Britney Spears sparks search for hidden meaning with Instagram post of Scrabble board

Singer says it’s ‘fun’ to make words up while showing Scrabble board

Britney Spears sparks hunt for hidden meaning with Instagram post of Scrabble game (Getty Images)

Britney Spears has some fans convinced she is sharing a secret message with a recent Instagram post about a game of Scrabble.

On Tuesday, the Toxic singer posted a photo of a Scrabble board to her Instagram account, where she has more than 28.1m followers, with the caption: “Can you find a word that isn’t actually a word????  Sometimes it’s fun to make ones up!!”

On the board, the star had placed numerous words, some of which were real, while others such as “yot” and “abirv” were made up.

While it was likely a case of Spears wanting to win at the board game, and not symbolic of a deeper meaning, many fans have taken the post as code for a secret message, with thousands of comments attempting to work out the answer.

“She’s talking to us through code. Let’s get to work,” one person wrote in a comment that has been liked more than 20,000 times.

Another suggested: “Please someone crack the code, she’s trying to tell us something.”

It comes amid renewed scrutiny of the legal arrangement that has allowed other people, most notably her father James (known as Jamie), control over Spears’s career, finances and personal life.

The high-profile case went back to court last week when Judge Brenda Penny overruled her father’s objections to an order establishing financial company, the Bessemer Trust, as co-conservator of Spears’s estate.

According to some of Spears’ followers, the Scrabble words indicate everything from a plea to help, with many pointing to renewed interest in the singer’s conservatorship and the #FreeBritney movement following the New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears, while others have speculated that the placement of the words also matters.

“Okay ‘uno’ and ‘veil’ are right across from each other. She’s def trying to ‘unveil’ something,” one person suggested.

While many of the 39-year-old’s followers want to find meaning in the post, others have encouraged fellow fans to take the post at face value.

“I was concerned for Brit… now I’m concerned by all of these comments,” one follower commented, while another said: “Don’t come for me, but maybe they were actually just playing Scrabble?...as in no hidden clues.”

The theory that the singer was, in fact, just having fun with the board game is likely correct, as it follows a previous warning from Spears’ social media manager Cassie Petrey, who recently warned fans that “Britney is not ‘asking for help’ or leaving secret messages in her social media”.

Petrey shared the statement in a lengthy post on her own Instagram earlier this month, where she informed fans that Spears curates her own social media content and is “literally just living her life and trying to have fun on Instagram”.

In the statement, Petrey also debunked conspiracy theories regarding the star’s social media usage, before telling Spears’ followers that the best way to support her is to “just be nice”.

“In terms of being supportive of Britney on her social media, the best thing you can do for her is just be nice,” Petrey wrote. “That’s all she really wants. Don’t bully her. She doesn’t deserve it.

“She’s having fun creating posts and sharing images that she likes. That’s it. There’s not some secret agenda to it.”