Anagrab Anagrab is a word game which is usually played with
Scrabble tiles. The name is an amalgam of the words
anagram (the basic game mechanism) and
grab - because a player's words may at any time be taken by opponents. The game was first described in 1976 in Richard Sharp's
The Best Games People Play, but his description suggests that he did not invent it.
Gameplay Letter tiles are placed face down and turned over one at a time. At any point (there are no turns) any player may call out a word of at least four letters. This word can be made either entirely from the pool of letters, or by adding at least one new letter to an existing word. If the new word is acceptable the person who said the word first takes the letters and places them as a word in front of them. When making a new word the root of the existing word must be changed - for example D could not be added to the word LIVE to make LIVED, but it could make DEVIL. All the letters in an existing word must be included in the new one, plus at least one more. When a new letter is turned over, the first person to say a valid word takes it. If more than one is said at the same time the longer word takes it. If the two are the same length (or the same word) then those words are banned for the rest of the game and nobody takes it.
Scoring Sharp suggests that the score for each word is the face value of the tiles multiplied by the number of letters in that word. In practice any reasonable system, such as totaling the number of letters held, is acceptable.
Anagrams Anagrams (also called Snatch or Snatch-words) is a fast-paced, non-turn-based
Scrabble variant played without a board. The tiles are placed face-down in the middle of the table, and players take turns flipping a single tile, leaving it in clear view of all players. Otherwise the game is not turn-based, and the rules are very simple: any player who sees a
Scrabble-valid word can call it out, take the letters, and lay the word out in front of herself. At the end of the game each player's collection of individual words is scored. To create the words, players can: • take whole words (of 3 or more letters) from the communal pool of exposed, unused letters; • add letters to an existing word on the table—whether their own or any opponent's. (Therefore, even if a player has found a word and placed it in front of herself, it can be stolen at any time if someone can combine its tiles with any loose tiles to make a new valid word. For example, if Sally already has SATE in front of her and a G comes up in the pool, any player can steal it by calling out "GATES". Sally can prevent the theft by calling out the word herself.); • take multiple words from the table and combine them with a letter (or letters) from the pool to create a new word. For example, a player may combine FEW, SATE and the G to steal WEFTAGES. Some versions forbid combining existing words without adding at least one extra letter. A version of the game seems to be popular among tournament
Scrabble players. Writers
John Ciardi,
James Merrill,
John Malcolm Brinnin, and
Richard Wilbur reputedly played together regularly in
Key West, Florida, with novelist
John Hersey also sometimes sitting in.
Clabbers Clabbers is the best known variant to tournament
Scrabble players. All of the rules are identical to
Scrabble with one exception: words played only have to be
anagrams of real words. For example, MPORCTEU is a valid play in Clabbers because it is an anagram of COMPUTER. The increased ability to play parallel to pre-existing words makes for much higher scores. A variant of this is Multi-Anagram Clabbers, in which players receive the basic score for any set of letters played multiplied by the number of valid anagrams for that set of letters. Opponents may "steal" points, once the initial player has declared their turn complete, by announcing other anagrams that the first player neglected to mention. In finding such anagrams, the blank must be declared as only one letter and may not change. For example, with a rack of AEILNS? (? = blank), a player announcing that the blank was a C and announcing the words SANICLE and INLACES would receive twice the base score; their opponent could steal the word SCALENI and score the base amount, but could not change the C to a T and earn points for SALTINE.
Duplicate Duplicate Scrabble is a form of organized tournament
Scrabble popular in
French-speaking countries, in which in each round all players receive the same tiles and, within a fixed time limit, have to find the highest scoring word. Players only receive points for their own words, and at the end, when there are no more
consonants or no more
vowels, the player with the most points wins the game. This form of
Scrabble can often result in many players participating simultaneously; the official record for participation in
France, where Duplicate
Scrabble is the preferred form of the game, is 1485 at the 1998 tournament in
Vichy. It is also the predominant format used in the
French World Scrabble Championships.
Ecological Scrabble The name of this variant stems from the fact that the blank tiles can be
recycled. If a blank is played, any player may remove it from the board at the start of their turn and replace it with the letter it was declared to represent. For example, if PEAk is played (with a blank K), a player may take the blank and lay an actual K in its place. However, they may not replace it with any other letter that would form a valid word, such as L (PEAL), R (PEAR), S (PEAS), or T (PEAT).
Solitaire Scrabble Solitaire Scrabble follows the same rules and word acceptability as normal
Scrabble, but there is only one player. Solitaire Scrabble can be played against a clock, trying to get the most points in a certain length of time or for highest maximum score.
Tag Team This variant is played with two teams of two players each, with each player possessing his/her own rack. On each team's turn, one of the players makes a play, followed immediately by a play by the teammate. Set-ups are quite common; a team set up a 302-point triple-triple MENAZo(N)S at the 2010
National Scrabble Championship's Tag Team Tournament.
Take Two Take Two (also called Speed Scrabble and similar to
Bananagrams) is a fast-paced, non-turn-based
Scrabble variant played without a board. Tiles are placed face-down in the middle of the table in a communal pool and each player is given a small number of face-up starting tiles. From their starting tiles,
each player tries to build his own valid
Scrabble grid—players do not use each other's grid or tiles. When a player successfully uses all of his face-up tiles, he shouts "take two", and every player takes two more tiles. Play continues until there are no more tiles left to draw. In some variants, the person who creates the first complete grid when all the tiles run out is the winner. In others, a calculation based on word length is used to determine the winner. Some variants allow for the exchange of unwanted tiles. Local variants include Take One or Take Four; the banning of 2 letter words; having a dictionary on hand for any players to use (but since it is a game of speed, this doesn't get used much); a bonus of 50 points for building a specific word, a bonus for longest word (number of letters in word, not tile values; and only if a single player has longest word), etc.
Team Speed Scrabble Team Speed Scrabble is when teams of 2, 3, or 4 race to play legal
Scrabble words as quickly as possible. Scoring does not matter; all that matters is how quickly words are played. This can be a co-operative game where all players are simply trying to complete the game as fast as possible. == Variants with non-standard equipment ==