Gadgets

Advanced Scrabble board live-streams tournaments, still counts questionable words

Scrabble has officially entered the online tournament scene. This super-advanced board is equipped with heavy dose of RFID tags and some special software to live stream the game sort of like StarCraft II.

As spotted by Gizmodo, the board was designed for Prague Mind Sports Festival, which begins on December 1. The group behind the festival spared no expense in putting together their cutting-edge game board for a total of £20,000 ($30,000).

Underneath the board is a total 225 RFID antennas (one per square) that detects a corresponding RFID tag on each letter tile. The board is also equipped with nine embedded circuit boards that keep track of all syllables in play and continuously updates its online status every 974 milliseconds.

While it’s not the first time we’ve seen RFIDs and Scrabble tiles team up, this board looks considerably prettier with a carbon fiber body and LEDs. Unfortunately the shiny board probably won’t fix any of the rules about Scrabble. I mean, seriously, since when was umiaqs a real word?

What’s your favorite Scrabble word? Leave a comment.