I’ve recently been reading The Book of Games: Strategy, Tactics & History by Jack Botermans. It’s a look at international games and their place in culture and history, from The Royal Game of Ur, one of the oldest board games ever found, to the much more modern Mastermind. Naturally all that reading about games got me to thinking about games and furniture, which is how I found this super sweet set of Scrabble couches.

Crafted by Stephen Reed for employees in the London offices of Bloomberg financial services, it’s not only the couch cushions that, ahem, get into the game. The couches themselves are stylized to look like Scrabble tile racks, i.e., those easily upended wooden things where one hides one’s tiles.

I get the overall concept, but frankly I’m much more interested in the Scrabble tile pillows than I am in the Scrabble-racks-turned-seating. The look uncomfortable, at least where the back of the knee is concerned… and possibly also for shorter people, whose legs might not quite reach the floor.

You can steal this look with Scrabble tile pillows from Etsy seller Pillow Happy!

Looking for something to do with those thousands of pennies you’ve been stashing in coffee cans since you were wee? Coinstar machines take a cut of your jingly change, and rolling pennies just plain sucks. And saving those pennies for a rainy day might not be the best of ideas when some people want to kill the humble one cent piece. So what’s a thrifty guy or gal to do with all that copper (and zinc… mostly zinc, actually)? Lay a floor, of course.

This penny floor can be found in The Standard Grill in the Standard Hotel New York. I imagine that laying a penny floor could take a lot of work, but hey, at least the materials will be cheap. Think about $1.96 per square foot, i.e., a 14×14 grid as calculated by Bridge Designs. Don’t forget about glue and all the other costs, however.

Here’s another sweet floor, as found in a certain Mark’s home. Note the scrabble tiles inlaid in the wall.

Then there are penny backsplashes and walls lined with pennies, like this one in a French shop from RB Architects. Neat, yeah?

For the longest wear and the most natural aging of the copper in your penny floor or penny wall, look for pennies minted between 1962 and 1982 since during this period pennies were comprised of 95% copper and 5% zinc. After that, the composition became 97.5% zinc with a mere 2.5% copper.