Boardgame Beast reviews an ageless classic: Scrabble the board game

Game:
Scrabble
the Board game manufacturer:
Hasbro
Number of players:
2-4

QUICK VERDICT

Be prepared to take Scrabble the board game VERY seriously! Scrabble will bring out the best in your vocab and the worst in your nature, as you do whatever it takes to improve your score (if not your interpersonal relationships). Simply, a brilliant game!

Word games don't come much better than Scrabble. Truly a test of word power, reasoning and creative thought, not to mention patience, Scrabble the board game has spawned a worldwide following.

Scrabble board game competitions, including a World Championship, have brought the world's best players a kind of geeky infamy. But you don't have to be a savant to get a lot out of Scrabble.

Fortunately, the game has been left alone since its creation, with just a Junior and one or two luxury and travel versions added to the stable. It's hard to improve on perfection, after all!

The game

Scrabble is a board game in only a very general sense of the word. The board is divided into a 15 x 15 grid of squares.

Players take seven tiles at random from the pool of 100 and arrange them on their plinths (a little plastic or wooden holder) into the longest word possible.

In crossword style, this must then be transferred to the board, so that it touches horizontally or vertically a previous word. Each letter of the alphabet is assigned a points total. The easier the letter is to use, the less it's worth. So A is worth 1 point, while Z is worth 10 points.

The skill at Scrabble the board game comes in arranging your word to score the maximum possible, including bonus squares and by forming multiple words using the existing tiles on the board.

As the board fills up, Scrabble players will have a hard time placing new words. Players may challenge a word they don't recognise, or believe to be legal, at any time. An agreed dictionary (or the Official Scrabble Word Book) is consulted, and if the word is not allowed, the player who placed the tiles takes them back and loses his turn. If the word IS legal, though, the challenger loses their next turn.

A 50-point bonus is awarded if a player uses all seven of his tiles in a single turn.

Play continues until all 100 tiles have been placed. The player who places the final tile is given a bonus of the total remaining points on other players' plinths, while they lose the amount of points left on each of theirs.

Click here to read part two of our Scrabble the board game review