Report: Moms Happiest When Playing 7-Letter Word in Scrabble

A Blue Rock College study conducted on a representative sample of 892 mothers found that playing a 7-letter word in Scrabble results in the greatest levels of recorded happiness, exceeding such events as watching a child perform in a school musical and even their own wedding night.

“We were surprised to learn that, while the dopamine levels of the mothers were very high when celebrating their son’s fourth birthday or successfully snapping a good picture of the whole family, these levels were significantly below those found when moms were playing words such as ‘mittens’ or ‘bowling’ in the popular board game Scrabble,” said psychologist Dr. Melissa Patterson, who proposed the study after watching her own mother cry tears of joy after shocking her family with a triple-word score ‘marbles’, tallying up 105 points in the process.

“The sheer excitement of the click of the final letter tile hitting the board, counting the numerous letter and word multipliers, and reminding the scorekeeper that a 7-letter word is awarded an additional 50 points nearly broke our self-reported pleasure rating system,” Patterson continued. “It was leaps and bounds ahead of childbirth, which lacked the multiple ‘woohoo!’s and fast little claps commonly associated with the once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence of a killer 7-letter Scrabble word.”

A similar study conducted on fathers found that their greatest happiness levels occurred when both of a receiver’s feet could be clearly seen to land in bounds on the slow motion replay, suggesting that the call on the field would be overturned to become a touchdown.