The demand for Scrabble articles has been tremendous — people can’t seem to get enough. I’m doing my best to keep up but I’m only one person and the phone won’t stop ringing. We have new developments in this fascinating battle. Writing for Business Week, Catherine Holahan reports that heartbroken, jonesing and angry Scrabulous nuts are hacking into Hasbro’s new online Scrabble game ( launched recently to supplant Scrabulous) just to mess things up.  They’re hurt, and they are lashing out. Meanwhile, back in India, the Agarwallas have not been sitting on their hands; they have already launched a new Scrabble-ish game on Facebook called Wordscraper where you make up your own rules and the tiles are round and the points are different and it’s a completely new thing this time… promise.

Now that Hasbro has launched its own online Scrabble game, the company has filed suit in federal court against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the Indian brothers who created Scrabulous on Facebook in 2005.

The suit claims that Scrabulous has violated Hasbro’s intellectual property rights. Facebook is not named as a defendant, but has been notified of the suit. The new Hasbro version is available in the U.S. and Canada, but Mattel owns the overseas rights to Scrabble and they launched their online version in March. It’s complicated.

Attention everybody here it is — the thing no one was waiting for because they are perfectly happy with the thing they got already. Rhode Island game and toy colossus, Hasbro, is launching its answer to Scrabulous — Scrabble at Club Pogo. I’m not big on this online stuff. I prefer the click of the tile bag and the knowledge that if my tiles suck it’s the universe conspiring against me and not some computer algorithm. I suppose it will take a little while for people to try it out and see how it compares. But what if no one bothers to try it out? I certainly want this to work. With our state economy tanking, who isn’t cheering on Hasbro ( My Little Pony notwithstanding)?

Above is a sample screen-shot and right away I have a problem. I’m picturing all these people naked. And clammy? Why is he clammy?

Rhode Island toymaker Hasbro Inc. will be launching its own online Scrabble game later this month in the hopes of scooping up all those Scrabulous players (according to today’s ProJo that’s nearly 3 million registered users). It is unclear what they have to offer that will tempt these people away. According to the Chicago Tribune,

Hasbro’s initial response to Scrabulous was to ask Facebook to take down the game. Hasbro and Mattel, which own the international rights to Scrabble, also reportedly made the same request of Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the creators of Scrabulous. News of the game’s possible demise stirred protests from avid players, with a “Save Scrabulous” group on Facebook attracting more than 45,500 members.

Inertia is not the only obstacle…

Hasbro faces several challenges in converting Scrabulous fans to the official version. Thousands of Facebook users are already comfortable with Scrabulous and are running multiple games with friends. Also, since Electronic Arts and Hasbro control the rights to Scrabble only in the U.S. and Canada, users based in those countries can’t play with people elsewhere in the world. RealNetworks created the international Facebook version of Scrabble for Mattel, and that game has about 5,600 daily active users.

As to the legal status of Hasbro v. Agarwallawallawallawallabro?*

The controversy over Scrabulous isn’t over … Hasbro is still considering its legal options and insists that the unofficial version infringes on the company’s intellectual property.

*(I made that up. Paul Grimaldi, writing in today’s Providence Journal, states that “Hasbro has not filed a lawsuit in this matter.” But I’ll bet there was a strongly worded letter.)

A front page story in today’s New York Times examines the weird legal jousting between the creators of Scrabulous, the Agarwalla brothers (may I suggest they shorten it to Agarbro?) and the owners of Hasbro, the Hassenfeld Brothers. It’s a squirrely sort of problem given the tension between protecting the property rights and some significant profits on the one hand and finessing the public relations issue on the other. (Why did I just picture Mr. Burns rubbing his fingers together?) I’ll bet it’s driving them crazy over there.

I am not an online Scrabble player because I want to know where your hands are at all times. It turns out there exists an “online ‘helper’ program, which generates a list of possible words based on the letters a user has.” Oh great, I was already picturing some creepy naked guy rubbing himself… now he’s cheating at Scrabble.

Ah the communal refrigerator… whether in the faculty lounge or the two-bedroom, five-student Brooks Street apartment… there will be blood. And there will be notes. A website dedicated to the fine art of writing Passive/Aggressive Notes features, but is not limited to, fridge-rage. (BTW, who here at The Dose drinks the coffee YooHoo? Just asking.)

In my capacity as the de facto secretary of a casually organized Scrabble club, I once received an angry email from a dissatisfied participant. We’ll call her “Enola Gay” (not her real name).

My boyfriend and I went to your scrabble club of elites several weeks ago and were somewhat immediately annoyed by the fact that we were told to seperate [sic] from one another and play complete strangers when we simply just wanted to play a game by ourselves to warm up and have fun, (something I feared the other scrabblers knw [sic] nothing about by the look of their stern and straight faces).

Needless to say, we won’t be back and I am all set with your emails and I will not be recommending this club to any other of my scrabble playing friends who actually enjoy the game instead of taking it so ridiculously seriously.

Thank you for taking me off your list.

Actually, we have a lot of fun.  And we meet every Monday night after 7PM at Julian’s on Broadway (where we are occasionally told to pipe down).