If you play Scrabble, can you remember your best score ever. 150 points, perhaps? Well, listen to these record-breaking stats! In a recent Scrabble competition in Lexington, Massachusetts, 3 records were set in the same game: A carpenter named Michael Cresta scored 830 points – shattering the record for a single game. His opponent, deli worker Wayne Yorra, got 490 – and together they smashed the record for total points in one game: 1,320. Cresta also got the record for highest score for one word: 365 points for QUIXOTRY, which means “an idealistic thought.”

In the community of competitive Scrabble, that game is right up there with Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point basketball game in 1962, and Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. So, how did 2 amateurs break the all-time Scrabble scoring record? With an unusual string of “bingos” – that’s Scrabble lingo for trading in tiles to maybe get better letters, and hitting the "triple-triple". Covering 2 triple-word squares in a single turn, giving you 9 times the value of the letters, plus a 50-point bonus for using all 7 tiles.

Cresta got a triple-triple worth 239 points with the word FLATFISH. Then, Cresta realized he had three-fourths of a really huge triple-triple: QUIXOTRY. So, he exchanged 2 letters from his rack hoping to draw the T and Y – a 1-in-532 chance. He beat the odds, and after just 3 turns, Cresta had an amazing 614 points. The fact is: Even though Cresta won, his strategy was a mistake. In Scrabble, the player who waits for a miracle word usually loses. But this time, all the wrong moves made history!