Scrabble

The verb "to scrabble" also means to scratch or scrape about: see Wiktionary:scrabble.

Scrabble

A game of Scrabble in progress A game of Scrabble in progress
Players	2-4
Setup time	2-5 minutes
Playing time	NSA tournament game: ~50 minutes
Chance	Medium
Age range	8+
Skills	Counting, Strategy, Vocabulary

Scrabble is a popular word game and board game in which 2-4 players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a 15×15 game board. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion, and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works (e.g. The Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, now in its 4th edition) that provide a list of permissible words, some of which are rarely found in standard English writing, are also available.

The name Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the US and Canada and of J. W. Spear & Sons PLC elsewhere. Scrabble was a trademark of Murfett Regency in Australia, until 1993 when it was acquired by Spears. The game is also known as Alfapet, Skip-A-Cross and Palavras Cruzadas

History

Scrabble board owned by Vladimir Nabokov

The game was created by architect Alfred Mosher Butts in 1938, as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. The two games had the same set of letter tiles, whose distributions and point values Butts worked out meticulously by counting letter usage from the various sources including The New York Times. The new game, which he called "Criss-Crosswords", added the 15-by-15 game board and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day.

In 1948, lawyer James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut, bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game (including the distribution of letters) unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the "premium" squares of the board and simplified the rules; he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble", and sold sets to, among other customers, Macy's department store, which created a demand for the game.

In 1953, unable to meet demand himself, Brunot sold manufacturing rights to Selchow and Righter (one of the manufacturers who, like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company, had previously rejected the game). J. W. Spear & Sons began selling the game in Australia and the UK on January 19, 1955. They are now a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. In 1986, Selchow and Righter sold the game to Coleco, who soon after sold the game to Hasbro.

Game details

The game is played by 2-4 players on a square (or nearly square) board with a 15-by-15 grid of cells, each of which accommodates a single letter tile. In official club and tournament games, play is always between two players (or, occasionally, between two teams each of which collaborates on a single rack).

Each letter is worth a set number of points, with the value depending on the letter's frequency in standard English writing; commonly-used letters such as E or O are worth one point, while less common letters score higher, with Q and Z each scoring 10 points. The board is marked with "premium" squares, which multiply the amount of points awarded: dark red "triple word" cells, pink "double word" cells, dark blue "triple letter" cells, and light blue "double letter" cells. The center cell (H8) is often marked with a star or logo, and counts as a double-word cell.

For information on tiles, see Scrabble letter distributions.

Notation system

In the notation system common in tournament play, columns are labeled "A-O" and rows "1-15". A play is usually identified in the format xy WORD score or WORD xy score, where: x denotes the column or row on which the play's main word extends; y denotes the second coordinate of the main word's first letter, and WORD is the main word. Although unnecessary, additional words formed by the play are occasionally listed after the main word and a slash. In the case where the play of a single tile formed words in each direction, one of the words is arbitrarily chosen to serve as the main word for purposes of notation.

When a blank tile is employed in the main word, the letter it has been chosen to represent is indicated with a lower case letter, or, in handwritten notation, with a square around the letter. Parentheses are sometimes also used to designate a blank, although this may create confusion with a second (optional) function of parentheses, namely indication of an existing letter or word that has been "played through" by the main word.

Example:

A(D)DITiON(AL) D3 74

(played through the existing letter D and word AL, using a blank for the second I, extending down the D column and beginning on row 3, and scoring 74 points)

Sequence of play

Before the game, the letter tiles are either put in an opaque bag or placed face down on a flat surface. Opaque cloth bags and custom "Protiles" are staples of clubs and tournaments, where games are rarely played without both.

Next, players decide the order in which they play. According to NSA tournament rules, players who have gone first in the least number of games in the tournament have priority. In both the case of a tie and in the regular Scrabble rules, players instead draw tiles, then reveal them. The player who picks the letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first (with blank tiles ranked higher than As), and redraw in the case of a tie.

At the beginning of the game, and after each turn until the bag is empty (or until there are no more face-down tiles), players draw tiles to replenish their "racks", or tile-holders, with seven tiles, from which they will make plays. Each rack is concealed from the other players.

During a player's turn, they will have seven letter tiles in their rack from which to choose a play. On their turn, players have the option to: (1) pass, forfeiting the turn and scoring nothing; (2) exchange one or more tiles for an equal number from the bag, scoring nothing, an option which is only available if at least seven tiles remain in the bag; (3) form a play on the board, adding its value to the player's cumulative score; or (4) challenge the previous player's move on the grounds that an unacceptable word was made (see Acceptable words and Challenges).

A proper play uses any number of the player's tiles to form a single continuous word ("main word") on the board, reading either left-to-right or top-to-bottom. The main word must either use the letters of one or more previously played words, or else have at least one of its tiles horizontally or vertically adjacent to an already played word. If words other than the main word are newly formed by the play, they are scored as well, and are subject to the same criteria for acceptability.

At the very beginning of play, when the board is blank, a player must form a word which covers H8, the center cell. The word must consist of at least two letters, extending horizontally or vertically. H8 is a premium tile, and the first player to make a play receives a double score.

A blank tile may take the place of any letter. It remains as that letter thereafter for the rest of the game. Individually, it scores no points regardless of what letter it is designated, and is not itself affected by premium tiles. However, its placement on a double-word or triple-word cell does cause the appropriate premium to be scored for the word in which it is used. While not part of official or tournament play, a common "house rule" allows players to "recycle" blank tiles by later substituting the corresponding letter tile.

After playing a word, the player draws letter tiles from the bag to replenish his rack to seven tiles. If there are not enough tiles in the bag to do so, the player takes all of the remaining tiles.

After a player plays a word, his opponent may choose to challenge any or all the words formed by the play. If any of the words formed are found to be unacceptable, the play is removed from the board, the player returns the newly-played tiles to his rack, and his turn is forfeited. Penalties for unsuccessfully challenging an acceptable play vary within club and tournament play, and are described in greater detail below.

With North American rules, the game ends when (1) one player plays every tile in his rack, and there are no tiles remaining in the bag (regardless of the tiles in his opponent's rack); or (2) when six successive scoreless turns have occurred and at least one word is on the board.

When the game ends, each player's score is reduced by the sum of his/her unplayed letters. In addition, if a player has used all of his or her letters, the sum of the other player's unplayed letters is added to that player's score.

Scoreless turns can occur when an illegal word is challenged off the board, when a player passes, when a player exchanges tiles, or when a word consists only of blank tiles. This latter rule varies slightly in international play.

Scoring

File:Scrabble tiles wooden.jpg

Wooden Scrabble tiles.

Each word formed in the play is scored this way:

• Any tile played from the player's rack onto a previously vacant cell that is a "double letter" or "triple letter" premium cell has its point value doubled or tripled as indicated.
• Add the normal point value of every other letter (excluding blanks) in the word (whether newly played or existing).
• For each newly-played tile, placed on a "double word" premium cell, the total is doubled. (or redoubled)
• For each newly-placed tile, placed on a "triple word" premium cell, the total is tripled. (or re-tripled)
• If a player uses all seven of the tiles in his rack in a single play, a bonus of 50 points is added to the score of that play (this is called a "bingo" in Canada and the United States, and a "bonus" elsewhere). These bonus points are not affected by premium cells.
• Premium cells are calculated for newly placed letters (and blanks) in all words made in the same play.

Premium cells, once played, are not counted again in subsequent plays.

Acceptable words

Acceptable words are those words found as primary entries in some chosen dictionary, and all of their inflected forms. Words that are hyphenated, capitalized (such as proper nouns), marked as foreign, or appear only as part of multi-word phrases (such as "brac" from "bric-à-brac") are not allowed, unless they also appear as acceptable entries: "Jack" is a proper noun, but a car "jack" is acceptable. Variant spellings, slang or offensive terms, archaic or obsolete terms, and specialized jargon words are allowed if they meet all other criteria for acceptability. "College" level dictionaries are generally used in preference to unabridged dictionaries.

In Scrabble tournaments, pre-compiled official word lists are used (usually compiled from combinations of several college dictionaries), along with an official dictionary for backup. The pre-compiled word lists generally contain only words with uninflected forms of two to nine letters — those most frequently used in the game. (One-letter words are not recognized in play, and with racks only containing seven letters, it is rarer to have words longer than nine letters.) Longer words are looked up in an official dictionary or a separately compiled long list.

There are two popular competition word lists: the North American 2006 Official Tournament and Club Word List, Second Edition (OWL2), which became official for use in American, Canadian, Israeli and Thai club and tournament play on March 1, 2006, (or for school use the bowdlerized Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Fourth Edition (OSPD4)) and the British Official Scrabble Words. Current printings of OWL2 and OSPD4 must be amended according to errata posted at the National Scrabble Association web site. North American competitions use the Long List for longer words, while the British use the Chambers Dictionary (but may soon change to the Collins Dictionary). Many on-line Scrabble sites use some version of the Tournament Word List (TWL), which is a combination of the OWL2 and Long List.

The OWL2 and the OSPD4 are compiled using four (originally five) major college-level dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster (10th and 11th Editions, respectively). If a word appears (or historically appeared) in at least one of the dictionaries, it is included in the OWL2 and the OSPD4, unless the word has only an offensive meaning or is used only as a trademark, in which case it is only included in the OWL2.

The key difference between the OSPD4 and the OWL2 is that the OSPD4 is marketed for "home and school" use, and has been expurgated of many words which their source dictionaries judged offensive, rendering the "Official" Scrabble Players Dictionary less fit for official Scrabble play. As well, the OSPD4 is available in bookstores, whereas the OWL2 is only available from the National Scrabble Association to current members.

Many international competitions use the combination of the British and American word lists; the union of the two lists is commonly referred to as SOWPODS, derived from an anagram of OSPD+OSW. Many countries in the English Scrabble-playing world now use SOWPODS (published in the UK as Official Scrabble Words International, or OSWI) for their own tournaments year-round, with the United States, Canada, Israel, and Thailand being notable exceptions.

Challenges

The penalty for a successfully challenged play is nearly universal: the offending player removes the tiles played and forfeits the turn. However, the penalty for an unsuccessful challenge (where all words formed by the play are deemed valid), varies considerably, including:

• The "double challenge" rule, in which an unsuccessfully challenging player must forfeit their turn. This penalty governs North American (NSA-sanctioned) tournaments, and is the standard for North American clubs. (It is also the standard in Israel and Thailand.) Because loss of a turn generally constitutes the greatest risk for an unsuccessful challenge, it provides the greatest incentive for a player to "bluff," or play a "phony" - a plausible word that they know or suspect to be unacceptable. Players have divergent opinions on this aspect of the double-challenge game.

• A pure "single challenge" or "free challenge" rule, in which no penalty whatsoever is applied to a player who unsuccessfully challenges. This is the official rule in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as for many tournaments in Australia.

• A modified "single challenge" rule, in which an unsuccessful challenge does not result in the loss of the challenging player's turn, but is penalized by the loss of a specified number of points. The most common penalty is 5 points. The rule has been adopted in Singapore and Malaysia (since 2000), South Africa (since 2003), New Zealand (since 2004), and Kenya, as well as in contemporary World Scrabble Championships (since 2001). Some countries and tournaments (including Sweden) use a 10-point penalty instead. In most game situations, this penalty is much lower than that of the "double challenge" rule; consequently, such tournaments encourage a greater willingness to challenge and a lower willingness to play dubious words.

Club and tournament play

Tens of thousands play club and tournament Scrabble worldwide. The intensity of play, obscurity of words, and stratospheric scores in tournament games may come as a shock to many parlor players. All tournament (and most club) games are played with a game clock and a set time control. Typically each player has twenty-five minutes in which to make all of his or her plays. For each minute by which a player oversteps the time control, a penalty of ten points is assessed. The number of minutes is rounded up, so that if a player oversteps time control by two minutes and five seconds, the penalty is thirty points. In addition, the players use special tiles called Protiles which are not engraved, like wooden tiles are, thereby eliminating the potential for a cheating player to "braille" (feel for particular tiles, especially blanks, in the bag).

Players are allowed "tracking sheets", preprinted with the letters in the initial pool, from which tiles can be crossed off as they are played. "Tracking" tiles is an important aid to strategy, especially during the "endgame", when no tiles remain to be drawn and each player can determine exactly what is on the opponent's rack.

The most prestigious (regularly held) tournaments include:

1. The World Scrabble Championship: held in odd years, the last was in London in 2005.
2. The former National Scrabble Championship, now the US Scrabble Open: an open event attracting several hundred players, held in the summer every year or two, most recently in Phoenix on August 4-9, 2006. The event will not be held in 2007.
3. The Canadian National Championship: invitational to the top fifty players, held every two to three years.

Clubs in North America typically meet one day a week for three or four hours and some charge a small admission fee to cover their expenses and prizes. Clubs also typically hold at least one open tournament per year. Tournaments are usually held on weekends, and between six and nine games are played each day. During off hours at tournaments, many players socialize by playing consultation (team) Scrabble, Clabbers, Anagrams, Boggle and other games.

Strategy and tactics

The object of the game is to score more points than your opponent. The key skills are knowing which words are acceptable or unacceptable (according to the official tournament reference) and being able to find them from a jumbled set of letters. Almost all serious tournament players study word lists extensively, and practice solving words from alphagrams or randomly jumbled letters. Only a few players know all the acceptable words for international play. But it is almost certain that the premier players know almost all, if not all, of the words they are likely to come across in their lifetime. For instance, there is no practical advantage in knowing a word like ZYZZYVAS, as this would require an extremely improbable rack containing both Ys, both blanks, and the only Z. By contrast, there is great value in learning and reliably finding the word ATRESIA, which uses a very common group of letters.

For a beginning club player, the most important list to memorize is acceptable two-letter words, because these allow one to play parallel to existing words, often scoring more points than merely extending or crossing a word. After mastering the two-letter words, a beginner can greatly benefit by studying the shorter words containing high scoring tiles e.g. QAT, ZEK, JEUX, as well as "hook" lists which show what letters can be added to the front and back of words and are therefore essential for forming multiple words in a turn. Until March 2006 and the release of the OWL 2, which for the first time included QI as an acceptable word, an important strategy was to memorize the words which have a Q but no U, in case they had a Q on their rack without a U. The addition of QI has made the U-less Q words less critical, since the probability that a player will have an unplayable Q has been significantly reduced. Another important tip for beginners is to strategically utilize S's and the blanks, which are by far the most useful for hooks and for bingos. Above a certain level of play, a good rule of thumb is that holding onto an S is worth 8–10 points, and a blank upwards of 25 points.

Esoteric words do not necessarily score more points than common words. For example FAERIE, depending on board placement, may score fewer points than FAIRY. The word CWM is quite famous for being a three-letter word with no vowels - not even a Y, which is often used as a vowel substitute - but it generally scores less than MACAW, for example. In this particular case, the player who plays CWM also risks overloading his rack with vowels. However, experienced players often choose to forego points on an individual turn, in favor of practicing good rack management.

Letters which are worth four or more points should be played on premium squares if possible, and letters such as X, H, and Y are powerful if they can score in both directions, for four or six times their face value. A vowel next to a double- or triple-letter score creates a hot spot where a valuable consonant can potentially be played for many points. A good strategy for intermediate players is to memorize all the words that involve the "Power" tiles (k, j, q, z, and x) that are five letters long or shorter. Knowledge of these words can increase a player's scoring 10-20 points per game when applied correctly.

Rack management is the strategic element most overlooked by beginners. It is disadvantageous to keep duplicates of most letters or to have a large imbalance between vowels and consonants. For example, the highest scoring whole word that can be formed with the letters AADIIKR is DARK. However, this leaves the player with no consonants and a double I. Because vowels are more commonly represented in Scrabble, it is entirely possible that the player will enter the following turn holding the unpromising letters AIIEUAO, for example. If the player had instead played RADII - which scores fewer points than DARK - he or she would have been left with an A and K, a combination which is common. Experts who know all the four-letter words might also have played KADI or RAKI to good effect, leaving an R and a D respectively.

Defense is another important part of strategy. Experienced players consider how opponents could exploit their tiles and avoid creating easy setups. For instance, the word QUIT provides a 14 point bonus to any opponent who has the letter E (thus making QUITE). A seasoned player would rather put a consonant next to a bonus tile than a vowel. Players take care to place the letter U in inconvenient locations if the letter Q has not yet been played.

Because of the 50-point bonus for using all seven tiles in one turn, many players manage their racks specifically to score as many bingos as possible. Making seven- and eight-letter words is generally the fastest way to achieve a high score. The letters A, E, I, N, R, S, and T are the most useful letters for this purpose, and so a good player will be reluctant to play off these letters without some benefit in return. Conversely, good players will strive to play off undesirable tiles, at times even if that play is not the highest scoring one available, and will use a turn to exchange tiles if necessary.

A good tactic for intermediate level players is to memorize "bingo stems," or groups of six letters that combine well with almost any seventh letter to form a bingo. The best bingo stem to have is TISANE, followed by SATIRE and RETINA. With TISANE on the rack, any seventh letter except for Q or Y (or, in North America, J) will create a seven letter word (TISANE + A = TAENIAS or ENTASIA; TISANE + B = BASINET or BANTIES; TISANE + C = CINEAST or ACETINS; etc.) Since many of these seven letter words are obscure, it is useful to memorize not only the stem, but all the possible bingos that may be created with it. In order to speed up this process both for memorization and during play, some players utilize mnemonics, including a specific type known by the coined term "anamonics" (see links below).

Experts at the highest level average over two bingos a game, and four bingos by a player in a single game is not at all uncommon. Given that a bingo conveys a 50 point bonus, at the tournament level, the number of bingos is often the determining factor in a game. At the highest level of competitive Scrabble, knowledge of the words that are acceptable for gameplay -- along with their "hooks" -- is by far the most important factor. Scrabble experts tend to play games that provide ample openings for their opponents to utilize premium squares, unlike intermediate players, who tend to be more concerned about blocking their opponents. The need for defensive strategy decreases as word knowledge increases.

It's a good idea to manually "shuffle" your tiles as you consider possible words, as a study has proven that players who physically manipulate tiles using their hands generate more possible words than those that do not.

Computer players

Scrabble has been an object of interest for many artificial intelligence researchers and enthusiasts. As already outlined above, playing the word with the highest score is not always the best strategy, so teaching a computer to play well requires knowledge of a number of much more subtle strategies.

The game is especially interesting to implement because it can be broken down into two phases that are, from a computer's perspective, fundamentally different. The first lasts from the beginning of the game up until the last tile in the bag is drawn. During this phase, it is not known what the other players' tiles are, and the game has an element of randomness. However, when the last tile is drawn and the bag is empty, the computer can deduce from the overall letter distribution what letters must be on the other players' racks. In particular, when playing against a single opponent, the computer knows exactly the tiles on your rack and thus what your possible moves are for the rest of the game.

The best known Scrabble AI player is Maven, created by Brian Sheppard. The official Scrabble computer game in North America uses a version of Maven as its artificial intelligence and is released by Atari. The official downloadable version which uses Maven was created by Funkitron. An open source challenger to Maven has been created, called Quackle, which may soon supersede its talents. Outside of North America, the official Scrabble computer game is released by Ubisoft.

Computer versions

There have been many software versions of the Scrabble game.

• Super Scrabble (Game Boy) (1991)
• Hasbro Scrabble 1 CD-ROM (1996)
• Hasbro Scrabble 2 CD-ROM (1999)
• Funkitron Scrabble Download (2001)
• Atari Scrabble Online CD-ROM (2003)

There have also been some derivative works from Scrabble.

• Scrabble Blast (Boggle-like Scrabble)
• Scrabble Rack Attack (Anagram game)

Records

The following records were achieved during competitive club or tournament play, according to authoritative sources, including the book Everything Scrabble by Joe Edley and John D. Williams, Jr. (revised edition, Pocket Books, 2001) and the Scrabble FAQ. When available, separate records are listed based upon different official word lists: 1) OSPD or OCTWL, the North American list also used in Thailand and Israel; 2) OSW, formerly the official list in the UK; and 3) SOWPODS, the combined OSPD+OSW now used in much of the world. To date, new editions or revisions of these lists have not been considered substantial enough to warrant separate record-keeping.

• High game (OSPD) — 830 by Michael Cresta (MA), October 12, 2006. Cresta defeated Wayne Yorra 830-490.
• High game (OSW) — 793 by Peter Preston (UK), 1999.
• High game (SOWPODS) — 750 by Edward Okulicz (Australia), 2004. As Edward's opponent passed without playing on the majority of his turns, this record is of debatable legitimacy. The recognised record for Australian SOWPODS play is 698 by Chris May, 2006.
• High combined score (OSPD) — 1320 (830–490) by Michael Cresta and Wayne Yorra, in a Lexington, MA, club, 2006.
• High combined score (SOWPODS) — 1082 by Helen Gipson and David Webb, 2000.
• Highest losing score (OSPD) — 545 by Kevin Rickhoff (CA) to Mark Milan's (CA) 558, Round 18 of the 2006 U.S. Scrabble Open.
• Highest tie game (OSPD) — 502–502 by John Chew and Zev Kaufman at a 1997 Toronto Club tournament.
• Highest opening move score (OSPD) — BEZIQUE, 124 by Sam Kantimathi (CA) in Portland, OR Tournament in 1992. The highest possible legal score on a first turn is MUZJIKS, 128.
• Highest single play (OSPD) QUIXOTRY, 365 by Michael Cresta (MA), 2006.
• Highest single play (SOWPODS) CAZIQUES 392 Karl Khoshnaw.
• Highest Average Score (two-day tournament) (OSPD) — 467 by Joel Sherman over 11 rounds; Wisconsin Dells, WI 1997.

In the absence of better documentation, it is believed that the following records were achieved under a formerly popular British format known as the "high score rule", in which a player's tournament result is determined only by the player's own scores, and not by the differentials between that player's scores and the opponents'. As a result, play in this system "encourages elaborate setups often independently mined by the two players", and is profoundly different from the true competitive game in which defensive considerations play a major role. While the "high score" rule has unsurprisingly led to impressively high records, it is currently out of favor throughout the world; associating its records with normal competitive play is extremely misleading.

• High game score of 1,049 by Phil Appleby of Lymington, Hants, UK, on June 25, 1989 in Wormley, Herts, UK. His opponent scored just 253 points, giving Appleby a record victory margin of 796 points.
• High single-turn score of 392, by Dr. Saladin Karl Khoshnaw in Manchester, UK, in April 1982. The word he used was CAZIQUES, meaning "native chiefs of West Indian aborigines".

Other records are available for viewing at Total Scrabble, an unofficial record book which includes the above as sources and expands on other topics.

International versions

Versions of the game have been released in several other languages. For more information, see Scrabble letter distributions.

The game is commonly known as Alfapet in Sweden.

In 2005, a Welsh language version of Scrabble was launched, with separate tiles for Welsh letters such as ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th.

Strategy Scrabble

Strategy Scrabble is the newest variation of Scrabble. It is for two players only. What happens is that both players can see their opponent's tiles. This greatly reduces the 'luck' factor and gives players the option to think on many new lines rather than just counting tiles. It is currently offered online at Scrabulous.

Game board formats

A pair of green plastic racks

The game has been released in numerous game board formats appealing to various user groups. The original boards included wood tiles and many "deluxe" sets still do.

Travel editions

Editions are available for travellers who may wish to play either in a conveyance such as a train or plane, or who may wish to pause a game in progress and resume later. To accommodate this many including methods to keep letters from moving, such as pegboards, recessed tile holders and magnetic tiles. Players' trays are also designed with stay-fast holders. Such boards are also typically designed to be folded and stowed with the game in progress.

• Spear's Games 1980s - boxed edition with pegboard, plastic tiles with small feet to fit snugly in the pegboard. Racks are clear plastic, allowing some sorting while holding tiles fairly snugly. Set comes with a drawstring plastic bag to draw tiles and a cardboard box. It is possible to save a game in progress by returning the board to the box. There is risk of players' trays being mixed and upset, and the box lid, held on by friction, is subject to upset.

• _____ 1980s - pocket edition with plastic "magnetic" board and tiles. Tile racks are also plastic with asymmetrical shape to provide handhold. All elements fit in a plastic envelope for travel and to permit a pause in the game. Plastic letters are very small and tend to lose their grip if not placed with slight lateral movement and if they are not perfectly clean. Game format is extremely small, allowing Scrabble games for backpackers and others concerned about weight and size.

• _____ 2000+ - hinged plastic board with clear tile-shaped depressions to hold tiles in play. Board is in a zippered folio such that board and tiles may be folded for travel, even with game in play. Reverse side of board contains numbered mounts for racks, holding tiles face down, allowing secure and confidential storage of tiles while game is paused. Tile racks have individual tile positions, thus not permitting easy sorting of tiles in rack.

Deluxe editions

At the opposite end, some "deluxe" editions offer superior materials and features. These include editions on a rotating turntable so players can always face the board with the letters upright. More serious players often favor custom Scrabble boards, often made of Lucite or hardwood, that have superior rotating mechanisms and personalized graphics.

Works detailing tournament Scrabble

An entertaining and highly informed introduction to tournament Scrabble and its players can be found in the book Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. In the process of writing, Fatsis himself progressed into a high-rated tournament player.

There have been numerous documentaries made about the game, including:

• Word Wars (2004) by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo, about the "tiles and tribulations on the Scrabble game circuit".
• Scrabylon (2003), by Scott Petersen, which "gives an up-close look at why people get so obsessed with that seemingly benign game..."
• Word Slingers by Eric Siblin and Stefan Vanderland (produced for CBC, 2002), which follows four expert Canadian players at the 2001 World Championship in Las Vegas.

References in literature, television, music and film

File:Scrabble 6x9.jpg

Scrabble used to try and find the Question to the Ultimate Answer, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Scrabble is referenced frequently in pop culture, most likely due to its popularity, accessibility, and universal familiarity. Due to the selection of random letters under an individual's limited control, the device is often used as a method for characters to receive supernatural or occult messages, much like a Ouija board. Template:Spoilers

Television

• In Spaced, (BBC TV Series), episode "Epiphanies" (series 1, episode 6), Daisy and Tim substitute a game of Scrabble for sex in order to maintain the platonic nature of their relationship. Tim attempts to defend the word "Shazam" as being a word uttered by Captain Marvel, and Daisy defends "ProV" as being the thing that makes Pantene Pro V shampoo work. Some play fighting with Scrabble pieces ensues, and suddenly the word "fuck" pops up on the table. Tim and Daisy give each other a knowing glance, and the scene ends.
• In Red Dwarf (BBC TV Series), episode "Bodyswap" (series 3 episode 4), Cat plays the word jozxyqk, claiming it to be a cat word meaning "the sound you get when you get your sexual organs trapped in something."
• In Friends (a U.S. situation comedy), during the first season, the gang plays Scrabble. Monica tries to put down the word "tushie." Ross uses "garge" (which he claims is a nautical term), and Chandler uses Ross's argument for "garge" for a word he invented, "fligament." Later, Ross's pet monkey Marcel chokes on Scrabble tiles. Also, Chandler gives Rachel a Travel Scrabble board for her birthday.
• In Will & Grace (a U.S. situation comedy), Episode 117, Jack invents the word "spramp" during a game of Scrabble and rigorously defends it against Will's challenge.
• In Little Britain (BBC TV Series) the character Kenny Craig hypnotises his mother to believe that "cupboardy" is a real word so that he can use it to score points in a game of Scrabble (by adding the letter Y to the existing word "cupboard").
• In The Simpsons episode "Bart the Genius," Homer plays "do" from his rack of "OXIDIZE" and Bart follows with the phony word "Kwyjibo," worth at least 113 points (2*(5+4+4+8+(1*2)+3+(1*2))+(3+~1)+(1*2+~1)+50, where ~ = 'at least' because Bart's hand blocks the two tiles that appear to be next to B and O (let us assume there are no blank tiles used); the I and O count twice because they would fall on Double Letter Score tiles), according to its placement on the board if we assume the top right corner shown is the top-right Triple Word Score. (View) Homer challenges the word and Bart defines it as "A big, dumb, balding North American ape… with no chin," obviously referring to Homer himself. In the Mattel game "Simpsons Scrabble", kwyjibo is listed, along with other Simpsons-related words, as acceptable for use in the game. One of its Cards however, says instead that Kwyjibo defines a big, dumb, smelly Scrabble Player.
• In a Seinfeld episode Kramer suggests to Jerry's mother that she put down the word "quone". She does and Jerry challenges it. When he doesn't find it in the dictionary Kramer claims it is a medical term. "If a patient becomes difficult, you quone him."
• In the final-ever episode of Frasier, there is a discussion between Frasier Crane and girlfriend Charlotte over the Scrabble-worthiness of the word quilty.
• In The Critic, an episode shows Jay Sherman playing Scrabble with his boss Duke, trying to ease Duke's depression over an imminent death by a rare incurable disease. Duke puts down the phony word "kwizabuk", which Jay naturally challenges, leading Duke to phone the offices of Webster's Dictionary and pay to make it a real word that means "a really big problem". A doctor shortly after in the episode is seen using the word.
• In The Vicar of Dibley (BBC TV Series), whilst playing Scrabble, Geraldine Granger asks how the Geordie exclamation, "why aye!" is spelt. After being informed it is not spelled "YI", she quickly discards the tiles in her hand.
• In the King of the Hill episode "Unfortunate Son", Cotton Hill puts down the word "Anzio" in a game of Scrabble at the Arlen VFW.
• In the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Bad Words," a tournament was featured in which participants played LOGOS, a word game similar to Scrabble (apparently to avoid the hassle of obtaining permission to use the actual game).
• In Dilbert (TV Series), while Dilbert, Dilbert's Mom, and Dogbert are playing Scrabble, Dogbert lays down "QUIZZES", without using any blank tiles. It is later revealed that he is making his own tiles under the table with a pyrograph.
• In That '70s Show, before Scrabble night starts, Red walks in on Bob washing his toupee, which had formerly been a secret. During the very awkward game, Red holds "BALDING", Kitty holds "A BAD RUG", and Bob has "SHOOT ME". Midge passes even though she has "ZYGOTES". Later on Red puts down "CUEBALL" and apologizes to Bob.

• In The Sopranos episode "Pine Barrens," Meadow Soprano and Jackie Aprile Jr. play a game of Scrabble in Meadow's dorm room. The none-too-bright Jackie objects to Meadow's playing the word "oblique," thinking it a Spanish word and pronouncing it "ob-LEE-kay."

Film

• In Heartbreakers (from a deleted scene), Sigourney Weaver and Gene Hackman are seen playing a game of Scrabble.
• In Sneakers (written by Phil Alden Robinson, Walter Parkes, and Lawrence Lasker), the main character Martin Bishop, played by Robert Redford, and Liz, played by Mary McDonnell, use Scrabble tiles to create anagrams from "Setec Astronomy", eventually coming across "Too Many Secrets", which refers to the hidden function of the black box acquired from a mathematical genius' laboratory.
• In the film Two Hands (Gregor Jordan), the character Pando, played by Bryan Brown plays the word "exquisite" down the right-hand side of the board, showing he is more than just your average gangster.
• In Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski), the main character Rosemary Woodhouse uses Scrabble tiles to create anagrams in an attempt to find a clue to her circumstances. After fruitlessly looking for anagram of a book title, "All Of Them Witches," she sees the name "Steven Marcato" underlined in it, and rearranges the tiles to discover it is an anagram of "Roman Castevet," her mysterious neighbor.
• In King Ralph, the main character who is played by John Goodman is seen playing Scrabble on a date in Buckingham Palace.
• In Roger & Me, Michael Moore visits a Scrabble convention, where a player talks about a word she used that was not really a word.
• Scrabble and the tournament scene revolving around it are the subject of the documentary Word Wars. This film tracks the rise to top contending status of G.I. Joel, as well as the paths of former champ Joe Edley, black militant Marlon Hill, and all-around obsessive competitor Matt Graham.
• In The Shaggy Dog, Dave Douglas, who at that point was a dog, used Scrabble pieces to spell "I AM DAD", to tell the kids that he was their father.
• In Foul Play (1985), Goldie Hawn's character Gloria Mundy attempts to get the attention of two older women playing Scrabble to help her escape from her kidnappers. One woman ads UCK to a dangling F. Her opponent ads ER to the UCK. The first woman tries to trump the addition by adding the prefix MUTHER. The second woman challenges that the word is spelled with a hyphen.
• In Black Hawk Down, Helicopter pilots Michael Durant and Cliff Wolcott argue over the Scrabble-worthiness of the word Limo.
• In Comedians of Comedy, Zach Galifianakis explains that the only suitable time to yell out, "I have diarrhea!", is when one is playing Scrabble, because " .. it's worth a shit load of points."
• In The Wedding Planner, Maria Fiore's father usually plays Scrabble with others in a game room.

Literature

• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), the main character, Arthur Dent, while stranded on a planet which turns out to be pre-historic earth, creates a primitive set of Scrabble tiles, though he has no viable opponents with whom to play. He later attempts to use these tiles as a method of divining the Ultimate Question to The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything by taking letters randomly from the bag and placing them on the board to form the words - 'what do you get if you multiply six by nine?' As the answer is already known to be 42, this prompts Arthur to remark - 'I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.' Note that in a regulation Scrabble set, this sentence would be impossible to create, as it contains 4 Y's, 2 more than the set contains. (Blanks could be used, however.)
• In The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), Scrabble is used as a pretext for the commander to have non-sexual interactions with the main character, Offred, though these interactions are forbidden by the laws and customs of their dystopian society.
• In the novel Watchers, a genetically enhanced dog learns to communicate with Scrabble tiles.
• The Charles Bukowski poem "pulled down shade" ends in the lines "this fucking / Scotch is / great. / let's play / Scrabble".
• In the novel Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, the title character scores 383 points on a single turn. She plays a 37 point word across two triple word scores, to which is added a 50 point bonus for playing all of her tiles.
• In jPod, a character hands out a list of 3-letter words acceptable in Scrabble -- with a phony inserted. The prize for the first to find it is a Toblerone.

Music

• In the song Seven Days from the album Ten Summoner's Tales, Sting sings, "I.Q. is no problem here; we won't be playing Scrabble for her hand, I fear."
• In the song Conventioneers from the album Maroon by Barenaked Ladies, the protagonist goes "Right up to your room for a drink and travel Scrabble."
• In the song Hiccups from the album Hello Stranger, Darren Hanlon sings, "Someday, without trying you'll find something that's rare; like an eight letter word on a triple word square."
• In the song Your Disco Needs You from the album Light Years, Kylie Minogue sings, "Desperately seeking someone willing to travel; You’re lost in conversation and useless at Scrabble."

Other media

• The classic Canadian NFB animated short The Big Snit includes a game of Scrabble where one unlucky player gets a rack of seven Es (EEEEEEE).
• In the online webcomic The Order of the Stick, a Mind Flayer plays the word "zyqxuwy" in a game against Elan, claiming it to be "a type of fish". Much to Elan's dismay, the Flayer also played it on a triple-word score.
• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin scores 957 points for playing ZQFMGB on a double-word score. When Hobbes challenges him, Calvin claims that ZQFMGB is a worm found in New Guinea.
• In the December 14th, 1986 strip of Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes scores 150 points for playing ZYGOMORPHIC on a triple-word score. He follows that by playing NUCLEOPLASM for 40 points during his next turn.
• Scrabble appears in various online animations. One of the most well known is CRAZIEST, a short, somewhat satirical movie about obsession with Scrabble.

See also

• Scrabble letter values
• List of two-letter English words
• Scrabble variants
• Super Scrabble
• Literati - a variant created by Yahoo! Games
• Scrabble (game show)
• Anagram
• Blanagram
• Clabbers
• Anamonic

External links

• U.S. patent 2,752,158 — "Game apparatus" — This patent used to protect the jagged edges of bonus fields which were added so that one need not lift previously placed tiles in order to see the bonus. It expired decades ago.
• Mattel's scrabble website
• Hasbro's scrabble website
• Online Scrabble dictionary Contains online dictionaries of SOWPODS and TWL where you can look up words.
• analysis of the legendary 502-502 tie game (John Chew v. Zev Kaufman, Toronto, 1997)
• The American National Scrabble Association
• Association of British Scrabble Players
• Scrabble Australia
• FISE Federation International Scrabble Spanish
• Scrabble FAQ