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Upwords

A finished Upwords game
Designer(s)	Elliot Rudell
Publisher(s)	Hasbro Games
Players	2 to 4
Age range	10 years and up
Setup time	< 1 min
Playing time	45 to 90 minutes
Random chance	Medium
Skill(s) required	Counting, Strategy, Vocabulary

Upwords, recently renamed "Scrabble Upwords" by Hasbro, is a board game invented by Elliot Rudell and originally published by the Milton Bradley Company (which is now a division of Hasbro). The game is based on Scrabble, except that letters can be stacked on top of other words to create new words. The higher the stack of letters, the more points are scored. This often makes words built in later turns of the game more valuable than earlier words, increasing play intensity.

The game is available in about twenty languages. Hasbro has recently licensed electronic marketing rights to Microsoft, making it available electronically for the first time since AOL bought Games.com and withdrew the game.

There have been national tournaments played in Hungary and Turkey.

Game play[link]

Players draw letter tiles until they have seven tiles on their racks. The first player forms a word that covers one or more of the central squares. After forming a word, the player draws more tiles to replenish their rack. Play continues to the left.

Subsequent plays may put tiles on the board and on top of tiles already played, so long as all words formed are found in the dictionary being used. For example, if a word on the board is CATER, a player on a subsequent turn could put a B and E in front of CATER and then put an L on top of the C and a D on top of the R to build BELATED.

Upwords resembles Scrabble in a few ways. Each player has seven letters and tries to place these down on the board to make words that link up with other words on the grid, like a crossword puzzle, so that they score as many points as possible. The board is smaller, and so the game is quicker, and it doesn't have special squares such as "triple word scores" and "double letter scores" that require additional scoring calculations.

The biggest difference from Scrabble is that once a word has been placed, any player may then alter it to another word, by placing tiles over some of the letters. For example, the word CAT could have an H placed over it to make HAT, or an H over the C and an E on the end to make HATE. If a player can alter two words at once, he scores both, so if the word CAT were already played, then an H could be placed over the C, and then A, R, and P added to make both HAT and HARP. The potential for clever play is quite great and most games include in them some turn in which a player makes three interesting words all at once to score a lot of points.

Players score one point for every tile in their word, and for each tile under their word. If the word is entirely on the first board layer, they instead score two points per letter.

Since Upwords lacks bonus squares found in Scrabble, players are not allowed to pluralize existing words by simply adding an "s" on the end of a word and ending their turn. If a word is pluralized by the addition of an "s", the "s" must be part of another complete word that was placed on the board. This rule prevents players from capitalizing too much on other players' words.

Originally, Upwords was played on an 8×8 square board and 64 tiles, which many players felt to be cramped relative to Scrabble's 15×15 grid.^{[citation needed]} Newer Upwords sets come with a 10×10 square board and 100 tiles, which allows for much more comfortable play. The most recent versions also come with a set of 81 numbered tiles to allow for playing/solving Sudoku puzzles.

Unlike Scrabble, which is controlled by competitors Hasbro (in the U.S.) and Mattel (in Europe), Upwords is at this time solely under the worldwide licensing control of Hasbro, making it the only such worldwide word game property that can be Internet-marketed and Internet-offered with complete licensing control.^{[citation needed]}

External links[link]

• Upwords at BoardGameGeek

Tay Zonday
Zonday in 2009
Background information
Birth name	Adam Nyerere Bahner[1]
Born	(1982-07-06) July 6, 1982 (age 29) Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Genres	Outsider music Electronica R&B Experimental music Spoken word
Occupations	Actor, singer, musician, announcer, voice artist, comedian, YouTube personality
Instruments	Vocals Keyboard
Years active	2007–present
Website	www.tayzonday.com

Adam Nyerere Bahner (born July 6, 1982^[2]), better known by the pseudonym Tay Zonday,^[3] is an American actor, singer, musician, announcer, voice artist, comedian and YouTube personality.^[4] He is well-known by listeners for his baritone singing voice. He garnered mainstream exposure when his song "Chocolate Rain" became a viral video^[5] in July 2007. As of March 2012^[update], "Chocolate Rain" has more than 79 million views.^[6]

Early life[link]

Zonday was born Adam Nyerere Bahner in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 6, 1982 and graduated from The Evergreen State College in 2004.

Media response[link]

In July 2007, Zonday went from being a grad student in Minneapolis, Minnesota^[7] to having his video featured on YouTube's front page^{[citation needed]} and making appearances on national television. He appeared on the Opie & Anthony Show,^[8] G4TV's Attack of the Show!, VH1's Best Week Ever,^[9] Lily Allen and Friends, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Tosh.0 and Maury^[10][11] where he performed "Chocolate Rain" on national television a little over three months after he posted his composition on YouTube. He made the front page of Sunday's Los Angeles Times on August 12, 2007 with additional features in The Toronto Star, The Chicago Tribune''s RedEye, The Star Tribune^[12] and People^[11] and has appeared on CNN^[13] for a televised interview. He's also come out on Fox News. On February 12, 2008, he appeared on the television show Lily Allen and Friends on BBC Three, and performed a cover of Lily Allen's debut "Smile." In March 2008, the video won a YouTube-award in the category "Music."

The Australian Daily Telegraph newspaper wrote: "Tay Zonday is the biggest sellout in the world right now."^[14] People said: "He's scored a YouTube hit with his repetitive, keyboard-driven 'Chocolate Rain', and after a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Tay Zonday's star is shining even brighter."^[11] The article also noted that celebrity musicians paid tribute to the song as its popularity rapidly peaked in August 2007. John Mayer reportedly copied Zonday's keyboard riff with his guitar in concert,^[15][16] along with appearing on Best Week Ever improvising a parody to the tune of Nelly Furtado's "Say It Right".^[17] Green Day drummer Tre Cool recorded a cover of "Chocolate Rain" which he posted on Youtube.^[18] Zonday also became the subject of thousands of other parodies and remixes on YouTube. A clip of his video was also shown on CW11's Online Nation, a new series.^[19][20][21] Zonday has been interviewed twice on Good Morning America, in March and November 2008.^[22]

Career[link]

Zonday starred in a commercial for Comedy Central's "Last Laugh 07", hosted by Lewis Black.^[23] He released a video called "Cherry Chocolate Rain,"^[24] in a promotion with Dr Pepper. He starred alongside Leslie Hall in a commercial for Firefox singing a song called "Users Against Boredom" in a parody of "We Are the World." Zonday has said that his voice is often compared to Ru Paul, Paul Robeson, Barry White, James Earl Jones, and Brad Roberts of the Crash Test Dummies.^[25] He appeared in-person at Intel's Consumer Electronics Show booth, rendering the source files of the "Chocolate Rain" YouTube video in Sony Vegas.^[26]

The Grammy Award-winning music video for rock band Weezer's single "Pork and Beans" featured Zonday, along with other YouTube celebrities. As well, in May 2008, Zonday performed an acoustic version of the song with Brian Bell of Weezer, spoofing his own performance in "Chocolate Rain."^[27]

As a voice actor, he voiced part of a multimedia presentation built to celebrate 50 years of NASA history.^[28] He also voiced a role in Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, spoofing his own song "Chocolate Rain."^[29]

Zonday was featured on the Jace Hall Show, where he was comically interviewed at a famous Hollywood restaurant in a play on the dissonance between Internet-fame and the traditional entertainment industry.^[30]

In February 2010, he cameoed in a Vizio Super Bowl commercial opened by Beyoncé.^[4] In October 2010, he appeared on Comedy Central's Night of Too Many Stars autism charity event during a musical number with Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert.^[31]

In August 2011, Zonday appeared on America's Got Talent and performed 15 seconds of his song "Chocolate Rain." Zonday was also featured in Dave Days' YouTube video spoof of Justin Bieber's song "Baby," which has over 14 million views. He had a cameo in The Guild Season 5 episode 3 Megagame-o-ramacon!, which aired on August 9, 2011. Zonday was featured in a 2011 Mike Diva comedy YouTube video as a dubstep dancing mastermind.^[32]

See also[link]

• List of YouTube celebrities
• Fifteen minutes of fame

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tay Zonday

• Tay Zonday Official website
• Tay Zonday's YouTube channel

Milton Bradley
Born	(1836-11-08)November 8, 1836 Vienna, Maine, U.S.
Died	May 30, 1911(1911-05-30) (aged 74) Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Board game manufacturer

Milton Bradley (November 8, 1836 – May 30, 1911), an American game pioneer, was credited by many with launching the board game industry in North America with Milton Bradley Company.

A native of Vienna, Maine, Bradley grew up in a working-class household in Lowell, Massachusetts. After completing high school he found work as a draftsman before enrolling at the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1856, he secured employment at the Watson Company in Springfield, Massachusetts. After the company was shuttered during the recession of 1858, he entered business for himself as a mechanical draftsman and patent agent. Later, Bradley pursued lithography and in 1860, he set up the first color lithography shop in Springfield, Massachusetts. Eventually, Bradley moved forward with an idea he had for a board game which he called The Checkered Game of Life, an early version of what later became The Game of Life.

In 2004, he was posthumously inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame along with George Ditomassi of Milton Bradley Company. Through the 20th century the company he founded in 1860, Milton Bradley Company dominated the production of American games, with titles like Candyland, Operation, and Battleship. The company is now a subsidiary of Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based Hasbro.

[edit] The Checkered Game of Life: The launch of the Milton Bradley Company

Milton Bradley's ventures into the production of board games began with a large failure in his lithograph business. When he attempted to print and sell copies of the presidential nominee Abraham Lincoln, Bradley initially met with great success. After they were released for sale, a customer contacted him calling it a fraud and demanding his money back because the picture was not an accurate representation of Lincoln, who had decided to grow his distinctive beard after Bradley's print was published. Suddenly, the prints were worthless, and Bradley burned those remaining in his possession.^[1] In search of a lucrative alternative project in which to employ his drafting skills, Bradley found inspiration from an imported board game given to him by a friend. Concluding that he could produce and market a similar game to American consumers, Milton Bradley released The Checkered Game of Life in the winter of 1860.

The game proved an instant success with the public. Bradley personally sold his first run of several hundred copies in one two-day period in New York; by 1861, consumers had bought over 45,000 copies. The Checkered Game of Life followed a structure similar to its American and British predecessors, with players spinning a teetotum to advance to corresponding squares. The squares each represented a social virtue or vice such as "influence" or "poverty", with the former earning a player points and the latter retarding his progress. However, even the most seemingly secure positions like "Fat Office" held the accompanying dangers of "Prison", "Ruin", and "Suicide".^[2] The player who first accumulated one hundred points won the game.

The original game board of The Checkered Game of Life.

While the structure of play used in The Checkered Game of Life differed little from previous board games, Bradley’s game embraced a radically different concept of success. Earlier children’s games, such as the popular Mansion of Happiness developed in Puritan Massachusetts, were concerned entirely with providing an attractive venue from which to promote moral virtue. But Bradley preferred to define success in secular business terms consistent with America’s emerging focus on “the causal relationship between character and wealth.” This approach, which depicted life as a quest for accomplishment in which personal virtues provided a means to an end, rather than a point of focus, complemented America’s burgeoning fascination with obtaining wealth in the years following the Civil War.

Final years[link]

Though The Checkered Game of Life and its several successive variations accounted for Bradley's financial success, board games did not constitute his primary focus in life. Once his pecuniary future had been secured, Bradley turned his attention to a series of progressive scientific and educational causes. Having met Edward Wiebe, an early American proponent of the kindergarten movement, in 1869, Bradley began to explore the ideas of the German romantic philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel. Fröbel challenged prevalent notions for educating children, which emphasized recitation, rote memorization, and the teaching of factual information from a child’s earliest schooling. Believing that these practices-–which attempted to instill an adult mentality in children-–ran contrary to both effective teaching and a child’s natural impulses, Fröbel suggested a pattern of education that focused on the child’s vantage point. Fröbel's theory stressed stimulation of aesthetic and sensory perception, kept lessons brief, presented them in simple terms suitable for a child’s consumption, and incorporated instinctual preferences for play and spontaneity. Froebel also used "gifts," which were objects to handle, such as geometric wooden blocks or balls and used in self-directed free play. He also used "occupations," which were materials to learn skills, later arts and crafts and also circles which included mother songs and finger plays. A year after Bradley met Wiebe, the Milton Bradley Company published Wiebe’s book “The Paradise of Childhood: A Manual for Self-Instruction in Freidrich Froebel’s Educational Principles, and a Practical Guide to Kinder-Gartners,” which describes a list of 20 Froebel gifts.

Enthralled with Fröbel's ideas, Bradley made distinct contributions to bringing them to prominence with the American public. Beginning in 1869, he published educational tracts and pamphlets on the virtues of Fröbel's kindergarten system. His company produced two magazines on the subject, Kindergarten News (later Kindergarten Review), and Work and Play. Though neither produced a profit, compelling Bradley’s business partners to withdraw their support, Bradley persevered, publishing the magazines until the end of his life. Bradley's lifelong friend, George Tapley, bought out his business partner's shares so Bradley could continue manufacturing his educational materials. By the 1890s, the Milton Bradley Company had introduced the first watercolour sets with standardized colours and education games such as Bradley's Word Builder and Bradley's Sentence Builder. The Milton Bradley Company was also the first to release crayon packages with standardized colors, forerunning the better-known Crayola Crayons and Artista Art Supplies of the Binney & Smith Company. Bradley's interest in art education also led him to produce a new color wheel for color instruction and publish four works about teaching colors.

Bradley married twice in his lifetime, first to Villona Eaton in 1860. They had no children together. He then married again to Ellen Thayer in 1869. Bradley and Ms. Thayer had two daughters together: Alice L. Bradley, born c. 1881, and Florence L. Bradley, born c. 1875. He died on May 30, 1911 in Springfield.

Books and inventions[link]

Books[link]

• Color in the Schoolroom, 1890
• Color in the Kindergarten, 1893
• Elementary Color, 1895
• Water Colors in the Schoolroom, 1900

Inventions[link]

• Bradley established a set of rules to play croquet in 1866.
• Bradley was one of the marketers of the zoetrope, a spinning slotted drum with pre-printed images to create the illusion of motion pictures.
• Though this was not definitely known as of November 2010, Bradley might have been awarded the patent for the one-arm paper cutter.

References[link]

• Bradley, Milton (1892). "The Color Question Again". Science (Moses King) 19 (477): 175–176. DOI:10.1126/science.ns-19.477.175-a. http://books.google.com/?id=yIMCAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA175. 
• Ing, Deborah (February 2000). "Bradley, Milton" (Reference Database - registration required). American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-00177.html. Retrieved 2007-01-31. 
• Lepore, Jill. "The Meaning of Life: What Milton Bradley Started". The New Yorker, 21 May 2007, pp. 38–43..

External links[link]

• Milton Bradley at Find a Grave
• Milton Bradley: A Playful Legacy — slideshow by Life magazine
• The Vienna Maine Historical Society has purchased Bradley's birthplace and is in the process of relocating to the site, where it plans to open a small museum.