas letters that are less commonly used, such as Q and Z, are worth ten points each. There are two blank tiles in the game that are unlabeled and have no point value. The blank tiles can be substituted for any letter, but once they're on the board, the choice is made for you. Varying letter set distributions with different point values are used in other language sets.
