Create Scrabble-Like Game Tiles

Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro in the United States and Canada and by Mattel in other countries around the world. With this Instructable it is our aim to share steps on how to create a game that is similar to the experience of playing Scrabble, so we'll just say "Scrabble-Like" game tiles.

For all intents and purposes, the tiles will resemble what you might expect an official Scrabble set to contain but feel free to modify the rules in any way you wish. The necessity of creating a Scrabble-Like game for us came because we wanted to use the game for educational purposes within schools in Haiti but there was no version of Scrabble in Haitian Creole. There are many instances in various countries where a spoken language or dialect is not reflected in pertinent learning materials.

This Instructable assumes you have access to a computer, a laser cutter, and some materials for fabrication.

Done by: Allison Bland and Ralik John

Step 1 Figure Out the Orthography

In other words, determine how many of each letter you'll need. Luckily for us, much thought has already been given towards making a case for a Haitian Creole version of Scrabble. In fact, in 2009 Dr. Benjamin Hebbelthwaite of the University of Florida published a paper called "Scrabble as a tool for Haitian Creole literacy: Sociolinguistic and orthographic foundations." In this paper he breaks down the frequency in which each letter of the alphabet should occur to make for the most playable game. This is not necessarily straightforward depending on certain language patterns - for example in the Hasbro's version of Scrabble there is an artificially diminished amount of letter "s" so that you cannot just add it to the end of most words and make a lot of easy points. Samuel Morse figured out one way to do this.

Comments

[Mojo_JoJo]

Awesome, I've been toying with this idea for some time now but since I don't have a laser cutter I'll probably "wood burn" mine or maybe try etching.

[Scriptone]

That's so inspiring thanks for the great ideas!

[ChrysN]

Wonderful project, those laser cutters are great tools to have.

[Creativeman]

Outstanding! Cman