War of the Words: Trouble may be in store for online Scrabulous game

The Scrabble board game may appeal to an older generation, but an online version, Scrabulous, has more than 3 million playing and more than 700,000 users logging onto the game daily.

These numbers worry companies Hasbro and Mattel, who own the rights to the classic board game. They announced in January that Scrabulous is piracy and want to take legal action, pulling the game from the Web. The online game’s creators, brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, are willing to settle but only for a sum long in zeroes.

The brothers want close to tens of millions of dollars, according to a March 12 article in The New York Times.

The Agarwallas run a software company in Calcutta, India, and invented Scrabulous when their favorite Scrabble-type online game started charging for play.

“Our family has been playing the game for 50 years now,” 21-year-old Jayant Agarwalla said.

The brothers grew up playing Scrabble as way to improve their English. Their family bought a board when the game first appeared in India.

Although they started Scrabulous for their own interests, they now receive more than $25,000 a month from site advertising.

Scrabulous has a board that resembles a Scrabble board, and its letters have the same values as Scrabble letters. Players keep track of their games and statistics. The online game doesn’t allow fake words, but there’s an unaffiliated helper program to help users put words together.

The online game jumped in popularity when it was introduced as a Facebook application. Users can play several games at once, challenging friends, family and co-workers worldwide.

In the wake of Hasbro’s complaints, more than 50 groups have popped up on the social networking site calling for users to “Save Scrabulous!”

Hasbro has been working with software companies to develop its own online version of Scrabble but has said it does not want to shut down the current Scrabulous version.

Others believe Scrabulous is helping Scrabble improve board game sales. Many Scrabulous players have said the online version has boosted their interest in the board game version.

“Because so many people are playing Scrabulous, it sometimes comes up in conversation and then people are like, ‘Hey! Let’s play Scrabble right now!’” freshman Elisa Casey said. “I’ve witnessed that a couple times already.”

Casey began playing Scrabulous at the beginning of winter quarter after she saw it on her best friend’s Facebook page.

“I thought it looked like fun to have an ongoing game with her because I don’t get to see her that often,” Casey said.

Freshman Evan Dunn is a self-proclaimed Scrabulous addict. He’s currently playing 11 games and tries to keep his number of games “in the double digits.”

He also plays the board game, often to settle disputes about Scrabulous.

“Just last week I settled a debate on whether or not I cheated in Scrabulous with a friend by playing him face-to-face on the board game,” Dunn said. “Everyone I know prefers the board game. Scrabulous sort of feeds the appetite meanwhile, you could say.”

Both Casey and Dunn see Scrabulous as a trademark violation.

“The board is the same, the rules are the same, and the official Scrabble tournament and international dictionaries, TWL and SOWPODS, are used,” Dunn said.

Tournament Word List, or TWL, is the name for a popular American Scrabble dictionary, while SOWPODS is an anagram combination of Official Scrabble Players Dictionary and Official Scrabble Words. Both are used in competitions worldwide.

Both Casey and Dunn acknowledged they would miss the online game if Hasbro pulled it.

“I would hope that Hasbro would create something similar on Facebook,” Casey said.

[Reach reporter Erika Cederlind at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]