Alfapet was the original Swedish name for the popular word game Scrabble .
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In 1954, the Swedish board game company Alga was granted a license by J. W. Spear & Sons to market Scrabble in Sweden. For almost four decades, Alga sold the game under the name Alfapet (wordplay on alfabet, the Swedish word for "alphabet"). [1] In the 1980s, Alga was bought by BRIO, which retained Alga as its board games division. [2]
In the early 1990s, Mattel acquired J. W. Spear & Sons and rescinded the BRIO/Alga license in order to market the game in Sweden themselves as Scrabble. [3]
However, BRIO/Alga retained the right to the name Alfapet, and quickly designed and marketed a similar word game using that name. [1]
The new Alfapet word game differs in several ways from the international game of Scrabble: [4]
- The board has 17 x 17 squares (instead of 15 x 15).
- There are more bonus squares (even quadruples) and also reduction squares.
- There are 120 tiles (instead of 100) and the values differ from the Swedish Scrabble set.
- The letter Q has a separate tile (but can only be played with a blank tile in Scrabble).
- There are several rule differences.
