Scrabble II highlights: GESTATED CRABGRASS...
Donald Sauter
night, Wednesday, December 16, 2009, at the Dover Scrabble Club
(Delaware).
We averaged 28.0 Points Per Turn as a group, a little sub-average for
us. I took a dive on BEAKIER, PURTIER, and REWIPES. I had the good
sense not to risk JIMMIER (the burglar's right-hand man) on triple-
word score. I held my breath on "more than one bigamy", something the
American Heritage might not condone, But BIGAMIES was good, if too
little, too late. Elsie had jumped out of the gate with CAREENED and
CRABGRASS (a 3-blanker) and was up by almost 200 in no time.
Tile oddities: One game had 22E! (See CAREENED above and SWEETEN
below.) Another game had 3Z, 2J, 9D, 14O and 4V. Another game had
2Q, 2X, and 7S. Every game is fresh and different!
Scrabble II is the purest form of Scrabble played anywhere. A few
small, natural rule fixes keep players gunning for l---o---n---g
words. It pulls the rug out from under those ridiculous, tired, old,
connect-the-dot, baby-word plays that have become identified with
Scrabble over the last few decades. It restores Scrabble as test of
anagram skills. (How novel!)
Scrabble II does not allow phony words. In our club, we use a
conventional dictionary, the American Heritage. Scrabble II is more
intelligent, challenging, and sophisticated than modern American
tournament-style Scrabble in every way. Heck, over 40% of the oddball
plays on championship boards wouldn't even be allowed in our club.
See:
www.donaldsauter.com/scrabble-ii.htm
ALL I'M ASKING FOR . . .
1. Give it a try!
2. Give it a try and report back!
3. A quality Scrabble II program placed prominently on the internet.
I'll pay reasonable programming costs!
4. A dear, old benefactor to bankroll a Scrabble II tournament with
the largest ever cash prizes for a Scrabble tournament, which would
still amount to chicken feed!
5. Too stuck in your ways to try it? Send me photos or screen shots
of a batch of your best tournament-style, baby-word Scrabble games and
I'll make you famous with a web page like the one above for the
National Scrabble Champions!
6. If nothing else, think of me hooting "Bravo!" over your shoulder
every time you haul out one of tournament Scrabble's tired, old, baby-
word plays.
Here's what we played last night in 4 games:
*** 9-letter Words ***
CRABGRASS
*** 8-letter Words ***
ADDITION
BIGAMIES
CAREENED
CAROUSEL
GESTATED
PROFANES
RIPENING
STUPIDLY
*** 7-letter Words ***
ARDUOUS
BATHERS
BEANIES
DITZIER
DIVINED
DROVERS
EDIFICE
EQUATOR (Note: not QI)
GENUINE
GRABBED
HORRORS
LIBERTY
MANAGED
OUTPRAY
SOILING
SWEETEN
*** 6-letter Words ***
CRAVES
DENIES
GOOSED
LOANED
MAILED
MENIAL
OUTSET
POISED
QUAINT (Note: not QI)
REWIRE
RINGER
*** 5-letter Words ***
ACUTE
AUDIO
AWARE
CLOWN
GAZED
GREAT
GUARD
HOMER
IGLOO
JIVER
KNOTS
NONCE
QUAYS (Note: not QI)
RIDGE
SAUTE
SPERM
VAPID
VICAR
VIGOR
*** Selected 4-letter Words ***
EXEC
FRAY
FREE
HOWL
JINX
LIAR
MEDS
MEMO
ODOR
OVUM
SKIP
WHIM
*** Just these 3-letter Words ***
AGO AHA ARC ARE COW DIE EGO ENS EYE GAB HOW IVY JAM KIP LOX MAY NEE
NUN OAF ORE PAN PUB REF TAG TIE TOO WET WOE YON
*** Just these 2-letter Words ***
AD AN AT AY BI EF EL EM EN ER HA HI IT LA ME NO OH ON OS OX SH TO WE
You, too, can set your Scrabble board ablaze with REAL WORDS found in
a REAL DICTIONARY, and used by REAL PEOPLE:
www.donaldsauter.com/scrabble.htm
Donald Sauter
John
interesting.
Would you advise against playing Scrabble II on a regular board?
Donald Sauter
Hi John,
Full blown Scrabble II can easily be played on a regular board if the
players are willing to position themselves so the board can remain
stationary. The tiles extended past the border will simply sit on the
margins of the board, or on the table top.
If you are asking about the Scrabble II variant that I call Scrabble
II Lite, which uses the conventional board and the standard 7-tile
rack, with stepped bonuses of 10, 30 and 50 points for plays of 5, 6,
and 7 tiles, respectively, I have no doubt that that would work
marvelously even though I've never tried it. There's no reason for me
to step backwards.
I realize that at first blush, the extra tile and extended board of
Scrabble II might strike one as cheap or silly, like suggesting
training wheels to an Olympic bicyclist. I promise you'll find there
is nothing cheap or silly about it. It's like taking the straitjacket
off of Scrabble after 60 years.
Donald Sauter
John
because they are going to rotate the board. Does Scrabble II Lite
eliminate those 2 and 3 letter words which aren't commonly used?
Donald Sauter
Hey John,
There's still some lingering confusion about Scrabble II and the use
of oddball little words. I can sympathize with your confusion, and
maybe if I can get it to click for you, you can help me say it in a
way that will be clear to other Scrabble players.
It is imperative that everyone understands that Scrabble II does NOT
prescribe a particular word set. That would be absolute insanity on
my part. Even I have switched word sets, using an American Heritage
college edition for years before moving to the full-blown Fourth
Edition a few years ago. No doubt I'll change again somewhere down
the line.
Having said that, I would like to see Scrabble players experiment with
using a conventional dictionary. I'm sure many would find that the
game, being much less of an artificial point-scoring exercise, is more
interesting and exciting in every way.
Completely independent of the chosen word set is Scrabble II's rule
against plays of just 2-letter words. (There's another stumbling
block. Almost everybody misinterprets that. If I meant "no 2-letter
words", wouldn't I simply say that?) This rule requires that at least
one of the words formed in a play be at least three letters long, and
I still mentally call it the "three letter minimum rule" even though
no one can understand that either. No, I didn't say anything about
the number of tiles played.
The "three letter minimum rule" by itself does a fine job getting the
game off the mindless, worn out little plays where a high-scoring
consonant is plunked on a premium square in two directions, such as QI/
QI/IT. Now you have to stretch that out in at least one direction, in
this case blowing an S or blank to spell QIS (which has certainly
never been used in flowing English verbiage!)
Of course, the rule was not devised simply to stamp out mindless high-
scoring plays of 2-letter words, but to add a degree of intelligence
to the whole game. If you don't like that K in your rack, say, now
you can't just look around for an I on the board to unload it, you
have to make the determination if it's worth blowing that nice T as
well to spell KIT. Are three letter words too much to expect of
Scrabble players???
But the bottom line is, even if we in our club stepped down to the
OSPD word set, our boards would not look so tremendously different.
The three letter minimum rule by itself forces the game into a realm
of longer words, and for all but the most zealous word list
memorizers, that means a player's working vocabulary.
If anyone is still not sold, all I can say is, "Try it!"
Donald Sauter
Donald Sauter
I also wanted to say that I sure hope the problem of turning the board
is not the stumbling block to getting players to try Scrabble II.
It's an easy matter for the players to sit at neighboring corners of a
table and each be facing the board at a perfectly acceptable angle.
Also, If you check my current weekly post, "INFINITE FREEBIES",
there's an image that shows how simple it is to attach a backing to a
standard board. (Look at the cool game, too!)
Donald Sauter