International Scrabble Trivia Game | Board Games

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Let's start with a set that looks pretty normal apart from being one of the largest sets at 120 tiles. Closer examination, however, shows the only 10-point letter being a single Q with the next value being an 8, present on two each of G, H and Z. The most common letter in the set is O and 57 tiles - almost half the set - are vowels. Only 21 different letters are used at all for this quite melodious language. Which is it?

Answer: Italian

Like its ancient cousin, the classic Latin language, Italian is using several letters only for loanwords, in this case the J, K, W, X and Y. These letters would thus be extremely limited in their usability and would more often than not have to be exchanged.

A player may however use a blank to represent any of these letters if they want to play a word they need it for. This omission of extremely rare letters is found in several international Scrabble sets.

2. Weighing in at the standard 100 tiles, this set is unusual because it not only is in one of the few Asian languages using standard Latin letters, but also because almost one fifth of the set - 19 tiles - bear the letter A, making it over twice as frequent as the next most common (eight N tiles). F and Z are the ten-point tiles in this set. Which language is it used for?

Answer: Malaysian

Again, this set uses fewer than 26 different letter tiles with Q and X being absent. Malaysian, also called standard Malay, can be written either using the Latin alphabet (Rumi script) or a modified Arabic script (Jawi). The use of Jawi has declined over the last decades, but initiatives to preserve it and encourage its use are underway. Still, the Malaysian Scrabble game so far only exists in the Rumi version.

3. While all letter values from 1 to 10 are used in several sets across the world (9 being the rarest), there is only one language where you will find all ten values used in the same Scrabble set. In its 104 tiles, 32 different letters are represented of whom a full twelve have only one copy. The highest values are present on the X (10), � (9), P (8) and � (8) while the A is the most frequent tile. Which language, spoken by less than one million people, is this set used for?

Answer: Icelandic

The Icelandic Scrabble set has 22 regular Latin letters (missing the C, Q, W and Z), the accented versions of all six vowels including Y, the �, an AE ligature and two special letters (� and �) sounding like the two ways of pronouncing the "th" sound in English. Very few loanwords use the four missing letters, but they can be represented by blanks, allowing an Icelandic game to end with 34 different letters on the board.

4. Next, I have another 100-tile set having 38 different non-blank pieces. Seven of them represent digraphs made as single tiles, showing SZ(3), GY(4), NY(5), CS(7), LY(8), ZS(8) and TY(10). A, E and K are the most common letters at only 6 pieces each. Which Eastern European language uses this peculiar tile set?

Answer: Hungarian

The highest-scoring regular letter (no digraph or diacritical) in Hungarian is the C at 5 points. Interestingly enough, in spite of the seven digraphs and nine letters with diacritical marks, the Hungarian set does not hold the record for the maximum number of different tiles in a Latin script language.

This title goes to the Czech set which beats Hungarian by 1, using 24 standard letters and 15 more with various diacritical marks. Both sets also share the record for the lowest number of equal tiles - no language goes lower than six.

5. If you are one of the players who seem completely unable to hit those double and triple letter squares with a high-point tile, the next set may be for you. It contains only four tiles worth more than 4 points - two Cs, an X and a Z, all of which are 8 points. On the other hand, a whopping 41 of the 100 tiles are worth 3 or 4 points, so you will be racking up high word values nonetheless. Three pairs of tiles, all 4-pointers, show nonstandard letters - two with diacritical marks and the third has the AE ligature. Which language should you know to play with this set?

Answer: Danish

Only four different letters show the dreaded "1" in the Danish set. They are the E, the A, the N and the R. It ties Italian for the lowest score in this category, but with far fewer individual tiles (28 compared to 52). No other commercially available set has this low a percentage of very high or low letter values.

6. Digraphs are present in several Scrabble sets, but only one of them actually has a digraph worth a measly one point. This record belongs to the DD tile, whose four copies are supplemented with two each of FF and TH (both 4 points), a CH, an LL (both 5) and the rare NG and RH (both 10). Apart from that, the set uses only 21 different letters and ignores diacritics. Which difficult to learn language is it used for?

Answer: Welsh

Digraph tiles put an extra memory burden on the players since they are not allowed to represent these combinations with two individual letters. Both the Welsh and the Hungarian set however omit some of the rarest digraphs, those can then be played with single letters if they occur. Thus, a player must always know exactly which tile types exist and which do not.

7. We have all learned to cross our "t"s and dot our "i"s, but of course in the English language, this only applies to lower-case letters. Thus, one would not expect a Scrabble set to contain any upper-case dotted I, but in one set, this letter exists and is in fact more frequent than the version without the dot. The set also contains the � (1 copy, 7 points) and � (2 copies, 3 points), but is definitely not for German. What language is it from?

Answer: Turkish

Turkish looks quite strange to English-speaking people due to its unusual letter frequencies. The most common consonants are K and L (both 1-point tiles available seven times) while D (3 points), C (4), G, H, (both 5) and F (7) are much rarer than in English. The only 10-point tile in Turkish is the J.

8. We already had a set with very few 1-point and high value letters, now here is the opposite: A full twelve tiles show an 8, 9 or 10. They are H, J, X and Z (10 each) as well as two copies each of B, G, (both 9), F and V (both 8). On the other hand, the list of interesting tiles almost ends here already as 75 of the 100 tiles (11 different letters) show a 1. Which language has this extreme distribution of letters?

Answer: Romanian

Apart from the already mentioned power tiles, the only letters worth more than one point in Romanian are the D, the P (both 4 copies and 2 points) and the M (3 copies / 4 points). Everything else is just one point, also aided by the fact that the Romanian game ignores the diacritical marks used on some of the language's letters. K, Q, W and Y are used only for loanwords in Romanian and are not part of the game.

9. Could there be a set where the most common letter is a consonant? The answer is yes and no - a consonant is never the sole most frequent letter, but in one set, a full three consonants (R, S and T) share this honor with the A. All of them have eight tiles each. The rare letters are Z (10 points), C, X (both 8), J and Y (both 7). Which North European language is this set for?

Answer: Swedish

Swedish Scrabble has a rather unique feature in that for one letter, the �, there is only one single legal word. There is however no � tile in the set - like the AE ligature, the Q and the W, it can only be played as a blank. (If any Swedish Scrabble player knows the sole � word, please let me know - unfortunately, the Swedish Scrabble dictionary is not available online).

10. For my last game, I have a handmade set with relabeled tiles, made according to the specifications for tournaments in its language. Its interesting letters include nine 1-point Vs and three Qs, each worth only three points. On the other hand, F and H are the only high-scoring letters at 8 points each. There are only 19 different letters, too, notably completely missing the U. What language do I need to brush up on to play with these tiles?

Answer: Latin

The specifications for a Latin language set have been drafted at the University of Toronto and are based on the frequencies of letters in medieval Latin. The set, however uses ancient Latin letters with the V tile standing both for the U and V sounds.

The many grammatical forms available in Latin render the game extremely dynamic and allow even those with a comparatively small vocabulary to play and score powerful words rather often. If you want to preserve the letters and only change the points on a commercial set, your best buy is a Slovak set (which has four Vs at 1 point) and then any three languages featuring two Vs and a Q.

There is no way to do it with fewer than 4 sets.

Source: Author WesleyCrusher

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor ozzz2002 before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

International Scrabble Trivia Quiz

While the board looks much the same around the world, each language edition of Scrabble uses its own letter tile set. Can you identify these sets from the hints given?

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