The Igbo Language Version of the Scrabble

The Igbo Scrabble is a word game ideally for two or three players. But for tournament/championship games, only two players are required. The game consists of forming interlocking words in a crossword fashion on the game board using the various letter tiles. Each player competes for the highest score by using his letters in combinations and locations that best take advantage of the different letter values and premium squares on the board. Play passes from person to person until all tiles are used or no more words can be formed.

The game was first invented by Olisaemeka Gerald Njoku as a sophomore student of linguistics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 2010. A colleague and friend of the creator of the game, Jason Ubah, and a university lecturer, Ms. Benita Uzoigwe, were both very supportive of the idea of having an Igbo language version of the Scrabble game. Subsequently, the board game qualified as an entry and was duly exhibited to the public from 22nd - 26th November 2010 during the Nigerian Universities Research and Development Fair (NURESDEF) which was hosted by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The innovative board game was part of the success of that fair as the university took the overall first position. Recently, in September of this year, the board game was presented to university lecturers and linguists from different universities in the country, at the Igbo Studies Association (ISA) conference which held at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka campus.

The game is a viable tool for Igbo language teaching and learning. It is brainstorming, tasking and very educative. It has the potential of motivating accuracy, speed in spelling (and writing), speaking and word-building in Igbo and, of course, refreshing the players memory of mathematics since scoring the game involves some mathematical calculations. Therefore, it could well be said that the Igbo Scrabble teaches both Igbo language and mathematics. The Igbo game adopts both practice and internalization strategy to ensure that the language is learnt by the learner. In the learning environment, the game could be played by 2 or 3 players, one of whom must be a communicative competent user of the Igbo language and the learner who can be a first (L1) or second (L2) speaker or learner. However, in competitive environment, 2 – 3 L1 or L2 players could play with a communicative competent user as the umpire.

The Igbo Scrabble equipment consists of the game board, which is a 19 squares by 19 squares grid, 134 letter tiles, a cloth bag (for the tiles) and racks on which players keep their tiles. The 361 squares on the board are of two basic types: premium and non-premium. There are 285 non-premium squares and 76 premium squares: 8 quadruple word squares, 12 quadruple letter squares, 4 triple word squares, 12 triple letter squares, 16 double word squares  and  24 double letter score squares.

 

The rules of playing the Igbo Scrabble are much similar to that of the English version, however, players get to pick 8 tiles at the start of the game. There are however some distinctive rules governing playable words in the Igbo Scrabble game.