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

Entry: Scrabble - The Word Game - A30038591
Author: The Apprentice - My Cat Sucks! - U35204

Retrieved from the Flea Market, I think I have caught a fair few issues - but have probably thrown in more in modifying and expanding the article. Feedback appreciated!

The Apprentice

Twelve words with Q that don't have a U in them...??

SHEQUALIM ??

I quite like the entry


(sorry I should have added that above)..

The reference to twelve came from the original author and I didn't doublecheck. I have now... and have changed the wording as a result.

The Apprentice

Sometimes picking up a Flea Market entry can be more difficult than starting from scratch

Flea Market entry -- start from scratch

*giggles*


Ooops..

Puntastic!

The Apprentice

You could mention that there are a number of Scrabble games available.

The basic game comes with a cardboard game board, 4 plastic tile holders, and plastic tiles.

The deluxe game has a cardboard game board, 4 wooden tile holders, plastic tiles, a swivel base and a velvet tile bag.

I believe there are other versions available, such as breast cancer support etc, that are the same as the basic game.

I cannot check the exact specs, but I believe the deluxe game also has wooden tiles.

Hope that helps.

There are also a couple of books available, which I have... The official Scrabble handbook and the Official Scrabble dictionary.



MMF

I enjoyed the entry.
Grandmas & eggs here? ... but a few typo-type things:

Header The Game,
SubHeader Gameplay,
- point 1: "You can pluralize a word and if you add one or more letters, and you get points for the entire new word." : one too many ands - the second.

- point 4: "The tiles that one puts on the board must be adjacent, horizontally or vertically,..." I'd suggest, for a bit more clarity,: must be adjacent, 'either' horizontally...

- subsequent para: "you must draw back up to seven tiles" ->
you must draw enough tiles to make your holding back up to seven,?

- next para but 1: a specific dictionary / issue of... ?

- last para: proper nouns 'or' ?


Subhead Scoring and points:

- After the table, 1st para after the points, "You can only get the benefit of a Premium Square once per game." - ...particular Premium Square...? (Capitals?)


The Qs: you've given shequalim a U - does it belong? - is it plural of sheqel? (shekel?)</>

- fourth point: "Leave space open for you to make additional plays": leave out 'for you'?


Header Variations
- 1st point: "You may change the arrangement of a word to an anagrams before you play your turn," singular anagram here!

Nice entry, Jordan

Cheers, RodtheBrit - I think I've now corrected all of those!

Good stuff!

Re: QUARTZY, the Z and Q are worth the same, so either of them could be placed on the double letter score to get 164 points.

8-letter words across both triples are the best way of scoring lots of points (since you multiply it by 9) - QUIXOTIC (with the X on the double letter) would for example be the best play I can think of. Apparently Nancy Butts (Alfred's wife) played this once (with the O on the double letter, and using a blank) when they were initially testing the game and scored 284 points for it! [I'll have to have a look in a book when I get back home again to find out the highest scoring play ever - can't remember it off the top of my head.]

Might say more later when I have more time to read!

Apprentice: sorry, I got the wrong acknowledgement for your work. )Jordan(

No problem, Rod... It's a Flea pick... So, Jordan and I both have something in the mix...

The Apprentice

I love how there are already two lovely ancillary edited scrabble entries AND Skanyrich's Bingo entry, but until now, no edited entry on the game itself

COuld you mention a bit about different language versions of Scrabble having different distributions and points? 10 points for a Y in German Scrabble, but only 3 (unless memory not so good) for the common Z.

vp

Apprentice:

Intro para 2:
Maybe you ought to mention the World championships? They've been going for some years, this year in Mumbai. (http://live.wscgames.com/2007/index.html).


The UK TV gameshow 'Countdown' (a long-runnuing, v popular show) had, at one time, one Mark Nyman on the staff.
Mark, the show's first 'Champion of Champions' subsequently appeared in the game's 'Dictionary Corner'. He is a past UK Scrabble Champ - And World champ in 1993 (http://www.ukgameshows.com/page/index.php/Mark_Nyman)


Pick some bones out of that?

'Placing multiple words in one turn' - this makes is sound as if you can have two goes at once - I'm not sure that's what you mean.

'You may also use a turn to exchange some or all of your tiles by replacing a number tiles that you have with the same quantity of new tiles (provided that there are more than seven tiles left to draw).' I think you need to point out that that *is* your turn and you can't place letters as well.

'If it is not a recognised word, the player challenged loses his or her turn and receives zero points.' and has to remove the tiles from the board.

'foreign' - what? Since when?

Good entry - my Nan (before she died) and my parents play this quite a lot. I've given up because they're too good at it.

> 'Placing multiple words in one turn' - this makes is sound as if you can have two goes at once - I'm not sure that's what you mean.

I guess it should say "Creating" rather than "Placing".

> 'You may play outdated, slang, colloquial, foreign and archaic words.'

Well, I guess it depends on your agreed dictionary - if you were playing tournament Scrabble then it would have to be a word in the Scrabble dictionaries (which contain plenty of outdated, slang, colloquial, foreign and archaic words), which are in fact different in the US, Canada, Israel and Thailand, where they use TWL (Tournament Word List, loosely based on the OSPD - Official Scrabble Players Dictionary), to the rest of the world, which uses SOWPODS - a combination of OSPD and OSW (Official Scrabble Words). There are more words in SOWPODS - for example there are 124 SOWPODS 2-letter words, but only 101 TWL 2-letter words. I'm not sure whether there are still any words that are in TWL but not SOWPODS - I'll have to look this up later when I get home.

"I'll have to look this up later when I get home"

Won't that take quite a long time? As I understand it, there are quite a lot of words to check???

I suppose so! What I meant was, I wanted to look up a word that was in TWL but not SOWPODS from a book I've got on tournament Scrabble, and check that it's still the case by using the online dictionaries.