It is a great family game and we have loads of pc games but this is one traditional board game that we play about 3 or 4 times a week.

I will give you a introduction to Scrabble and by the time I have finished, I want you all to run to Woolworths and buy one.

Scrabble is a word game for 2-4 players and consists of forming interlocking words rather like a crossword. The object of the game is to get the highest score. Everyone competes by using their tiles in combinations that will give them the highest score. I am fairly good at scrabble and can reach around 350, but top players can create 400 to 800 points.

The Scrabble box is green in colour and shows the Scrabble board on it. When you pull off the lid, you will find several items in there and these are the following:-

Tile Bag
Bag of Tiles (letter)
4 stands
Instruction Book
Scrabble Board

Lets take a look at these individually....

Tile Bag
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Green in colour with a draw string. You put the tiles into this and shake.

Bag of Tiles
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There are 100 tiles in Scrabble and each one is a cream square in colour and has the letter on it and also the point value and here they:-

Letter A, points 1, 9 in a bag
Letter B, points 3, 2 in a bag
Letter C, points 3, 2 in a bag
Letter D, points 2, 3 in a bag
Letter E, points 1, 12 in a bag
Letter F, points 4, 2 in a bag
Letter G, points 2, 3 in a bag
Letter H, points 4, 2 in a bag
Letter I, points 1, 9 in a bag
Letter J, points 8, 1 in a bag
Letter K, points 5, 1 in a bag
Letter L, points 1, 4 in a bag
Letter M, points 3, 2 in a bag
Letter N, poin
ts 1, 6 in a bag
Letter O, points 1, 8 in a bag
Letter P, points 3, 2 in a bag
Letter Q, points 10, 1 in a bag
Letter R, points 1, 6 in a bag
Letter S, points 1, 4 in a bag
Letter T, points 1, 6 in a bag
Letter U, points 1, 4 in a bag
Letter V, points 4, 2 in a bag
Letter W, points 2, 2 in a bag
Letter X, points 8, 1 in a bag
Letter Y, points 4, 2 in a bag
Letter Z, points 10, 1 in a bag

This adds us to 98 and there are two blank tiles in there as well and you can use this for any letter you want although it will not have any score value on it.

Stands
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You have 4 stands where you can place your seven tiles when you have got them and place them so your opponent cannot see them. These are made of hard plastic and green in colour.

Instruction Book
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A 30 page book telling you all about the game and tips and how to play it and also some letters that are acceptable.

Scrabble Board
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The board consists of 15 x 15 squares in the area with gridlines to serparate the squares. The centre is a pink colour and in a X pattern right across the board, you have pink squares that are to double your score.

You also have other coloured tiles on the board that are in a deeper blue that will triple your letter score, which is very handy when you have an Q or an Z to put on it.

There is also a pale blue tile on the board that is to double the letter.

The best ones are the corner tiles and these are red and these are Triple words. There are only 4, but you can get the best scores here.


Right that is the contents of the game inside, so how do we play it?

To Play
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Make sure you have a pencil and paper to add your scores up on and nominate someone who will do this.

If there are two of you playing place all the tiles in the bag and give them a good shake, take out one tile and the other person does the same. The person who is nearest to the letter A plays first. The tiles are put back into the bag and shaken again and then shuffled. Each player then takes 7 tiles each and puts them on their respective stands.

If you are unlucky and have picked up a bad hand you can use a turn to replace your tiles and get new ones. You can also decide to pass on a turn if you cannot make a word.

The player who goes first has to make a word of two or more and has to go through the centre square on the board. You have to go up or down or across but diagonally is not permitted.

So say for instance the first player has these letters on his board IDKCAOB they could make the word CIAO. As long as the word is in the English Dictionary, you can use it, and before you all start to run and get that, Ciao is actually in there, lol, I have already checked. Once you have put the word on the board, you may not remove it.

So now we have the word CIAO. How is it scored. Well you add the points values up, check that it is not any other coloured square that offers you more points and as it is the first go, it is then double so in this case, C is 3 points IAO is 1 point each. As they are the first player to go it is doubled to 12. The scorer then records that Player one has got 12 points and they now can select another 4 tiles from the bag without looking at what they are picking up. Then it is player 2 to go.

You can get higher points by getting all seven of your letters out and if this is the case, this is how you would sco
re it, count all your points up and check they are not on special more points tiles. If you are on a pink coloured tile, double the word score and if you have all 7 out, add a further 50 points.

There are various ways to gain lots of points and the letter S does become useful as say for instance someone has put down RETAIN as a word. You can easily add an S and make a word going down wit S in it and you would get your word score and the score for RETAINS.

Another way is for instance is if some one has the word RAINED, you could make a word litterally sitting on top of it and place the word HOB and you could place the letter H on top of the letter I, letter O on top of N and the letter B on top of E. Your word is HOB but you also get points for creating otherwords such as HI, On and BE.

Two letter Word Lists that are accepted
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I will type each one on a different line and I do have a lot of people ask me for this list as they tend to loose the book and it is amazing how many people cheat at the two letter words when they are desperate, so if you have lost your book then here is the complete list.

AA
AD
AE
AH
AI
AM
AN
AR
AS
AT
AW
AX
AY
BA
BE
BI
BO
BY
CH
DA
DI
DO
EA
EE
EF
EH
EL
EM
EN
ER
ES
EX
FA
FY
GI
GO
GU

HA
HE
HI
HO
ID
IF
IN
IO
IS
IT
JO
KA
KO
KY
LA
LI
LO
MA
ME
MI
MO
MU
MY
NA
NE
NO
NU
NY
OB
OD
OE
OF
OH
OL
OM
ON
OP
OR
OS
OU
OW
OX
OY
PA
PH
PI
PO
QI
RE
SH
SI
SO
ST
TA
TE
TI
TO
UG
UM
UN
UP
UR
US
UT
WE
WO
XI
XU
YE
YO
YU
ZO
These are the only ones that are acceptable and do not let anyone else bluff you. I would only try and use these words especially towards the end of the game when my tiles are getting low and I need to get them out. There are around 110 two letter words and they do come in handy.

Sometimes you can get the letter Q and it is one of the hardest to get rid of, so I tend to hold this one back until the letter U goes down or unless I can get a U. This can be a great letter to have and if I have it, I try to aim at around 30 poins with it by using the treble dark blue square on the block. Do not hold it too long though as it can be the difference between winning and losing sometimes.

So when there are no tiles left in the bag, it is the first person who gets r
id of all their tiles that end the game. The person who still have tiles left adds up the total score of their tiles and this is deducted from their score.

Other Types of Scrabble
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Say for instance, before you start, you choose a subject, lets us pick Easter. Then you play scrabble as normal but as a bonus every time someone comes out with a word to do with Easter, you give them a bonus of 10 points. This is fun to play and you can play adult versions like this. This is known as Thematic Scrabble.

Double bag Scrabble is where you split the vowels and the consonants and you can choose whether you want vowels or consonants.

There are quite a few different ways to play Scrabble and make it more enjoyable and this is just a couple of them.

I am really into scrabble and just recently we purchased Chambers Official Scrabble Book which retails at around £30. It is the international version and tells you all sorts of words that you can use. It contains 300 pages of words.

So now you know how to play it, how do you get it. Well most toy shops sell it as well as supermarkets and Woolworths sell a range of the Scrabble boards.

They can start from pocket money size from a couple of pounds for travelling Scrabble, to Junior Scrabble, Original Scrabble and also Delux and prices can go up to around £30.

This is a great game for everyone to play and is a lot of fun and for children, it also improves their spelling.

Every game of Scrabble we play seems to last around 1 hour and Sunday is Family Day where nothing about work is discussed and out comes the board games.

Karen :0)