h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Grabble -- hmm the name reminds me of a game (with Scrabble tiles) we nicknamed Scramble - must look up the entry...

Hmm - its not the same as Scramble - but similar...

In Scramble you get 7 letters - everybody tries to make words out of their letters.

The first one to use all their letters calls out "go" or "scramble" or whatever you decide the codeword is. If no-one can use all their tiles then you come to a decision after a while to continue.

Then everybody grabs another letter from the pile uses it to make another word or extend current words (you could at this stage take 2 or 3 tiles if you so decide that's your rule). First person to have used all tiles shouts out again.

Words can only be formed in normal scrabble ways - i.e. left to right or top to bottom. AND MUST LINK to other words you have....

When all the letters have gone you should have a set of intertwining words. First person to finish (i.e. shout out when they've placed their last tile) gets either 50 points, or value of rest of tiles not used (which in grand Scrabble Stylee values are removed from "losers" score).

Scores are made up from scrabble scores for letters, and extra points for longer words.... (scoring probly needs a bit of work...)

At any point in the game you can rearrange all your letters to form a new grid - but until you've finished rearranging you cannot shout out... ALSO when someone shouts YOU MUST grab a tile.

If at the end of a round any person has a non-valid word down that word is not counted, nor any word that relies on it (or is that too harsh?). IF the Caller has a non-valid word. They are "frozen-out" and the round continues until someone else calls.

Hmmm... Any feedback before I publish this..

My old english teacher would always make up words when she played with relatives but no one called her on it for the obvios reasons

I played that with some friends once, in teams of two. They called it "Go Scrabble". Quite good fun.

TRiG.