Scrabble has been around since 1948. You would struggle to meet someone who has an interest in board games and has not heard of it. In fact, you would struggle to find anyone who’s not heard of it. Scrabble clones, like Words With Friends – who had over 200 million users in 2012 – have increased the popularity of crossword puzzle-like style games. However, it is more than just a game. There are some genuine benefits of playing Scrabble.
Table of Contents
- Benefits For Your Brain
- The Benefit of Social Interactions
- The Benefits of Solving Anagrams
- Scrabble Improves Vocabulary
- Scrabble and Strategy
- Boosting Family Interaction
- Summing up the Benefits of Playing Scrabble
Benefits For Your Brain
Much study done on dementia prevention by healthcare professionals. Unfortunately, the brain is incredibly complicated and doctors cannot give any definitive dementia prevention methods. However, there is evidence to suggest people who stay mentally and socially active are less likely to develop the disease.
If you have never played Scrabble before there is reasonable evidence to suggest that it will help reduce the likelihood of developing dementia. That is because trying new hobbies and activities is recommended by health professionals, especially in later life.
While it is a grey matter (pardon the pun), doctors are reasonably confident that maintaining an active social life reduces dementia and Alzheimer’s risk. Scrabble, and indeed most board games, are a social tool – meant to bring people together. Playing Scrabble with friends two to three times a week should be enough to make a noticeable lifestyle a change, but the more the better.
If we consider studies taken at the high end of Scrabble skill, scrabble professionals, there is evidence to suggest that Scrabble exercises different parts of your brain to normal games. A 2015 study, by Protzner et al., compared brain activity from 12 competitive Scrabble players against 12 non-experts. They found that the Scrabble players made use of the parts of the brain associated with working memory and visual perception. In short, Scrabble helps use more of your brain, more often.
The Benefit of Social Interactions
Aside from dementia prevention, board games act as mechanism to encourage human interaction. Interaction is a shared human need, very few people are happy completely alone. Meeting up with people and playing games can outright improve your mood and make you feel happier. Who doesn’t enjoy playing and laughing with friends? In fact, loneliness and isolation has actually been shown to increase health risks in older people.
In children social interactions are also important in development. Playing board games with children their own age helps them to develop language skills, creativity, communication and confidence.
The Benefits of Solving Anagrams
Scrabble is a game essentially built on solving anagrams. For those that do not know, an anagram is rearranging a set of letters to make a new word. They help with learning letter patterns and improving spelling. Points are only given if a word is spelled correctly, so it is a useful way to help children learn – through a game.
To further practice the skill of anagram solving, you can make a game out of finding the most possible words out of an anagram. “Because”, for example, can be broken into: cease, cubes, sauce, case, cub, ace and more. There are actually between 40-58 words within “because” depending how lenient or strict you’re being with word definitions. Again, make it into a game where the most points win.
Scrabble Improves Vocabulary
On the face of it, the statement “Scrabble Improves Vocabulary” seems rather straightforward. A game about making and placing words would improve the number of words that players know and can use in everyday life.
The question is: ”why is this important?”. In short, it helps you think outside the box. You are not limited to the way in which you can express yourself. A broader vocabulary allows you to construct better ideas and concepts. Not only for yourself, but you can communicate these ideas to peers at school, home, in the workplace, and everywhere in between.
Adult usage of wider vocabulary will be noticeable in children first learning how to speak. Typically, they will learn to speak at a younger age to their peers and understand complex sentences more easily if their parents/guardians expose them to more words. If you can expose children to vocabulary in a game like format, as discussed before, you will see some rapid results.
Scrabble and Strategy
As much as Scrabble may seem like a game of playing the most complicated word possible, this is not always the case. First, the double and triple word/letter tiles encourage careful placement of words. Second, sometimes the magic word you have discovered might help your opponent. Maybe the placement of your 20 point word will give your opponent access to the bonus tiles. In that case, it is worth playing more carefully.
Strategy in tactics in Scrabble, while not explicit, is an overarching theme. You can take this theme and apply it to other board games and help you improve and win there too. It is the art of thinking ahead which games like Chess are build on.
Boosting Family Interaction
It will come as little surprise that board games can be played by the whole family. Sometimes though, it is hard finding similarities between the oldest family members, Grandmother and Grandfather, and the youngest, the current generation. Having been around since 1948 Scrabble is known by almost everyone over the age of 70 – it is a game they know how to play. If you can get your children to play scrabble too it creates some common ground between everyone in the family.
Everyone understands words, everyone uses words in daily life. This is different to board games like Ticket To Ride, where you need an interest in trains; or Risk, which is a war based strategy game. Words are common to everyone.
In any case, it is likely that your home will have a version of scrabble to play. Half of British homes have a Scrabble set and about one third of American homes have one too!
Summing up the Benefits of Playing Scrabble
Scrabble is a word famous game. While the jury is still out on outright preventions to dementia; there is reasonable evidence to suggest that games which keep people mentally and socially active do help reduce risk. There are benefits for children, in expanding vocabulary, as well as in older people. The game can help bridge generational gaps in families and it is a sure way to put a smile on Grandma’s face when you visit on Sundays. We have mostly examined scientific and factual studies for the benefits of playing Scrabble. Did we forget to mention that at the end of the day it’s just pretty good fun?
