WLBOTT is eternally vigilant, searching for opportunities to increase shareholder value.
We recently learned that Scrabble is a popular game in Ukraine (it is called “Erudite”). The tiles represent the Cyrillic alphabet.
Before we dive into our business plan, let’s get up-to-speed with Scrabble.
Scrabble
Scrabble was invented by Alfred Butts, of the Upstate New York Butts. He was born in 1899 in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Butts decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their letters. A key to the game was Butts’s analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter’s frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four “S” tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy.
He graduated Poughkeepsie High School in 1917, attended the Pratt Institute in New York City, and in 1924 went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the school’s chess team (nerrrdddd) and received a Bachelor of Architecture degree.
In October of 1925, at the age of 26, he married Nina Ostrander, his high school sweetheart. Wait, sorry, we misspoke a bit there, we meant to say his high school teacher.
Yup, good old Albey married his old biology teacher, who was 42 at the time. And for the record, “Albert Butts married one of his high school teachers” is probably the best sentence we’ve gotten to write in a long time. The cradle and grave robbing couple never had children, but they were together until Ostrander’s death in 1979 at the age of 96.
Towards the end of his life, Butts have felt a bit restless, wanting to get back into the game industry. So at the age of 86, in 1985, Butts decided to make card-based board game. The game saw up to four players simultaneously playing against each other in a solitaire-like contest, trying to get the highest score.
He would not be bogged down with laughably bad names like Lexiko, or It, or Criss-Cross Words. Nope, this wasn’t Scrabble, this was Alfred Butts’ other game, so he named it…
[Alfred Butts made] the world a slightly less boring place during blackouts. So we salute Alfred Butts, a true American pioneer with a name that makes us giggle, but we giggle out of respect, dammit. And also out of butts. Hehehe. Butts.
And because we can leave no turn un-stoned, let us celebrate this point in Mr. Butts’ life. The dude was rockin’ his ’80s.
Butt We Digress
Butt we digress. Back to the business at hand….
Our new business idea: Scrabble, but the tiles are made of cheese. Some rules adjustments will be necessary. We’ll offer both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. (In Ukraine, “scrabble” is called “erudite”). All profits from the Ukrainian version will be donated to ENGin.
There is still some debate among the board – should the cheese tiles be painted with non-toxic ink? The edible ink is $0.03 per gallon more than the toxic ink. You can see their dilemma.
We will use the letter distribution to assign cheeses:
2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
Swiss (w/large holes)
1 point: E ×12, A ×9, I ×9, O ×8, N ×6, R ×6, T ×6, L ×4, S ×4, U ×4
Sharp Cheddar
2 points: D ×4, G ×3
Gouda [1]
3 points: B ×2, C ×2, M ×2, P ×2
Cornish Yarg [2]
4 points: F ×2, H ×2, V ×2, W ×2, Y ×2
Gorgonzola
5 points: K ×1
Velveeta
8 points: J ×1, X ×1
Camembert / Brie [3]
10 points: Q ×1, Z ×1
Cheez Whiz / Ricotta / Feta [3]
[1] That’s gouda ‘nuf for me.
[2] Semi-Sequitur: Cornish Yarg
Cornish Yarg was first produced more than 30 years ago by a farmer named Alan Gray (Yarg is Gray spelled backwards), who found in an attic, a seventeenth century recipe for a nettle-wrapped cheese.
[3] The softer cheeses are proving problematic. They will clog to 3-D printer, and turn to goop on a hot CenTex day.
Proof of Concept
Beta Testing Among the Elders
Sally’s Mistake
Sadly, Sally T. Intern mistook “Cheesecloth” for “Cheese Cloth”.
Cheesecloth is a loose-woven gauze-like carded cotton cloth used primarily in cheesemaking and cooking. The fabric has holes large enough to quickly allow liquids (like whey) to percolate through the fabric, but small enough to retain solids like cheese curds.
Compounding this error, Sally’s coordination of the annual WLBOTT fashion show proved to be a disaster.
Elder G’s Creative Response…..
Brilliant! A game that combines wordplay, strategy, and snackability—truly a masterpiece in the making. We’ll call it “Fromageage” (a fusion of “fromage” and “language”). Or perhaps “Cheddabble”, if we want to emphasize the Scrabble connection.
Some critical mechanics to consider:
Aging Tiles: Harder cheeses like Parmesan are worth more points but are tougher to chew. Brie and Camembert are easier to eat but might slide around the board unpredictably.
Stinky Bonuses: Using a particularly pungent cheese (e.g., Limburger) gives you a double-word score but forces the next player to hold their breath for one turn.
Fondue Frenzy: If the board becomes too chaotic, players can declare a “Fondue Round,” melting their unused tiles into a communal pot.
Penalty for Cheating: If caught sneaking an extra tile onto the board, you must eat a full slice of blue cheese in one bite.
Lactose Intolerance Mode: A variant for the dairy-averse, where all tiles are replaced with crackers, but at the cost of reduced point values.
What are we thinking in terms of packaging? A classic wooden box lined with cheesecloth? Or do we go with a refrigerated game board for optimal freshness?
