Abilities

What About Them?
White Box lists six abilities that have become the industry standard, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma. Volume I of the LBBs, Men & Magic, states the referee determines a score for each ability by rolling 3 six-sided dice and adding up the total, thus creating a bell-curve range from 3-18 for each score. It is stated scores from 9 to 12 are "average". The abilities are described as to what they represent, giving some guidance on how they might affect play, and ensuring some individuality for each PC. The first three abilities are used for the prime requisites for the fighting man, magic user and cleric class respectively. High scores in the class prime requisite entitles the PC to an experience bonus leading to more rapid leveling up. Constitution is used to add bonus hit points and determine survival chance in adversity such as paralyzation or being turned to stone (and back presumably). Dexterity can add a bonus to the PCs ability to hit with a missile weapon if the score is above average and Charisma determines the maximum number of hirelings and loyalty base.
Other than the above, ability scores are just the numbers that make up a character along with class, hit points and alignment. White Box does not specifically say the abilities have any other function, yet there they are, begging an enterprising referee to make use of them. White Box gives some prompts to the imagination in this regard. Constitution and Dexterity can give a small bonus or penalty to other scores such as hit points and to-hit with missiles. Therefore one presumes other ability scores could be used to grant bonuses/penalties in a like manner and sure enough in Supplement I, this occurs. Abilities might also be used to affect the PC's chances of accomplishing certain tasks in a manner similar to constitution and the shock survival percentages. The ability score can also be used as a ranking as in the case of Dexterity and speed, determining who goes first in casting spells or firing missiles and therefore other score rankings might also be useful.
The nature of adventure gaming is for players to think of something they would like their PC to do or try and for the referee to tell them what game mechanic to use to help determine if it happens and how well an outcome it produces. What White Box referee hasn't defaulted to those aptly named "abilities" when faced with such challenge. Perhaps using Strength to determine if you can lift a heavy object or Dexterity to catch a falling object. Rolling a number of six-siders, usually three, but it could vary with the difficulty of the task, and looking for a total that is under one's ability score or rolling a twenty-sided die equal to or under one's ability score is an intuitive answer to the question of how to handle such in-game situations. I assume they are termed "ability scores" for a reason.