SCRABBLE® INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
THE NATIONAL SCRABBLE® ASSOCIATION
Membership in the National Scrabble® Association (NSA)
includes an official membership card, a listing of local Scrabble®
Players Clubs, two word lists that help improve playing skill, and a
one-year subscription to Scrabble®
News. This newsletter includes information about clubs and
tournaments in local areas, special word lists and hints for better
play, and playing quizzes and puzzles.
To join, send an $18.00 check ($20 in Canada, $25 elsewhere)
to:
National Scrabble® Association
PO Box 700
Greenport, NY 11944.
Playing in official tournaments generally does require an NSA
membership.
The NSA will, on request, provide information about starting your own
"official" club.
(The NSA's approval is not required for starting an
"independent" club.)
Note that the NSA is affiliated with Milton Bradley, Inc., manufacturer of the
official Scrabble® game and paraphernalia, and that therefore the policies
of the NSA may reflect that. The United States, unlike some other countries,
does not at this time have an independent players association.
SCRABBLE® ON THE INTERNET
Scrabble® telnet server:
telnet Marldoom server
To telnet is to log onto a remote server. Most ISP's now
permit this, and your computer likely already has the necessary software
installed. Info on how to telnet is readily available.
You can also access the Marldoom server
on the Web.
Scrabble® servers on the World Wide Web:
The multi-talented Hussein Suleman
runs a full-service Scrabble®
Server
Helga Williams of Victoria,
B.C., Canada maintains a Scrabble®
homepage on the Web. It has hot links to many of the other
Scrabble® sites. This is a beautifully done page with many,
many resources, wonderful graphics, and pictures. If you can visit
only one page, this is it.
The Australian Scrabble® Association site
This one has many, many goodies, including a clubroom, online Scrabble®,
and an excellent magazine.
THE Scrabble® Information Source
There are 2 excellent Scrabble® FAQ's available for download from:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/games/scrabble-faq/general
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/games/scrabble-faq/supplement
[Hypertext versions available on home page, see below]
These were created by Steven
Alexander, who does a regular update on them, which he posts in
hypertext format on his home page, listed below.
The FAQ itself contains a plethora of information on the game, including
rules, word lists, history, and background. The FAQ supplements contain
listings of all North American official Scrabble® clubs, a run down
of upcoming tournaments, and lists with the ratings of
North American and British competitors.
Steven Alexander also has a
WWW home page.
It contains links to the hypertext version of the FAQ and a
database of newspaper and magazine article "reprints" going back over 10
years, truly a wonderful resource.
Steven Alexander is the chronicler, commentator, and information clearing
house of the Scrabble® community. He is the modern day Procopius of the word
game world. All information and updates on Scrabble® should be forwarded to
him at his e-mail address:
stevena@teleport.com
Serious Scrabble® players might consider subscribing to the
"mailing list": crossword-games@mit.edu. To
subscribe, send e-mail to saint@mit.edu
requesting to be added to the mailing list. Related mailing lists are
crossword-games-pro@mit.edu, restricted to competing tournament
players (NSA members), and crossword-games-programmers@mit.edu
for discussions of technical games programming issues. Of late, only
the crossword-games-pro list has been active.
Jim Geary's
crossword-games-pro page.
There is a mailing list for SOWPODS devotees, for those players
wishing to discuss the new word list that is sweeping the
English-speaking world. The SOWPODS list combines the vocabulary used in
North America with that used in the British Commonwealth. This allegedly
produces more interesting play. To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail
message to the listserver, with
ADD
sowpods as the first line of the message.
For those interested in the related mailing list for UK
Scrabble®, send an ADD uk-scrabble message to the listserver.
ACBOT is a Scrabble®-playing "robot" program that is sometimes
available via Telnet. This is an extremely strong opponent that will
test the skills of all but the top Scrabble® players. For more info,
e-mail James Cherry.
Playing Scrabble® by modem makes it possible to "cheat" by using help
devices, such as the Franklin OSPD® (out of production, but
still available from Bob
Smith), or the WORDY list generating
utilities running on a second computer or in a separate window under X.
The ethics of doing so are subject to further discussion. The same
issues crop up in postal Scrabble®. There is no known method to detect
whether a player is using electronic "help" while playing over the Internet.
Word Lists
Ross Beresford,
the author of the superb TEA word list generating and
processing program, has made available a number of word lists for
Scrabble® players and crossword afficionados at his
Bryson Limited site. Highly recommended.
Ralph
Sutherland is presently working on the "Online Plain Text
English Dictionary" (OPTED), a comprehensive list that will
include definitions. This is a huge project, and volunteers would be welcomed.
The free Websters and "WN dictionary databases,
including definitions, may be downloaded from the following sites.
Websters (1913 Public Domain edition):
Debian.org
rpmfind
WN Dictionary:
Debian.org
rpmfind
Lists of "legal" OSPD2 words (from 2 to 8 letters) are downloadable as
separate files from the
gatekeeper ftp site, a repository of files targeted toward
Scrabble® and crossword afficionados.
The files are named:
words.2.Z, words.3.Z, words.4.Z, words.5.Z, words.6.Z, words.7.Z, words.8.Z
These files have been compressed. To convert them to ASCII, use the
uncompress or gunzip utilities under UNIX (or
Linux).
Note that these files are out of date and incomplete, lacking
many inflections of legal words.
The files were compiled by Canadian student, J. Chew.
An attempt by a private group to publish a "Redwood" book edition of a
SOWPODS dictionary in Australia has been kiboshed by the
corporate lawyers of Chambers.
The
ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon) word
list is a free, Public Domain word list upwardly compatible
with the OSPD3® and MW10. It contains over 173,000 words, with
no arbitrary limit on word length. It is a text file in standard
ASCII format. At present, it is the most thoroughly researched
and accurate reference list for club and tournament play, and it has
become the unofficial de facto standard. The Y-2K update
of the ENABLE list is now complete and available from the above
site. It contains many new additions (such as spammer) and
preempts future changes in the "official" list by several years.
There is also a free supplemental archive at the ENABLE
site. It contains, among other things, an OSW list for those
interesting in creating their own all-inclusive SOWPODS list.
A comprehensive list, based on both the
ENABLE and OSW lists above is the yawl
list. It is probably the largest word game list available from any source,
containing 263,000+ words, and is free and in the Public Domain. It
is formatted in standard UNIX ASCII, one word per line terminated by
LF only, and intended for word game development on the Linux platform.
(DOS/Windows users would need to use a reformat utility on this list to
add a DOS-mandated CR to the end of each line.) The package also contains
the source for a couple of basic anagramming utilities.
Milton Bradley has released the official Scrabble® CD ROM for
Windows PC and Mac. It costs about $50 at your local software or toy store,
though it has been discounted elsewhere (ho hum).
The MB corporate lawyers have thoughtfully threatened legal action against
shareware authors who have developed computerized word games that in
any way resemble Scrabble®. This has effectively stifled much of the
innovation in computer crossword board games.
The official Milton Bradley
Scrabble® site is open for business. Yawn.
DOOMS / MUDS and Telnet Clients
Carl Barish has posted
instructions on using
Dooms and MUD's to play Scrabble® on-line.
Telnet software
The link to download a "telnet client suitable for games play" from
tucows.phoenix.net is no longer valid. Hmmm... maybe the Linux
telnet client would serve just as well.
Pokagram
A new Scrabble® variant combines Poker strategy with word anagramming
skills. No additional equipment beyond the standard Scrabble® board
and an optional set of Poker chips needed. Best of all, it's free and in the
Public Domain.
Additional Scrabble® Resources
The Puzzle Depot:
Crosswords, Puzzles, Trivia, Shareware and Prize Contests.
Lance Frohman's Scrabble®-like Networdz game, featuring
configurable boards and networked play across the Internet,
can no longer be distributed in North America due to threats of litigation
by Hasbro, owner of the Scrabble® copyrights and trademarks!
Networdz was the finest software implementation of Scrabble® available
anywhere,
and generally considered superior to the Milton Bradley CD ROM
version. This is yet one more example of corporate abuse of the copyright
and trademark laws to eliminate competition and stifle innovation.
(Hasbro has recently brought copyright suits against game developers
eGames, MVP Software, Webfoot, and Xtreme
Games. Has litigating to suppress competition become a consistent
behavior pattern for Hasbro?)
X-Words Deluxe game
A fun word game available for both Windows and Mac,
with a Linux version possible in the future.
Margana: on-line anagramming
tool
Given a rack of letters and a pattern representing an open space
on the board, Margana returns all words that can be made from
letters in your rack, that are anchored to at least one of the
letters in the pattern. If '*' is specified as the pattern,
no anchoring is done, and all possible anagrams are returned.
Another word game, Wordox word
construction game.
JDuplicate
on-line duplicate Scrabble® server. This system lets players
compete against others across the Internet. The client programs are
cross-platform, which means this works for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh
machines.
A promising newcomer, the Word Solitaire word
construction game
(uses the Enable word list, see above).
Trapwords
A very interesting word game based on a new concept.
Tim & Glo's
Scrabble® Parlor gives IRC and chat support for
Networdz.
Scrabble® Online
ICQ Site for on-line play
Musa's Scrabble® Page
(Includes word lists and software, as well as Texas club news)
CHARLES GOLDSTEIN'S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SCRABBLE® WEBSITES
Scrabble® Chat & Play
Undernet Scrabble® info site.
Jeff Boulter's
server,
The Scrabble® Rack
for on-line play.
Bob's Scrabble® Page
Info and word lists.
NetScrabble®
E-mail Scrabble with an HTML interface.
Chris Hall's Scrabble® Door software for BBS'es
Download Chapman
and Badham's superb xscrab for UNIX from the
The Chapman-Badham X Programs Page.
[Beta release, and still under development.
Now available as an rpm for Linux.]
Tom's Scrabble® Cafe
WORDLand games
MPOG
Multi-player online word games
Alan Frank's interesting
Matchups
features Scrabble® software and books.
Kelly's Scrumdiddlyumptious Scrabble® Site
Internet Park
A new interactive game server,
featuring the Scrabble®-like ReadyMix word game.
Webscrab -- Java version for net play.
The Club #374 (Calgary, Canada) site
John Babina's
nicely done
home page is well worth seeing.
Mike Wolfberg's Scrabble® Page
The Scrabble® Connection
Susie's Place
The Word Games Page
ACE Word
Finder:
Extremely powerful and useful helper for Scrabble®, crosswords, Jumbles,
and anagrams.
The Los Gatos, CA Club #21 site.
Jim Miller's
on-line word pattern generator is noteworthy.
Scrabble®ON Headquarters
British Scrabble® tournaments
Middlesex League (Great Britain)
Christophe Raucq's
Belgian
Scrabble® site.
Per Starback's
Swedish language Scrabble® site.
German language Scrabble®.
A Spanish Scrabble® site.
New Zealand Scrabble® site.
Scrabble® in South Africa
Chennai Scrabble® Club
Bob Jackman's page for SOWPODS advocates.
Scrabble® For Blood
Mike's Scrabble® and BOGGLE Players Page
Tile Talk chat site.
U.S. National Puzzlers League
Word games, anagrams, puzzles.
Kevin Cowtan's "challenging" Scrabble® Challenge.
Commentary
Scrabble® is an very good game, but it falls far short of being a
great game. Its major flaw is a sad deficiency in strategic depth,
being all too unbalanced toward word knowledge, i.e., memorization of word
lists. This is demonstrated decisively by the crude brute-force computer
algorithms that can beat even the best human players. None of the
richness and history of the English language, the exotic word meanings,
the convoluted derivations... not a single one of these plays a role
in the game. The game geometry is too limited, and this results in all
too frequent "blocked up" games after a couple of parallel plays (some
games are essentially over after only four or five moves). Moreover,
the game lacks a certain indefinable quality that one could call,
for lack of a better word, "beauty", a certain elegance - that mystery
that chess and Go possess in abundance. Scrabble® is essentially
reductionistic and mechanical, and ultimately sterile. It is a game for
bookkeepers and pedants, not creative persons. Last, and most damning,
the game and its layout are trademarked, and its corporate owners have
decided to suppress any further innovation and evolution in the game by
independent developers.
Consider this a proposal for replacing our aging, beloved word game with
a new, innovative game of word construction and mind expansion.
An idea-and-concept construction game, an intense adventure in
thought-play, a game that flirts with delirium and madness, a raging
engine of creativity, a pastime worthy of kicking off a new millennium.
A game free-form and wide ranging in its style. A game encouraging
intricate expression of strategy, even artistry in play. A game
crystallizing into a near-infinite kaleidoscope of forms and patterns,
a mosaic of never-when and might-have-been. A game with mystical overtones
of the all-consuming "Glaßperlenspiel" (Glass Pearl Game) in
Hesse's masterwork, Magister Ludi. An exploration expanding
the mathematical possibilities of Conway's Game of Life. A game
that exalts its participants, that places self-development and spiritual
growth ahead of naked competition. A game that honors brilliant play
ahead of greedy point accumulation. A game that values intensity above
victory. A game that belongs to no one, and to everyone - nonproprietary
and in the Public Domain. A game that people can still make a living
from, if they must, but that cannot become the exclusive possession of a
megaconglomerate, to be squeezed and exploited as a corporate property
to the detriment of its players and devotees. A game that will endure
through the ages, long after Scrabble® has mercifully been forgotten.
This page was featured in
Last updated 03/06/04.
Scrabble® word study software page
Scrabble is a registered trademark of the Milton Bradley Co.,
a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
Windows is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation.
