HZ: People assume to my face that a podcast about language won't be fun, and they're like, “Why would you do something that sounds so boring and dry and like a punishment?” What kind of reactions do you get when people learn that you make games about language?
KATHRYN HYMES: It's so interesting - for some people there's a similar reaction, but for a set of people, it's like you have given them the thing that they have most wanted in the world and maybe didn't realise or articulate or hope that such a thing could be made. And it's somewhat shocking that there's enough of those people and that the internet is able to connect it, you know, connect us to them that we end up finding each other.

LESLIE SCOTT: Not many people realise the success of Scrabble is based on a statistician figuring out the scoring system - it's the first time someone had a word game where the score of the word game was based on him researching very thoroughly the number of times a particular letter was used. He scoured the New York Times for years counting how many times an E comes up, a Z, etc. Hence the numbers of those letters in the stack to start with was based on this, as is the scoring. And it works, whether or not you like the game. We have a mathematician to thank.
HZ: Probably why it’s not fun.

HZ: Sorry, Scrabble. But a game where you can triumph just by memorizing every two letter word will never have my affection.