The Scribble on Scrabble

Scrabble is a game that neither of us plays with regularity. And maybe that's good for this episode. We're all learning, right? See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:11Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:21Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, good old fashioned pop culture games edition.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:35Josh Clark?

  And yeah, here we are, finally talking about Scrabble. I've been asking for you to do this with me for at least a decade and you kept refusing. I still don't know why. Even Jerry chimed in and was like, will you guys please do Scrabble? And finally you relented, I think just because you wanted me and Jerry to stop bothering you about it.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  That was probably it. A big thanks to Laura for her help on this one.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  What was your nickname for her?

• 3:02Josh Clark?

  Dr. Claw.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  Dr. Claw.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  Do you play Scrabble? Are you a Scrabble? I just kind of wanted to get that out of the way.

• 3:10Josh Clark?

  You know, I wish I were. I'm not. And it's not like I have an aversion to it or anything like that. It's just not part of my world, I guess, you know?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, same. I mean, we own it and I have played Scrabble here and there. If somebody's like, hey, let's play Scrabble. I won't go like, no, sorry, not gonna do it. But, you know, I'll play very occasionally, but I've never been a regular Scrabble. Nor am I very good at it at all, especially if I'm playing against somebody who, you know, because there's a lot more to it than just like knowing words.

• 3:42Josh Clark?

  Well, I feel like based on Stuff You Should Know history, our best episodes are ones where we explain games that we don't actually play. Soccer, chess.

• 3:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  I mean, the list just keeps going on. I feel like we're about to add to it.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Surfing?

• 3:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, surfing.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  I mean, we should probably just say that Scrabble, if you don't know, it's a board game in which two to four players use letters, little tiles, to spell out words on a board in a crossword-like fashion.

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  Wow, that was a good description, Chuck.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  In other words, you know, the words have to intersect each other. You can't just throw a random word out there in the corner if you feel like it. They have to touch and use a letter, or I guess a blank space for another word.

• 4:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  And by the way, I just wanted to go ahead and, because Scrabble people are probably going to get mad at us, but I'm going to go ahead and throw out a suggested rule change.

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  There is a word, Scrabble, and that means to, as a verb, to scratch or grope to try and collect something, or as a noun, the act of doing that. And I propose that if you play that eight-letter word, that not only do you get your bingo bonus for playing a seven-letter word, I think you should, if you play the word Scrabble, you should get an extra bonus on top of that.

• 4:59Josh Clark?

  Of how many points? A million?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Whatever's fair. That's where I just step back and say, you guys handle it.

• 5:05Josh Clark?

  Okay. You like to kick the hornet's nest and then watch him go?

• 5:08Speaker 04

  I just think, I don't know, if you play the word Scrabble, give it a little, just a little bump.

• 5:12Josh Clark?

  I agree. I think you're right.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  All right. That's my only suggestion. My only note.

• 5:16Josh Clark?

  A little more about it. The Scrabble board is 15 by 15 squares, 225 total squares. And because it's 15 by 15, you're limited to no more than 15-letter words.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 5:30Josh Clark?

  And I guess just a quick summary of the rules. So when you play that first word, you have to play it in the center square. That's where you start. And you can build off of other people's words. You get up to 15-letter words by building on to other words, because you could never spell more than a seven-letter word, because at no point in time do you ever have more than seven tiles.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Right. And as I said, that seven tiles played at once is called the bingo. You add up your score at the end and tack on 50 points at that point.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Or however many you get. Apparently, experts can play like, you know, three, four, or five of those in a game sometimes.

• 6:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a great way to run up scores, from what I can tell. And then, across the board, there's triple word scores, double word scores, double letter scores, and triple letter scores. And basically, when you lay a tile over that, depending on whether it's a letter or a word, you get bonus points for it. So when you're like, if you play a bingo across like a triple word score.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  They're cooking.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  You got a bunch of points. You basically just dusted your opponent in that one move, essentially.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, if you're just sort of amateur funsies Scrabble people. One big bingo like that can seal the game for you.

• 6:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's called sending them packing with tears in their eyes, I think.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Uh, in France, by the way, the bingo is called a Scrabble. Uh, just other nuts and bolts, um, you know, the, the tiles come in a little, they're little wooden tiles, little wooden square tiles. And on the tile is a letter and then a point value, sort of as a sub-script. Uh, and then you keep your letters on a little wooden tile rack. And you, uh, ideally your, your opponent does not see those.

• 7:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Like, you know, it's, uh, they're facing away from you if you're opposite, uh, your opponent. And that's a big part of like an expert, or at least an accomplished or experienced Scrabbleist. Is it dummies like me, and I guess you, if you and I played, we'd just sit down and try and spill fart every chance we got. Uh, if you're an experienced Scrabbleist, you're almost like counting cards. Like you know how many letters.

• 7:44Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Are in the bag of like, how many of each letter in the bag? And you see them being played, you know how many are on your rack? You know how many are still in the pile? So you're sort of trying to figure out mathematical possibilities of what's still out there and what can be played. Like that's the next level stuff.

• 8:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And it's not like evenly distributed. For example, there's 12 Es, but there's only one J, K, Q, X, and Z. Uh, and then the other letters is kind of distributed in weird, random ways. So that, like, you could, I guess, easily count that stuff. If you play Scrabble enough, you're just going to pick up on how many.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:22Josh Clark?

  Are out there at any given point.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've also got your blank tiles, which are worth zero points. But that, it, those really help out in making words possible that you couldn't get ordinarily. Uh, and then you've got your one pointers, A, E, I, L, N, O, R, S, T, uh, and U.

• 8:40Josh Clark?

  Um, and also, well, just real quick, I did some poking around Chuck. And I found that there's some mnemonic devices that like tournament level players use to remember how many points a particular letter gets.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  You should say that after I list them all.

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  Well, I was, I was going to just do it by, by group, if that's okay with you.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 9:03Josh Clark?

  So the first group, one point, they use astronauts eat in limbo. No, right, silly tiger, umbrella.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  All right, uh, the two pointers are D and G.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  Dave and Gary.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  Okay, I would say doggone, uh, three points are BCM and P.

• 9:24Josh Clark?

  Uh, that is be chewing and masticating pizza.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Does someone really suggest like, hey, use these and don't make up your own?

• 9:32Josh Clark?

  No, I'm making this up.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  I got you. This is all a bit.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  Okay, four points, we got FH, V and W and Y.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  Right, so for heavens' sake, Y, you.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Okay, I get it now.

• 9:47Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  You should have told me this is a bit. Five pointers, you get your K.

• 9:52Josh Clark?

  K.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Okay, eight pointers, J and X.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  Jackson loves Xanax.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Okay. Uh, Jackson loves?

• 10:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you just have to ignore the, the L.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Then your 10 pointer, Josh, what are we gonna end up with Q and Z?

• 10:11Josh Clark?

  Uh, quartz and quartz.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  That's great. I think I got it.

• 10:17Josh Clark?

  You got it?

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, give me a quiz at the end. I'll, I'll put this away and then you can just quiz me.

• 10:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, once you learn that, you'll never forget it.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Uh, there is a statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon, Andrew Thomas,

• 10:32Speaker 04

  who says if you go first, you have an advantage of 14 points. Uh, if you have that blank tile ever in the game, that's an advantage of 30 points if you're good at Scrabble, not like me.

• 10:42Josh Clark?

  Right, um, there's also, like, if you have S tiles, there's a 10-point advantage. And the reason why, I was like, that doesn't make any sense because S, as you remember from your mnemonic device, is only a one-point tile.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  You should throw that on the end though, right?

• 10:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's the thing. So like, if you add, if you, like I said, you can add on to other words that are already on the board, even ones another player wrote out. And whatever word score they got for that word, if you add an S, you get that same word score plus one point for the S. So, um, that's a really easy way to rack up some quick points.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 11:19Josh Clark?

  And I think also probably annoy other players.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  I wonder about that. I'd like to hear from Scrabblers. I mean, if it's fair game, it's fair game.

• 11:27Josh Clark?

  Yes, and there's, but there's plenty of rules that are fair game that are also like, you're a jackass.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a good point. Uh, let me see here. What else do we have? We have X and Z give you a three to five point advantage. Even though they're, you know, tougher to use and the Q is a five point disadvantage because, I mean, I was about to say you always have to have that U, but I'm sure there are weird Scrabble words that don't have a Q U.

• 11:52Josh Clark?

  There's two that I know of. One is qi.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Q I? Yeah, I think I heard that.

• 11:57Josh Clark?

  Q I, or is, no, sorry, that's qi, like life force, I think.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 12:02Josh Clark?

  And you get 11 points for that one. And then, I can't remember, there's one more that's like a, a Q word that does not require a U.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Oh, no, Q I is in here because that's the highest scoring two-letter word along with za. Is that what you said?

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I looked up za, za, and it's slang for pizza. I'm not certain that that usage is allowed, but it's also a archaic word for a B-flat notation.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I wonder if, because I did the same thing you did. Every time they gave an, Laura found an example of a word that's unusual or high-scoring. I always looked it up because I was curious. I wonder if that's part of the love of Scrabble is actually learning what these words mean, or if they're like, I really don't care. I just care how much it's worth.

• 12:48Josh Clark?

  Well, from what I can tell, Scrabble players don't care what a word means. They, they don't think of them like that. And I mean, that'll come up later with those controversial words.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. Yeah, good point.

• 12:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's just us. We're curious types, Scrabble players are not.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  That's, that's true. The highest scoring three-letter word is zax, a 19-pointer, and zek is 16. Quiz is a four-letter word worth the most at 22.

• 13:13Josh Clark?

  That means like a test of sorts.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  Okay, and then zippy, what does that mean?

• 13:17Josh Clark?

  The, the pinhead.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Zippy the Pinhead, what's that?

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's a really weird 80s comic strip. You know, the clown with the Zippy the Pinhead?

• 13:29Speaker 04

  No, I don't know it.

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  You should look it up. It's weird. It's a weird comic strip.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Okay, I don't know it.

• 13:35Josh Clark?

  But it couldn't be that, sorry. I have to, I have to correct myself before all of the Scrabble players email in. It couldn't be Zippy the Pinhead because Zippy the Pinhead would be a proper noun.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Ah, okay, good point.

• 13:47Josh Clark?

  Thanks.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  You can't use proper nouns?

• 13:50Josh Clark?

  No, you can't.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Might as well go ahead and say that.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  They're really serious about that stuff, too.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  Oh, I bet. Uh, see, I'm a house rules guy, so I can, you know, as long as everyone's on board, I think you can, uh, you can have your own house rules for stuff.

• 14:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, I agree.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  Don't bring that into a tournament.

• 14:05Josh Clark?

  No, get that mess out of here is what they'll tell you.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, but like if I were to play with Ruby, she'd, and I'd probably say like, hey, we can use proper nouns because she'll want to put our dog's name or something.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Or maybe I would.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Uh, I did look up the highest scoring, um, bingo, and that is, uh, muzjiks, M U Z J I K S, which is a Russian peasant.

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  It's probably, it's probably muzjiks or something.

• 14:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I like it both ways, though.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Muzjiks.

• 14:38Josh Clark?

  Look at all them muzjiks toiling in the fields.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I like that.

• 14:42Josh Clark?

  Um, so I was confused because there's a lot of, like, one of the rules is no proper nouns, no words that end in apostrophe or require an apostrophe.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:52Josh Clark?

  Um, and then also no foreign words. But clearly some foreign words are allowed in because they're so common in English that they've just basically been adopted into the language. I get that. But a muzjiks is not a common word in English. So it must mean that that does appear in some English dictionary somewhere because that's kind of the great ruler arbiter. But I just don't see how it could be. That's just weird to me.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  Well, what's weird is your college band, I know for a fact, was Jay Clark and the Muzjiks.

• 15:26Josh Clark?

  Yes, but we were trying to be exotic, you know?

• 15:28Speaker 04

  And we should also say that Scrabble, I think, is now up to 30 languages all over the world. And apparently, that can be problematic. Like, in France, you can add an E and an S to many, many words. So it can kind of get out of hand with the score totals there. And in our beloved Germany, and I never really thought about this, but German words are long. So there's not a lot of, I mean, sure, sure, there are obviously words shorter than seven words in Germany, but a lot less than a lot of other languages.

• 15:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  So it must just be Bingo City, or whatever Bingo City is in German.

• 16:04Josh Clark?

  There's also Bingo, I don't know what city? Bingo Bird?

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Stad, maybe?

• 16:11Josh Clark?

  Bingo Stad. Sure. There's a, so in some other countries too, in foreign language versions of Scrabble, there are some adjustments with the tiles, like some have more than 100 tiles.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Oh, right. Because of weird little letters.

• 16:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's like double L and double R in the Spanish language version. There's also the N with the tilde over it. That's also a tile.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, spice it up a little.

• 16:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think that's worth eight points.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 16:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but you have to remember that that's eight points, you have to say nice.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Right. Should we take a break? I like how this is headed.

• 16:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  All right, we'll be right back.

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• 19:32Speaker 04

  All right, we're back. And if you're going to talk about Scrabble, you got to talk about Alfred Mosher Butts, because he is the gentleman who invented this game. This was in 1938. He was an unemployed architect at the time. And just into games. He's from Poughkeepsie, but I believe the game was actually invented, actually, I know this for a fact, in Jackson Heights, Queens, because at 81st Street and 35th Avenue, I believe, is a Scrabble-style street sign. I think it's 35th Avenue has, below each of the letters, is the little number value subscript, which is kind of just a little nice, fun, cute nod.

• 20:10Josh Clark?

  Are you sure it's just that that community in particular isn't big Scrabble fans?

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm positive.

• 20:16Josh Clark?

  Okay. So he, did you say he was an unemployed architect?

• 20:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, at the time, and he was just into gaming and wanted to invent a game that was part chance, part skill.

• 20:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so he did not have a great success with it out of the gate. He initially tried to call it Lexico and Criss Crosswords. And he took it around to game manufacturers and they're like, nah, I'm not really feeling this.

• 20:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:41Josh Clark?

  And that was the, the way it went for a good decade before a man named James Bruno bought the rights. He saw something in it that I guess other people didn't. He renamed it Scrabble. He changed the gameplay a little bit. One of the biggest changes he made was that the way that Moser Butz had come up with is that you just thought the word in like a kind of a mental version of the, the board. And the other player hopefully was able to pick up on the word you were thinking. And so Bruno was like, maybe we should just replace it with an actual board and tiles. And that really kind of helped move things along a bunch.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I looked up this James Bruno and you know, we get a lot of great information a lot of times from New York Times obituaries. And he was a friend of Butz and so they used to play Scrabble together on occasion, like their homemade version. And once this guy took it over, he and his wife Helen like operated out of their house. And he was like, at a certain point, like all that was in our house was boxes of tiles and racks and boards. And we couldn't move around, so they had to, they moved to an abandoned schoolhouse. And then eventually a converted woodworking shop. And they had 35 employees working two shifts, producing 6,000 Scrabble sets, sets a week.

• 22:04Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  53, by 1953.

• 22:08Josh Clark?

  So within five years of him buying the rights.

• 22:11Speaker 04

  That is correct, sir.

• 22:13Josh Clark?

  Okay, so that, that, the year before that, I've seen it told as a legend or a widely told story. Laura put it, I don't know why no one's like, yeah, that's what happened. But supposedly, the president of Macy's came across the game. I'm not sure how, played it, liked it, ordered a bunch to stock up. Of course, that meant gimbals immediately followed suit. And so the game took off from there. So this would have been 1952 when that supposedly happened.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 22:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and Bruno was like, we can't possibly keep up with this demand. Like, this has just skyrocketed, which is great. But they turned to a company, a game maker called Celcho and Ryder. And they took over making the game. And they did so for decades. They were the people who made Scrabble for a really long time. Within two years, two years of that great Macy's president story happening, four and a half million copies were sold. Like, it just hit America like, you know, a giant packet of Pop Rocks and Diet Coke. Or Mentos.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, or like a T O N N E of bricks, which is worth more than T O N.

• 23:32Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  So that's selling pretty good. I think they've sold, they estimate about 150 million total sets as of, you know, kind of now. Even though it's hard to get a real firm number on that. But they bought that trademark, Celcho and Ryder, I want to say Richter there, but it is Ryder. Bought that trademark from them in 72. Bruno got a million and a half bucks, which would be about 12 million today. And this, by the way, was like, he was looking for something to do in retirement. So he really scored.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  That's a triple letter retirement gig, I would say.

• 24:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  Or triple word even. And then the inventor, Mr. Butts, got 265 grand, which should be about 2 million bucks. Plus, he got a very small royalty that he seemed to be pretty happy with.

• 24:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  He sounds like a great guy.

• 24:23Josh Clark?

  This is one of the more heartwarming quotes I've come across in a while. He, he was interviewed in 1984 about, about his invention.

• 24:32Josh Clark?

  And he said, people are always asking me if I'm rich. I used to get two to three cents for each game sold. One third went to taxes. I gave one third away and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  Great.

• 24:45Josh Clark?

  And if there's such thing as heaven, I believe that Mr. Butz is there right now.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  I think so, too. He would have been in his eighties then, too, because I think he died in the early nineties in his nineties.

• 24:56Josh Clark?

  Uh, okay. Well, there you go. He had a great life, apparently.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 25:03Josh Clark?

  So, um, things turned kind of dark when the Cabbage Patch Kids bought Selcho and Ryder in 1986.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  You want to hear something funny?

• 25:13Josh Clark?

  What?

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Every time I looked at that word, I said, Colco.

• 25:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 25:19Speaker 04

  I was like, that's so weird. Like, I grew up with Kaliko toys.

• 25:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  And I just kept seeing it as Colco. And I was like, wait a minute, dummy, it's Kaliko.

• 25:27Josh Clark?

  Well, you must be, uh, Scrabbleist because that would just be like the word construct without any

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 25:34Josh Clark?

  of meaning to it. So you're in there, Chuck. You really did some method research.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe so.

• 25:40Josh Clark?

  So Kaliko, yes, bought Selcho and Ryder and just did not really give much of a care about Scrabble. I mean, it was just a moneymaker to them. Apparently they were already in trouble, which is nuts that they declared bankruptcy by 1989. I think, I can't remember. Surely we talked about in our Cabbage Patch Kids episode, why that happened. But to go from having one of the hottest toys in the history of toys to bankrupt in the same decade is breathtaking, uh, as far as business goes. But when Kaliko declared bankruptcy, Hasbro stepped in and they did seem to care a lot more about Scrabble.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  Um, and so under their ownership, I think it's still owned by Hasbro, if I'm not mistaken. Uh, it's been fine. It's had its ups and downs, as we'll see. Uh, but there was also a bidding war for the international rights to produce Scrabble. And Mattel beat them out for that.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 26:41Josh Clark?

  And that, I can't imagine what aplomb that is. But it also occurred to me, and I know we've done an episode on intellectual property, but there's like, there's some fictitious right out there that says this one company is allowed to produce all the games just internationally. This other company has this other fictitious right to produce all the games just inside of the United States. And it's just so mind blowing to me that we've just kind of created that, that kind of made up structure for things and how much just gobs of money that, that legal fiction creates for people.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Are you pushing for just an open source world?

• 27:22Josh Clark?

  No, not necessarily. I don't have a problem with it. I was more just astounded by it.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, it's interesting. I mean, I mean, have you ever dug into like TV rights for professional sports leagues?

• 27:36Josh Clark?

  Oh my God, is that, I'll bet that's quite a jungle.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. And it's gotten really, really expensive. Like when you see the numbers like, you know, Amazon acquires the right to air whatever Sunday Night Football or something. It's just like

• 27:47Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Astounding what kind of money we're talking about.

• 27:50Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Anyway, I guess we can move on to competitive Scrabble because, you know, a lot of people just play for funsies at home. I know our bud, John Hodgman, and his lovely wife Catherine play like for decades now because they're high school sweethearts. So they're, they're long, long, long-term scrabblers, you know, against each other. I kind of wanted to find out if there was a lifetime record that they keep up with.

• 28:19Josh Clark?

  Surely.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  But then I just decided not to ask.

• 28:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Hodgman used to live tweet their games.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Oh, he did?

• 28:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was really cute to, to just kind of follow along.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  I bet they're both good because Catherine's an English teacher and John is, you know, knows a lot of words.

• 28:37Josh Clark?

  Anybody who knows Hodgman too, right when they saw the Scrabble episode of Stuff You Should Know, knew that there was 100% chance that Hodgman was gonna come up at some point in time, for sure.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  He would have complained if we hadn't.

• 28:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. He's a Scrabble guy, for sure.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, he would smoke me. In fact, I feel like I might have played him once on one of these trips that I used to do with him for maximum fun. But I don't know. If we did play, it was not even competitive at all.

• 29:09Josh Clark?

  I'm sure.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  I don't see why he would have played me, because I'm really just, you know, I'm like Steve Carell in Anchorman. I like, I'll try to spell lamp just because I looked at one, you know?

• 29:21Josh Clark?

  Hey, man, if it gets you some points, who cares?

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you and I'd probably be a pretty good matchup.

• 29:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so, too. We should play sometime.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:30Josh Clark?

  Okay, so...

• 29:32Speaker 04

  That sounded unenthusiastic. I meant, hell, yeah, buddy!

• 29:34Josh Clark?

  All right. Sorry, you can't see me, but I'm raising the roof right now.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 29:39Josh Clark?

  So, you mentioned competitive Scrabble, that there are tournaments, which isn't very surprising. I mean, people are into Scrabble, so when you start throwing money down for, like, prize money for tournaments, people are gonna flock to them. And for years, the main, the biggest Scrabble tournament, what they called Nationals, was the North American Invitational Scrabble Players Tournament, which had its inaugural championship in 1978 and was held every year through to 2009. And Selcho and Ryder actually formed the National Scrabble Association, which was very smart,

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  because that kind of thing generates a lot of interest, enthusiasm, newspapers cover, oh, it's so crazy, there's a Scrabble championship right now. And like, it just helps keep the thing topical, you know, instead of just letting people buy it and crossing your fingers, that kind of thing. It was a pretty smart business venture. And then, like I said, Colico came along. They did nothing for it. Apparently, the Players Association had to shame Colico into chipping in $5,000 for prize money for the national tournament. And then, when Hasbro came along, they started funding it a lot more lavishly. But then they kind of said, you know, we're, we're, this isn't actually worth it anymore.

• 31:06Josh Clark?

  You guys are, you know, maybe a few hundred people coming to these tournaments and you,

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:13Josh Clark?

  you all have all of the Scrabble boards that you're ever gonna need. You're not gonna buy anymore. So they stopped funding those. And they actually shut down the, um, the National Scrabble Association. So an independent version came up, the North American Scrabble Players Association. I think back in 2009 is when it was formed.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. And before anyone writes in, technically they didn't completely shut down the NSA. They just stopped their, uh, they weren't in charge of the tournaments anymore. They just, they moved them over to another program called School Scrabble.

• 31:45Josh Clark?

  Yes, because those kids have a long life of buying Scrabble boards ahead of them.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  That's right. Uh, you mentioned ups and downs over the years. Uh, you know, I guess all board games go through kind of boom periods and bust periods, or at least low periods, and Scrabble is no different. Uh, there was an early 2000s boom. Um, there were televised tournaments. Uh, it's interesting what drives this stuff. Uh, I don't know if they know on the inside, but I couldn't figure out why it would have had a boom in the 2000s, early 2000s.

• 32:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, uh, a, um, a documentary called Word Freaks, I believe.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Oh, is that what did it?

• 32:23Josh Clark?

  It introduced it to a whole new generation of people.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. Well, there you have it.

• 32:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And it took off like it, like, like, um, Hasbro has a lot to be thankful for from that documentary, from what I understand.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Oh, I bet the New York Times crossword documentary to kick that up a notch.

• 32:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. That was a great one.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Um, but we're not talking crosswords again, so don't worry.

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  I just busted out in sweat.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  You got a flop sweat happening. Uh, there were 75,000 rated Scrabble tournament games in 2004. And that number by 2019 was cut almost in half. That went down to 40,000. Uh, and the Nationals went from 837 players to 280 over that same span. So it just seems like that documentary really caused a resurgence, I guess. And then it kind of went back to a level set, maybe?

• 33:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. There was also a lot of internal strife, too. The North American Scrabble Players Association didn't make a lot of friends. They established a real top-down hierarchy of how that that association was run. So some other players' associations were developed, splintered off. There was a lot of fracture, I guess, in the Scrabble community. That just kind of came around that time that surely affected attracting new people. Like, I hate to use the word toxic because I feel like it's definitely overused. But it feels like that community got a lot more toxic around that time. And, you know, that doesn't exactly attract people.

• 33:56Josh Clark?

  Like, hey, I want to join that toxic subculture. Really mix it up.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, some people are into that.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those aren't the people you want to attract to your toxic subculture, though.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, or play Scrabble with. If you're in a tournament, you're going to see some big scorers. They have, you know, scores over 800 points at times in tournaments. The highest-scoring legal word, I don't think it's ever been played officially. But that would be a 1,784-point score if that was across three different triple-word scores. And that word is oxifenbutazone.

• 34:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's a now-banned NSAID pain reliever.

• 34:40Speaker 04

  That's right. And since I know you looked it up, because I did, too, I'll let you give the definition of kazik, which is the highest score ever for a word played in a tournament. 392 points for kazik.

• 34:52Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, so that one, from what I could tell, I found that it's a Spanish word for an indigenous chieftain, usually among Caribbean tribes.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I saw that the Taino people, like the indigenous Bahamians.

• 35:06Josh Clark?

  Right. And that was actually played.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 35:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, that's so that's one word for 392 points. To put that into perspective, a good, you know, average person's Scrabble score, from what I can tell, couple to a few hundred points. This is like a Scrabble score with just a high Scrabble score with just one, one word. This is like the level that these people are playing at. And Chuck, I, I say we take another break and we'll come back and we'll poke around in the brains of those high level Scrabble players and see what neurologists have found out recently.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 36:02Speaker 04

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• 37:15Speaker 04

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• 37:26Josh Clark?

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• 37:49Josh Clark?

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• 38:26Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so we've kind of made mention a couple of times that people who play Scrabble like think of words differently than normies do. And there have been studies, using the Wonder Machine in particular, by neurologists of the brains of people who play Scrabble, because there's a lot of longstanding discussions, rival theories and hypotheses about how we process words and information associated with words. And by studying Scrabble players, like high-level Scrabble players, they found that their brains literally work different when it comes to words.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  Take it away.

• 39:05Josh Clark?

  Well, one of the studies, I can't remember what year it was. I actually failed to look now that I think about it. They found that when you put the, put a Scrabble player through what's called the lexical decision task, which is showing people very quickly jumbles of words and saying, is there a word in there? Ah, too late. Is there a word in here? Too late. They have to answer really quick and there's always some lab assistant shouting, too late and really just mix things up a little bit. Scrabble players use regions of their brains that most people wouldn't use. They, and they don't use regions of their brains that people normally do use. Say, so like when you think of a word, you think of the meaning usually. That's how you grasp a word.

• 39:50Josh Clark?

  And you're really kind of processing what the word is. There's a meaning attached to it. There's a symbolism attached to it. With the Scrabble player, they do not think like that. They think of words as physical constructs of letters. There's, meanings aren't attached to them. That takes too long. They process them much more quickly because it's just a bunch of letters that you put together. It doesn't matter what it means. It just matters that you can get this number of points on a Scrabble board. And one of the other things they found is that they also use more spatial reasoning than the average person does when they're recognizing and processing words and letters,

• 40:30Josh Clark?

  because they have to figure out how to orient them on the board and how they would intersect with other, other words on the board. So they, their brains change and the way they approach words change the more Scrabble you play.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's, it's almost like Tetris-like in their brains at a certain point. Like they might as well just be Tetris blocks that are trying to fit in. Obviously not Tetris because you can't make, you know, your own size and shaped things, but you know what I mean?

• 40:56Josh Clark?

  Sure. I know what you mean. I think that's, I think it's a good analogy.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  There's some other cool studies that there are, you know, kind of findings they found from different studies. The setup of this one is basically that if you have a college degree, they have found that you're less likely than those without, with, you know, less education to get age-related memory loss and Alzheimer's. But in terms of Scrabble, they found that that gap can be closed a lot. If you don't have that college degree and you play a lot of Scrabble, you can close that gap to where it's almost the same as people with higher levels of education as far as acquiring that memory loss in Alzheimer's.

• 41:35Josh Clark?

  Pretty great. Take that, college boy.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  What about the Ruski's? That was interesting, too, I thought.

• 41:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they studied Russian engineering students, and by they, I mean the people who conducted this study. And they said, here, Russian engineering students, we're going to teach you Scrabble, and you're going to play it for a year, and then we're going to test you. We're going to have you play teachers who teach English as a foreign language. So they're Russian, but they know a lot of English. And we're going to play the English language Scrabble, by the, by the way. So there's all the pieces on the board right there. And what they found is that the engineering students who didn't speak that much English were able to, I think in the words of the study, smoke the English as a foreign language teachers in Scrabble.

• 42:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 42:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, even though the, the teachers knew more English than the, the engineering students did.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's super cool. They've also found that for tournament play, men dominate tournament Scrabble tournaments, generally speaking. But they've done studies of this, and they're like, hey, it's not because men have big brains and women have little tiny brains. It's not because guys can, can learn words better than women. Has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with the fact that in general, overall, men start younger than women do. Boys, I guess, start younger than girls when it comes to Scrabble. And women generally and and girls play more Scrabble, but they say that's not necessarily how to get better at Scrabble. They're playing for fun and just having a good time.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  Whereas to get better at Scrabble, what these boys and men seem to be doing more of is like anagramming stuff and analyzing everything. And instead of just like, hey, let's just play some Scrabble and have some fun. Like, let me research and analyze this stuff so I can dominate in a tournament.

• 43:23Josh Clark?

  Exactly. But I mean, that's how you get better at apparently anagramming is a huge thing to do if you want to get better at Scrabble. Because when you look at the, you know, there's seven tiles on your tile holder. It's just a jumble of letters and you have to find the words in those letters. That's part of the game. So if you go practice that, yeah, you're going to get a lot better. But I saw that among just the population in general, just people who play Scrabble for fun. It's much more closely divided. It's more like 60, 40 men to women.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's changed a lot over the past couple of decades, too.

• 43:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think that documentary probably helped quite a bit.

• 44:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. When it comes to like, all right, what words, like what dictionary do you use? There is a Scrabble dictionary. It's called the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. It was released in 1978, again, by Selchow and Ryder, even though they worked with Merriam-Webster to produce the game because, you know, they're dictionary people. And this has caused a lot of controversy over the years because words have been added, words have been taken away. And every time that happens, the Scrabble community, you know, some people are like, great, great change. And some people are like, no, I hate that.

• 44:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because to them, they're just words. The meaning has no purpose or point whatsoever in the game. It doesn't matter. So why would you take any words out that we could potentially use and score with?

• 44:50Speaker 04

  Some of the worst and the worst racial slurs out there have been in the Scrabble dictionary.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, do you want to tell some people?

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I'm not going to say those, but there is a list. I think there was a woman named Judith Grad in the 90s who kind of got on her, I don't want to say got on her soapbox because that indicates a bad thing. She, she got a campaign going to have the slurs removed. The Anti-Defamation League got involved. Hasbro eventually said, all right, we're going to remove these words from the next edition of the dictionary. Booby, gringo, farted, bleep, honky, bleeped, whitey's pissed, fatso, redneck, and wazoo.

• 45:34Josh Clark?

  And Jerry, best of luck beeping all those out.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  It should be pretty easy.

• 45:38Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, so there were a lot of Scrabble players who were like, this is outrageous. Who cares about offensiveness? And other people are like, this is kind of society evolving in real time right here. So I guess Hasbro made a compromise and they said, well, how about this? For tournament level, we'll keep the, we won't take these words out. We'll have a separate book called the Official Word List. Among players, it's called TWL98. That's when it came out, it was 1998. But for everybody else, and that, by the way, the TWL1998 is just available to Players Association members. So it's not like available

• 46:21Josh Clark?

  to the general public. And then the other one, the toned down version, that's the one that the public will be able to get their hands on.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that was in the early 2000s. And then in 2020, the official tournament removed a lot of those slurs that they previously allowed for tournament play.

• 46:39Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:40Speaker 04

  And I'll also mention, you know, adding words. Over the past few years, they've added hundreds of words. Jedi, subtweet, vax have been added. Birria, as in birria tacos, has been added.

• 46:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, and I discovered a new dish from this, tuchuk, cockumber. Usually spelled with a K, but apparently it's also okay to spell with a C. It's an Indian dish featuring cucumbers.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 47:06Josh Clark?

  It's like a fresh tomato cucumber salad. And actually, I should correct myself. I think it could be Indian, but it's also possibly like Anatolian. I'm not 100% sure, but it sounds delicious. I'll send you the recipe.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  All right, do it. They also had slang from time to time, apparently. Ima? I M M A?

• 47:25Josh Clark?

  As in, I'm going to?

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Like, I'm about to do something?

• 47:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  You can, you can play that.

• 47:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you could. You could also play yeet, which-

• 47:33Speaker 04

  What is that?

• 47:34Josh Clark?

  I don't know, man. You know, I really feel like I've outed myself in the last couple of episodes as-

• 47:40Speaker 04

  Skibitty toilet buddy.

• 47:41Josh Clark?

  Not the edgelord that people assume that I am.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Edgelord. Uh, there has been some cheating over the years. Uh, we'll talk about a couple of these incidences, incidents. Uh, in 2011, um, there was a World Scrabble championship between, um, a Thai player named Cholapot E T Ari and a British guy named Ed Martin, because it was a missing G tile. And, uh, there's a lot of versions of this story. Um, apparently Time Magazine, uh, and some Scrabble websites say that, uh, E T Ari called for Martin to be stripped, searched for that G. And the tournament officials were like, no, we're not gonna do that.

• 48:19Josh Clark?

  We don't wanna say that.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  In mental floss, they said that, you know, they asked them to turn their pockets inside out and that eventually just escalated to like, hey, maybe they hid it in their pants. They should be stripped, uh, searched.

• 48:30Josh Clark?

  Maybe it's in their chode.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:34Josh Clark?

  That's why you strip search.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Is that, is that in the Scrabble dictionary?

• 48:40Josh Clark?

  There's no way that it's not. As a matter of fact, you keep talking, you tell the story and I'm going to look it up.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Uh, and then what they eventually found out was that the missing G was in the pocket of another player from a previous game. And what I want to know is like, who, who's running these tournaments? Like, how are you not counting the letters before the game? Or cracking open a brand new Scrabble, factory sealed Scrabble? Like, you gotta count those letters. You gotta make sure that's like playing chess without like a pawn and just being like, oh, looks good to me.

• 49:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's nuts. It's also nuts just how, how many players do cheat in like high level tournaments?

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Like that kid?

• 49:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was a kid. He was 13, so he's unnamed as far as I can tell.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  He's of age now. We should find him out and dox him.

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  He was playing down in Orlando at the Scrabble Nationals in 2012. And he got caught palming blank tiles.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Man, what a jerk.

• 49:42Josh Clark?

  I don't know that we even mentioned what blank tiles are good for, but they, they can stand, they're like a wild card. They stand in for any letter that you want. So they can really come in handy when you have like a bunch of letters, but you just can't quite connect them. That blank tile comes in there and you say, thanks, blank tile. So if you have that, you have a huge advantage. So finally this kid was caught cheating, but this was on the heels of a year before when he won the $2,000 prize for winning. Even though apparently statistically, the percentage of blank tiles that he came up with across the game, or the games that he played throughout that tournament where it just doesn't add up, but they let that win stand. But for 2012, he got booted.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, they should have made that kid pay that money back with interest.

• 50:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they should have.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Uh, what else? There was a, they had their own little Me Too incident at one point too, didn't they?

• 50:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's, uh, I don't want to say well regarded, a well-known player named Sam Contamathie. And he is not just a player, he also has a side business of like custom equipment, like tile holders, boards. Timers is another one because in tournaments, they, they use timers like chess. So he's got his whole line. He's like really integral to the, the current.

• 51:04Josh Clark?

  Like Scrabble world, tournament world. And for a long time, especially before Me Too came along, he just got away with it. Like, the Players Association president would make a point of escorting women who went up to Cannon Matthews' hotel room to pick up equipment that they bought from her or were buying from him. Like, you just didn't go alone. Like, it was an open secret. And then finally, like, he just groped the wrong woman. Me Too came along, and I think at least 15 named women came forward and put their story on the record about him. And the response from the Players Association was essentially like, "Okay, but don't do it again."

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:47Josh Clark?

  And he had already been banned for cheating. He palmed tiles too. He was a national champion. He palmed tiles too. He got suspended for four years for cheating, but for the allegations of sexual misconduct, nothing, just a warning, essentially. So that really ticked off a lot of people, especially high-level women players too, who were like, "You know what? We hold our own tournaments, and he's not invited any longer." So he's kind of been ostracized, but I have the impression that he's still very much around.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Still making those custom racks.

• 52:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, from what I can tell.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  By the way, we live update, we did text John Hodgman just to find out. I was kind of curious about a couple of things and about his highest Scrabble total ever, and if he and Catherine have a running record between them. And he says, "We have old notebooks full of score sheets, but we never go back and look at them." Because as we know, John Hodgman only looks forward. Time does not go backward.

• 52:45Josh Clark?

  No. Nostalgia is a toxic impulse, according to Hodgman.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  "We were both consistently in the 300 to 350 pretty good mode." Okay, that's, that sounds high to me.

• 52:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, same here.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  He said, "That's good enough to make me happy." He said, "We have both probably broken 400 a couple of times." I remember words better than scores. 25 years ago, I added S T E R to joke to make jokester on a triple word square. While playing with some of my, with some friends of my parents and I don't remember the points, but I was really proud of myself.

• 53:17Josh Clark?

  I'll bet, I'll bet every once in a while you can peek in on Hodgman sleeping and he's got a big smile on his face because he's dreaming about that.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 53:25Josh Clark?

  I have a live update as well. Chode is not in the Scrabble.

• 53:28Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 53:29Josh Clark?

  allowable word.

• 53:30Speaker 04

  Oh, man. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the show. Live updates.

• 53:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And Scrabble being the arbiter of what words we can and can't use now.

• 53:40Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 53:41Josh Clark?

  So Scrabble, of course, has popped up in pop culture here or there. Rosemary's baby, very famously used, Mia Farrow used, well, Rosemary, uses Scrabble, a bunch of Scrabble tiles to try to figure out that some suspected witches were actually witches by using the tiles to figure out anagrams.

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:01Josh Clark?

  Same with sneakers. I couldn't find that, that.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  I saw that movie.

• 54:06Josh Clark?

  I never saw the movie. I couldn't find the clip with the Scrabble. I just saw mention of it in a couple of places.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  I don't remember Scrabble. It was a long time ago. I love this one. Frank, old Frank, the chairman of the board, Mr. Sinatra, in his version of the 12 days of Christmas, added nine games of Scrabble.

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Which is actually Joe Biscapo doing Frank.

• 54:27Josh Clark?

  Which, that's all you need to do. That's better than Frank, I think. And then Seinfeld and Calvin and Hobbes both kind of famously had Scrabble, made up high value Scrabble words in their shows. In the first season of Seinfeld.

• 54:43Speaker 04

  I don't remember. Who was it? Do you know?

• 54:46Josh Clark?

  Seinfeld's mom played Quone, Q U O N E. And like Seinfeld calls her out on it and it's not actually a word, but Kramer's like, yeah, Quone, whatever. But the, the biggest thing that stood out to me in this scene that I watched it today, had the original dad.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 55:06Josh Clark?

  Just did not work.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then they brought in, I can't remember his name, but he was the dad in Arthur.

• 55:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, was he the dad in Arthur?

• 55:13Speaker 04

  He was Liza Minnelli's father in Arthur. Yeah.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  He was, he was Morty Seinfeld.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally.

• 55:20Josh Clark?

  His first name's Barney, I think.

• 55:22Speaker 04

  Oh, God, I used to know his name because Arthur's, you know, one of my like top ever comedies.

• 55:27Josh Clark?

  And then Calvin and Hobbes, I think Calvin played ZQFMGB and said it was a type of worms from New Guinea.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  Oh, that's funny.

• 55:40Josh Clark?

  And then lastly, Chuck, we can't forget Scrabble led to Trivial Pursuit being created. Because remember, they went and got a new Scrabble board and were like, how many Scrabble boards have we bought over the years? We should make our own game.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 55:55Josh Clark?

  And that's it. Scrabble has not appeared in any other part of pop culture except for those things.

• 55:59Speaker 04

  Right. That's right.

• 56:02Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 56:03Speaker 04

  No, sir.

• 56:04Josh Clark?

  All right. Well, that's Scrabble, everybody. Thank you for finally doing it, Chuck. And since I thank Chuck for finally relenting and giving in on doing an episode I've wanted to do for years and years and years, it's time for listener mail.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  Oh, you.

• 56:21Speaker 04

  Hi, guys. Or basically, just the voices that live in my head permanently because I listen to you two all the time.

• 56:28Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  A while back, I have no idea where the idea came from. I wonder whether everyone sees concepts the same way in their head as I do and started asking around, because she's referencing like the inner dialogue app where people don't hear words, they see images. And Daisy says this, and this is very interesting, I think. I noticed that for me, the calendar months of the year in my brain are arranged like this: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, December, November, October, August.

• 56:56Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  On the line below, like, it's very important the way it's spaced out, I think. And it's not, it's also indented. So December, November, October, August is on the line below and dented to about mid-February.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  So going from left to right and then making a curve to continue from right to left. No need to point out how weird this is, guys, because no calendar ever was drawn this way. However, this is how it is normal for me in my head. You can imagine the weird faces I got when asking this question enthusiastically to find out about other people's head calendars, especially when I told them about mine. Anyway, all this to ask, when you picture a yearly calendar in your head, what does it look like? Immediately when I read that, the only thing that popped into my head was a, like, the back of a, like, a wall calendar you would get as a teenager where it had all of them listed. That's what I pictured.

• 57:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, nice. So what are the, what are the monthly centerfolds of what the pictures are?

• 58:00Speaker 04

  I don't know, but I guess it would just be four, four, and four.

• 58:03Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 58:04Speaker 04

  That's how I pictured it in my head. January, February, March, April, and then four more, then four more, in order, because I'm not weird.

• 58:10Josh Clark?

  I, I don't know. I'm trying to come up with it now, and I don't really think I keep a calendar in my head. I'm just too, like, in the present, you know, like, in the now.

• 58:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, baby.

• 58:20Josh Clark?

  Sorry to let you down. Who was that?

• 58:22Speaker 04

  Uh, that is Daisy, and Daisy is from Belgium.

• 58:27Josh Clark?

  Thanks, Daisy.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  That's the problem.

• 58:29Josh Clark?

  Well, that she's from Belgium. There's your problem. Thanks a lot, Daisy. That was wonderful. I feel like also that somebody could make a T-shirt of, like, the visual representation of the calendar in Daisy's head, and it would be the most arcane, deep-cut, Stuff You Should Know T-shirt of all time.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 58:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So if you want to get in touch with us, like Daisy did, and share your mental whatever, we would love that. You can send us an email to [email protected].

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 59:17Josh Clark?

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