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ATTENTION: This is a RETIRED web page, although you are more than welcome to stick around as long as you'd like. It is historically important. In February 2009 I revamped all my Scrabble pages, focusing everything on Scrabble II. What you see here represents a formative step leading up to Scrabble II.
What is Octo Scrabble?
Let me quote from my main Scrabble page:
Mark down February 2008 as the dawn of a new era in Scrabble. Even with all my previous efforts above to nudge the game towards longer words, that's when Scrabble finally broke out of its diapers as an exercise in pushing around baby blocks onto the colored squares into a joyful, full-grown word game for word lovers! I call the innovation Octo Scrabble. Here are the rules.
1. Fill your rack with 8 tiles (instead of 7).
2. Score bonuses for playing 6, 7, or 8 tiles at once, as follows:
Bonuses in Octo Scrabble Tiles Bonus Play Played Points called ------ ------ ---------------------------------------- 6 20 Little Bomb, or 6-tiler 7 50 Bingo, or 7-tiler 8 80 Big Bomb, Octo Bomb, or 8-tiler(And, incidentally, since the rack now has 8 tiles, the requirement on tiles needed in the bag for an exchange is upped to 8.)
Simple as that. You can forgo me stumbling around trying to find the words to convey the joy of Octo Scrabble; try it just once and see if you can ever turn back. But here's what to expect.
Octo Scrabble removes that "all or nothing" aspect of Scrabble in which either you have it or you don't, meaning either a rack with killer tiles or great bingo possibilities vs. a rack which is good for nothing. Octo Scrabble fills in that "no man's land" between high-scoring baby words and 7-tile bingoes. All of a sudden, the game is not weighted so heavily to "having the right goodies at the right time." You won't even need to groan when your opponent drops a brain-dead J, Q, X, or Z word on a triple-letter score while you sit there looking at a rack full of junky one-pointers. Now there's a just-right intermediate reward for a good, solid 6-tile play - a Little Bomb. Now you can make a solid score with a respectable word made up of that "junk". Now there's an incentive for playing a great, but formerly useless, word like GOATEE from a vowel-heavy rack out in the open, as opposed to "connecting the dots" of the colored squares step by step to fit GOAT onto triple-word score, exactly the same as 20 million other Scrabble players would do, exactly the same as your pet turtle would do.
Casual players for whom playing all seven tiles was a once in a lifetime event, if that, can now experience the thrill of dropping a Bingo Bomb here and there. If you are an old hand at bingoes, now there's the challenge of playing all eight tiles - the Big Bomb. Blammo!!!
The 8th tile cuts the probability of an all-vowel or all-consonant horror rack just about in half. It's only one step up from 7 tiles and will not overwhelm a player with tons of extra options to consider on every turn. I'll admit, when I first heard of people playing with 9 tiles - which is now a suggested variant in the set of rules that comes with Scrabble - I thought two things. First of all, "Kid's stuff!" And secondly, "Holy smokes, it would take me a half an hour to wade through the possibilites of 9 tiles!" Rest assured, there is nothing cheap or silly about 8 tiles, and there is nothing overwhelming about the possibilities. It plays just as fast or faster than the conventional seven.
Octo Scrabble just feels so much better. It's smooth; it flows; it's comfortable. It's like riding a good, 10-speed bike after decades of clunking yourself around on a heavy, old, American 1-speed. (Well, for this analogy, maybe you have to imagine a 10-speed bike with a nice, fat, padded seat and high-riser handlebars.) Try Octo Scrabble and tell me if I'm exaggerating or imagining things.
Here are the first Octo Scrabble games ever played in my Dover Scrabble Club. I had played two games a few days earlier with my family, but I did not have my computer along to record the finished boards. The GOATEE/GOAT example used above came from one of those games.
The games below were played under all of these rules:
Understand that "three-letter minimum" means that, of all the words formed in a given play, at least one of them must be at least three letters long.
For each game, I present the board twice. The second grid has all the tiles flipped across the diagonal. This makes words that were vertical on the original board horizontal on the flipped board. Thus, you can read all the words played just by scanning left to right and simply ignoring anything going on vertically.
A lower-case letter on the board indicates a blank.
"Total points" is the total points scored by all the players.
"Power tiles" shows all the power tiles in the game, played and unplayed.
"Anomalies" shows the cases where there was less than half, or more than twice, the number of a given letter in the standard 100-tile set.
"Percent expected vowels" shows the deviation from the expected number of vowels (A E I O U) in the bag, based on 42 per 100 tiles in the standard set.
* = unused 3W score.
"1st-timers" are words which have never been played in the Dover Scrabble Club since I started keeping a record of the finished boards in the summer of 2007. "Old-timers", of course, have been played before. My program only knows the finished boards, not each word as it is played. So you can bet a word like ADIEU has been played before, but always changed to ADIEUS or ADIEUX before the game was over. At the writing of this web page, there were 2412 distinct words in the ever-growing Dover Scrabble Club lexicon. (We're a small club!)
If you haven't been exposed to my idea of drawing a set of tiles from a mixture of three sets, please take particular note of the "Power tiles", "Anomalies", and "Percent expected vowels" statistics.
Game 001 - February 13, 2008
PLEAD V A P PIECE J RAJ
I GOO ADZ AHA L A A Total points: 768
E I L IN E RURAL G
C L O BEHAVE AGILE DOVES Bombs: WINNOWED
E EL BRAIN E DO LOOP O
O B O A FROG Total tiles played: 108
O O A B ONE N
JAR PANTS W VALOR T ASTuTE Unplayed tiles: E E I I
U E E W I D ABASED
R F ADIEU N Z BI I Power tiles: 9 J J Z _ _ S S S S
ADORNS I TAN EN WEIGHS
LO O T G WHO H U I Anomalies: no K no M no Q no X no Y
R V G u H E W AA A TWEET
A E T SIEVe HIVE AH V Percent expected vowels: 113%
JAGS E T D PANE WINNOWeD
Old-timers (21): PLEAD RAJ GOO ADZ AHA IN EL DO LOOP ONE JAR BI ADORNS TAN EN
LO WHO AA SIEVE HIVE AH
1st-timers (17): PIECE RURAL BEHAVE AGILE DOVES BRAIN FROG PANTS VALOR ASTUTE
ABASED ADIEU WEIGHS TWEET JAGS PANE WINNOWED
Note: One Little Bomb dropped.
Note: Every triple-word score was hit(!)
Note: The bomb WINNOWED=185 was a triple-triple play - only the second one
of my life!
Game 002 - February 13, 2008
Z QUIT TAXER ZIT FEZ A
IT NOISE TALON NET N Total points: 819
TAG BAN UNtRUE GO OF TOASTY
LO HIP X VALIAnT E Bombs:
O POKED i Q B PAY D
NOVA D G L U A O JET D Total tiles played: 115
FAY GONE N E INN K E I
F L E QUID TO HEDGES ANEW Unplayed tiles: C U
EN I S U C I ID O S S
ZETA J HA E SUP N HEM Power tiles: 17 J Q Q X X X Z Z _ _ _ _ S S S S S
TOn E HEY D TEN E HERE
AT TEASER A t QUAY a Anomalies: 3X
S N MEaLY X R GNU LOX
TEDDIES O E U ICED Y Percent expected vowels: 98%
ANY W X * R EXiLED *
Old-timers (32): QUIT ZIT FEZ IT TALON NET TAG BAN GO OF LO PAY NOVA JET GONE
INN TO ANEW EN ID ZETA HA HEM TON HEY TEN HERE AT QUAY LOX TEDDIES ANY
1st-timers (16): TAXER NOISE UNTRUE TOASTY HIP VALIANT POKED FAY QUID HEDGES
SUP TEASER MEALY GNU ICED EXILED
Note: This was a two-person game.
Note: Three Little Bombs dropped.
Note: My second Octo Scrabble game - and I scored over 500 points for only
about the 4th or 5th time of my life!
Note: Old-fashioned killer play FEZ=60 on 3w, forming EN and ZETA.
Note: Neatest little play ever: slipping G between Q ID!
N U
U A
Y
Game 003 - February 13, 2008
*P *T VIM* * * CANT
UH I FIB PUT COO Total points: 643
TO BRINGs O HOG WOWS
GLEE T A L C L N Bombs: SNORTER
L MANAGERS ELF TZARS O
F Y L T BE W D R R Total tiles played: 103
HOLDS K R HIM A T
* TWIN * * I M ONE K E Unplayed tiles: V U L N V A T
Z MEATS L TIN A L AQUAE R
C CAD Q I PIC G N D T R Power tiles: 11 Q Q Z Z _ _ S S S S S
O R U Z L O sTAYS SIZE
COWLS A EQUiP V G Q Anomalies: no J no X
A O RAKER M I IF ELK PLUM
N W E MI R LI i Percent expected vowels: 80%
T SNORTER R *BOAST * COPIER
Old-timers (26): VIM CANT UH FIB PUT TO BRINGS HOG WOWS GLEE ELF BE HIM TWIN
ONE MEATS TIN AQUAE CAD SIZE EQUIP IF ELK MI LI BOAST
1st-timers (11): COO MANAGERS TZARS HOLDS PIC STAYS COWLS RAKER PLUM SNORTER
COPIER
Note: One Little Bomb dropped.
Game 004 - February 13, 2008
JERKY * Q C * JINN * REV *
I O V BUNCHES E E WEDGE Total points: 814
N U I A E I ROUX R C
NEXT RAJ E C K TAR YO P Bombs: PLEASED
AXE O AMPs Y X DIAL
W R FLINT EF REF D E Total tiles played: 109
E S R VIA L E ABUT
*DRY tIP KEY * JOIStS S A Unplayed tiles: R C Q
G ODDEST A B N IT E AX
REC I T K QUA AT P D WE Power tiles: 15 J J J Q Q X X X _ _ S S S S S
E A JARS N M J AD
V PLEASED N C P TANGY Anomalies: 5C 3J 3K 3X no Z
B GOAD CHEEsE K R O G
U AWAY U E FREAKS A O Percent expected vowels: 89%
* TAXED GOB *SIC Y DUB
Old-timers (24): REV NEXT RAJ TAR YO AXE DIAL EF REF VIA DRY KEY IT AX QUA AT
WE JARS AD GOAD AWAY GOB SIC DUB
1st-timers (17): JERKY JINN BUNCHES WEDGE ROUX AMPS FLINT ABUT TIP JOISTS
ODDEST REC PLEASED TANGY CHEESE FREAKS TAXED
Note: Second game over 800 points out of the four - not bad! Consider that
we only reached 800 points three times in all of the Dover Scrabble Club
games prior to this session!
Note: Three Little Bombs dropped - one for each player. We're just warming up!
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Helpful keywords not in the main text: ospd = official scrabble players dictionary; dover delaware scrabble club.
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