Scrabble, by the Milton Bradley toy company is 1 year older than I am. See, I told you I wasn’t the oldest thing around! =)
In 1948 a crossword puzzle fanatic in New York (USA) invented the game, which has turned out to be one of the best family games ever invented!
For about $15.00 (US) the whole family can sit down together and enjoy an evening of educational fun.
The game board is set up to look like a crossword puzzle and there are about(I’m not sure exactly) 100 or so tiles, each consisting of 1 letter of the alphabet, and each assigned a point value. The more commonly used letters (a, e, i, o, u, etc.) have a lower point value than the less commonly used ones(z, x, v, y, q, etc)
Each player starts out with 7 tiles and tries to build words. Each player then takes turns to build other words using at least 1 of the other persons letters to form a new word. For each tile you use, you draw new tiles from the tile pot. The game goes on until one player uses all their tiles. At that time each player adds up all their points and the person with the most points is the winner.
They also have a junior edition for the very young members of the family too.
All in all, Scrabble is quite entertaining, causes silly arguments over spelling of words, teaches you the correct spelling and brings your entire family together for real fun!
I highly recommend Scrabble! And, I recommend keeping a dictionary close by to challenge a players spelling!