Make a Science Board Game

If you look up the word SAWBUCK in the SCRABBLE Dictionary, you'd see that it was a sawhorse, but there's another definition that we're all probably more familiar with: SAWBUCK n pl. -S a $10 bill (informal) So, 8,000 sawbucks equals $80,000, and that's exactly what Sonya Gl ...more

There are a lot of fantastic video games out there. Indie Games Ichiban's bread and butter is making sure that you steer clear of the bad ones and embrace the good. But really, the biggest goal here is to help everyone have more fun. To that end, today a game is not recommende ...more

When I heard that a man wearing a pink wig and matching PVC dress won the 2010 National Scrabble Championship yesterday, I wasn't that shocked. After all, it was Halloween. But it turns out that it wasn't just a Halloween costume. In fact, it's a way of life for this champion ...more

There are tons of mobile apps out there for the gaming logophile, but there's a new word building game taking over iPhones and iPads, and it not only wants you to have fun, it wants you to fight back in the "war against words". It's the Word Examination Laboratory for Dynamic ...more

I have an absolutely wonderful time making projects and writing articles for all of you mad scientists! Today, I will bring you behind the scenes for a look at the workbench, tools, and software that make the Mad Science World possible. Above is my beautiful workbench! My who ...more

For as long as I've loved SCRABBLE, I can't believe I've never come across this before. "CRAZIEST" - A short story by Liz Dubelman about words and numbers as a religion (think Pi), about SCRABBLE being the oracle, about her quest for the "triple-triple". This spoke words to m ...more

In these weekly Scrabble Challenges, so far we've covered two-letter words, double bingos, high scoring moves, triple-triples, last moves, parallel plays, phoneys and opening moves. For this week's puzzle, we're revisiting the strategy for opening moves. It's said that the pl ...more

If you haven't noticed yet, I've started dishing out some "Scrabble Bingo of the Day" articles that showcase interesting and somewhat unusual seven-letter words (or longer) that could give you an extra 50-point bonus on the board, as long as you empty your rack. So, for this w ...more

Angry Birds might be the most visible video game franchise in the world today. It has sold 100 million units, as many as all the Sims games put together. It has been incorporated into board games, birthday cakes, and Israeli sketch comedy shows. And yet, this piece of seeming ...more

Three years ago, Double Fine productions held an in-house event called the Amnesia Fortnight. The company was split into four teams, each of which set out to spend two weeks developing an idea for a small game and present it to the other groups at the end of the duration. All ...more

This is my fourth (and final) installment on SCRABBLE adverts. I'm sure there's a lot I haven't found, but that's for another day. But this post features all of the remaining SCRABBLE advertisements (prints and posters) that haven't already been listed in my previous posts: O ...more

Last week's challenge brought up a good question (thanks Lisa) regarding the functionality of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 4th Edition, both online and in print form. The word TACTICAL was the answer to the first puzzle in that challenge, but when you search for t ...more

As much as I love Scrabble, the iPhone and Android versions of the game are just not as much fun or as fast paced as Words with Friends. I play both, but I'm most active on Zynga's version of the mobile word game because it's quicker to make moves, doesn't take as long to upda ...more

Bluffing is one of the key components of poker. You may have a horrible hand, but if you can play it cool and raise the bet, you might just be able to convince your opponents otherwise and induce a few folds. But if you can't handle a little subterfuge, then you shouldn't be p ...more

We all remember the controversy of SCRABBLE Trickster back in April. SCRABBLE + Mattel + Proper Nouns = BLASPHEMY! Some thought it was just a PR hoax, something to rattle the bones of diehard SCRABBLE players, like myself. Others thought it was an April Fools' Day joke. But ...more

The end game is a very important aspect of playing Scrabble. If you have just a few letters left on your rack and there are none left in the draw bag, but you're currently losing the game, you still might have a chance to win if you play your cards (er… tiles) right. No matter ...more

If you've checked out my SCRABBLE World, you may have read "How Controversy Changed SCRABBLE".  In that case, you know that the word JEW is not allowed in regular play, because it was deemed an offensive and obscene word. JEW v JEWED, JEWING, JEWS to bargain with—an offensive ...more

If you've read my blog "How Controversy Changed SCRABBLE", then you know that the word JEW is not allowed in regular play, because it was deemed an offensive and obscene word. JEW v JEWED, JEWING, JEWS to bargain with—an offensive term But this coming July, it will no longer ...more

Today, we're pleased to announce that WonderHowTo is getting a major site-wide update to make it easier to follow the subjects you're passionate about and to share your creations with people who will give you the kudos you deserve! We Built You a New WonderHowTo! In preparat ...more

A recent study in Canada concluded that competitive Scrabble players are twenty percent faster than non-Scrabble players at identifying real words on a Scrabble rack. In light of this news, this week's challenge is actually just a game of Scrabble Sprint from Pogo.com. See ho ...more

Each year on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, Ashbourne becomes a war zone! The majority of the ablebodied men, women and children take to the streets to play what is probally the largets football game in the world! - The two teams number in the hundreds, and the palying fiel ...more

A phoney word in a game of Scrabble is basically a non-valid word, either played or considered being played. Why? To fool the other player and go from losing to winning. It's perfectly acceptable in Scrabble play, but only if you don't get caught. If the other player challenge ...more

There are two types of Scrabble players in the world—those who enjoy it and those who love it. I definitely fall into the latter category. Unfortunately, most of my friends don't. I'm lucky to have a few who simply enjoy it from time to time—some are even standing on the edge ...more

In 2007, Nintendo introduced the world to motion control video games with the Wii. Microsoft and Sony built on Nintendo's phenomenal success and released their own motion control products for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 late in 2010: the Kinect and the Move. The Move is bas ...more

If you dig case mods and Resident Evil, it's fair to say you'll find Ron L. Christainson’s nothing short of epic. Inspired by the renown video game and movie, Ron—an artist and PC tech from Seattle—has already spent a year constructing the mod from scratch, and still has a cou ...more

Three years ago, Scrabble was one of the very first 500 mobile applications to appear on the new iTunes App Store, allowing iPhone users the chance to kill their Scrabble cravings on the go. It was a smart move for Hasbro and Electronic Arts (EA), but it's been two years and e ...more

The 2011 Toronto International Scrabble Open (TOSI) took place last weekend, with former World Champion Adam Logan beating out all of the human competition for the $3,000 grand prize. But when it came time to take on the Quackle program in the Human vs. Computer Showdown, he l ...more

SCRABBLE: 14 points; GRAFFITI: 15 points; MARRIAGE: 11 points; YES: 6 points. When playing a game of Scrabble, those are the minimal amount of points for each of the given words (not including blank tiles). But for 28-year-old Jeff Gurwin, it's more than just 46 points on the ...more

Great controls are the most important and difficult part of game design. Games with vector graphics and non-existent stories are classics because their creators managed to create a system where using buttons to control a shape on a screen was intuitive and fun. This is the tra ...more

Some say Nigel Richards is to SCRABBLE what Garry Kasparov is to chess, but that doesn't make him perfect. The New Zealender lost on Sunday to Pakistani scrabble champion Muhammad Sulaiman, in the Malta International Scrabble Open Championship 2010, played in Qawra, Malta (So ...more

WonderHowTo World LEGO People points us to an amazing chess set made with LEGO Star Wars characters. LEGO fanatic Brandon Griffith of Hollywood, CA, plans to build three different chess sets, one per each original episode. Pictured below is his first completed set, Star Wars: ...more

There's nothing better than playing a game of Scrabble, feeling the smooth wooden tiles in your hand and savoring the heavy fumes of cardboard, cheap wood and plastic as you rearrange the letters on your rack into the perfect word. You try to keep a straight face while you wat ...more

A woman from space that who has been dead hundreds of years has been resurrected on the internet and you're the IT assigned to fight the viruses attacking her. Child of Eden is a mesmerizing musical game, with fluid animations, great game play, and lots of replay ability. Pla ...more

Via WonderHowTo World, SCRABBLE: Dirty SCRABBLE. Everybody likes to play dirty, but we're not talking bluffing with fake words or closing up the board—we're talking actual "dirty" and offensive words. Despite the exclusion of offensive words in the bowdlerized Official SCRAB ...more

Dirty SCRABBLE. Everybody likes to play dirty, but we're not talking bluffing with fake words or closing up the board—we're talking actual "dirty" and offensive words. Despite the exclusion of offensive words in the bowdlerized Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (OSPD), the ...more