Men Are Scientifically Better At Scrabble As Women Perceive It As A "Useless Skill"

UK - Men generally outperform women in Scrabble tournaments because female competitors are less willing to spend their time improving a largely pointless skill, according to new research. Scientists found male players spend their time practising anagrams and analysing the game, whereas women are more likely to play the game as a hobby. The research, published in the journal Psychological Research, found there is no inherent difference in talent between genders. Yet, despite the fact there are slightly more female participants in Scrabble tournaments, male players tend to dominate them. To find out why, University of Miami researcher Dr Jerad Moxley and his colleagues questioned 300 participants at the 2004 and 2008 US National Scrabble tournaments about their playing habits. The scientists then analysed how the participants spent their time against their game ratings, which showed men tended to outperform women in the competitions. Dr Moxley found both men and women were putting the same number of hours into playing the game, but significantly, they spent their time differently. Women, on the other hand, spent their hours playing Scrabble – an enjoyable game deemed largely useless for building skills by the scientists – for fun, treating it as a hobby. The researchers found female participants played the game to be happy.

Women! Is there anything they can’t do? Well, dunk. But other than that, ya gotta love how they can manipulate any situation in their favor. Only the female species can get away with calling the English language a “Largely pointless skill”. That’s such an egregious spin zone I can’t even hate the travail. And that’s the underlying crux of this disquisition. It’s not the fact fellows are statistically better at Scrabble because they take it more solemnly than lassies. There’s nothing wrong about that either way, for chaps or dames. Dudes practice Scrabble more than chicks. Big whoop, right? The issue here is the justification. The fact somebody actually went: “Oh, guys rule and girls drool at a certain activity? Not so fast. That mentally stimulating game revolving around improving vocabulary is hereby deemed useless.” is comical. An absolutely jovial concept of the mind. How is written and oral lexicon not important in modern day, nay, overall human history? Next thing you know breathing could be deemed a futile activity. Stop making excuses and either improve on the board or accept defeat. Or at least go down swinging, put out questionable 7-letter words, and force challenges left and right. Kwyjibo me and call it a day.

Unrelated but related, all this Scrabble talk reminded me of one of the great old(ish) school ESPN basketball commercials featuring Shaq doing dominating the board. Hilarious. RIP Stuart Scott. And Shaqtus should be in the dictionary. .