(Roughly) Daily

The values of the letters in Scrabble were assigned according to the front page of a US newspaper in the 1930s. Is it time the scoring system was updated to reflect today’s usage?

All Scrabble players know that Q and Z are the highest scoring tiles. You can get 10 points for each, in the English language version of the game.

But according to one American researcher, Z really only deserves six points.

And it’s not just Z that’s under fire. After 75 years of Scrabble, some argue that the current tile values are out of date as certain letters have become more common than they used to be…

Read the full, unsettling story at the BBC.

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As we reshuffle our tiles, we might recall that it was on this date in 1950 that a nine-member gang stole $1,218,211.19 in cash, and over $1.5-million in checks, money orders and other securities from the Brinks Building in Boston.  The  largest robbery in the history of United States (at the time), it was quickly known as “the crime of the century”– and as “The Great Brinks Robbery.”  The crew was meticulous, and left almost no clues at the scene; their ingenious plan was to sit on their spoils for six years – time enough for the statute of limitations to expire.  In the end, all nine were arrested– but most of the money was never recovered.

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