As of January 1, 2010, Hasbro will stop support for all North American Scrabble tournaments. And they’re only providing partial support (still a $15,000 prize package, I believe) for the upcoming 2009 US National Scrabble Championship in Dayton, next week.

The National Scrabble Association, originally founded by Selchow & Righter, was the branch that funded and oversaw these tournaments, and they are instead turning to promoting Scrabble in schools and other such activities. As a result, a new organization, the North American Scrabble Players Association, was formed this month to take over the North American tournament scene.

For more information, see their FAQ.

The 2009 World Scrabble Championships will be held in Malaysia, in November.

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Synapse is a party game where a team of players create a sentence – one word at a time, with each member trying to come up with the next word in the sentence – to give a clue about the word that must be guessed. It comes with an electronic doodad that makes a lot of noise.

The creator’s sister’s friend is Doug Reuter, creator of Sequence, and he gave them some manufacturing advice.

Their website is pretty funky: a light trail follows behind the mouse when you move it. I keep making circles with the mouse, and I’m like whoa! Pass the bong.

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Sequence, designed by Doug Rueter and published by Jax, is a perennial bestselling game, combining ideas from many other games into a simple package. Incidentally, Jax is not Jakks, which confused me for a moment.

You get two decks of cards and a board with a grid of card faces. You play cards to get five in a row. Jacks are wild. It’s easy for kids, and interesting enough for the casual family crowd.

Additional games in the family include Sequence for Kids, Jumbo Sequence, Deluxe Sequence, Travel Sequence, 25th Anniversary Edition, Sequence States and Capitals (warning: slightly educational), Sequence Numbers (warning: also slightly educational), and Sequence Dice.

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Who owns dominoes.com?

Puremco Dominoes, a company in business for the last 50 years. Not only do they sell a number of popular dominoes variants, including Spinner (extra tiles with “wild” symbols), Chickenfoot, and Mexican Train, they also make customized dominoes sets.

The site also sells books about dominoes, and has the rules to their games.

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