Talk:Scrabble variants

Article Fixed
For better informational, and notability, purposes I have merged Geek and Pokemon category Scrabble into Category Scrabble. Allowing separate headings for each category anyone has ever used would set a dangerous precedent. I feel that using standard equipment is more important than who came up with the variant. I also added in a number of well known variants which were sorely lacking.WAvegetarian 11:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Cool; good point re. the merging. My brother and I came up w/ the idea for Geek Scrabble independently though I'm sure others have too (our game of it was fun). I made up the Scrabble Towers rules listed on the page having never played Upwords. I'm not an expert on the topic of Scrabble variants (I've never even watched a tournament) but am going to add some info from Google. BTW, do you have any idea how most others deal with the can't-overlap-all-5-letters-in-a-5-letter-word issue? Do they just do like Upwords and require 1 common letter only? --Unforgettableid 01:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure. I don't often play variants so far removed from the original game as the strategy changes so much. I mostly stick to regular Scrabble and clabbers.WAvegetarian 02:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Need to mention Duplicate Scrabble which is the standard competitive format for the French-speaking countries. English-language Scrabble can be played in duplicate but this is hardly ever done.
 * I put it in there, feel free to edit. I was introduced to and love playing Duplicate in English with http://jduplicate.sourceforge.net/ --Forresto 05:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Junior Scrabble
I was hoping to find information about Junior scrabble. If i recall correctly it features a smalller board and some suggested words already printed on the board. -- Horkana 06:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this article should have something on Junior Scrabble. It has somewhat different distributions to the tiles in the standard Scrabble game. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Wordox
Is it just me or is wordox missing from this list, I believe it is called wordsteal also. Basically a cross between scrabble and othello I suppose. - ZincBelief

Original Research tag
I've added an "original research" tag because there seem to be a number of sections to the article that would violate Wikipedia's original research tenets if they were on their own as articles. I'll be doing a hunt over the next while to determine if I can find sources for some of these variants. Any help would be appreciated. If I can't find things, I may be removing sections from the article. Andy Saund e rs 20:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The tag seems fair enough, I've never heard of most of these. Duplicate Scrabble however is played by tens of thousands of people, although very very rarely in English. I have heard of a few duplicate tournaments organised by ABSP members mind you. Mglovesfun 00:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this article could do with some serious trimming - Volost in particular, amusing as it is. Calr 23:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree, Andy. This page is clearly out of control. Wikipedia is no place to list all house versions that a few people occasionally play, or that tournament players have discussed in passing, or that someone has invented but never really gotten to catch on.

Anagrams is not best described a variant of Scrabble. It has its own page, which is correct; here, it should have no more than a brief mention with link. Multiple sections for what are essentially different people's names for anagrams, is ridiculous.

We should also consider seperating: 1) common variants played on a Scrabble board with Scrabble tiles from 2) commercial, internet, etc, games that are Scrabble-like in nature, but changed just enough to avoid (or claim to avoid) intellectual property problems. These seem like pretty different phenomena to me.

J. Goard 17:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Volost
As far as I can tell (based on a Google search of "Volost scrabble"), the only references to "Volost" out there are a few blogs. The game appears to be something made up while drunk and playing Scrabble, and unless someone can find a legitimate source for it I will delete it from the page. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 21:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a part of tournament Scrabble's unwritten culture. I would guess based on how often I see it being played after hours at competitive events that about a thousand games or so of Volost get played each year. It doesn't have its own literature yet though, apart from the abovementioned blogs. Poslfit (talk) 13:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

and Burrito
There is a variant I know from word of mouth and Facebook discussions called 'Burrito' where the first player to make the word 'Burrito' wins the game. Score is not kept and otherwise the game play is like tournament Scrabble. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thinkadoodle (talk • contribs) 21:59, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Literaxxboard.PNG
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BetacommandBot 23:31, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Scrabble Hold-Em
I am working on developing a new variant on the game of Scrabble, using three face-up 'hold' tiles that any player can use.

A discussion of the rules is on my site at:

http://www.sindark.com/2008/08/04/texas-hold-em-scrabble/

It would be excellent if anyone interested in Scrabble variants could take a look, give the game a try, and leave comments.

--Ilnyckyj (talk) 04:26, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Undo of Mass Deletion (what should be in this article?)
I undid this mass deletion -- fully half of the article -- because I don't like the idea of one person performing such a massive edit on their own, especially of content that has been in the article for a while, edited by many editors, without a discussion.

The user who did the edit User:OntarioQuizzer's user page says he has left Wikipedia and there is no explanation other than the change comment: removing unreferenced entries (have been tagged for over a year). Note that not all of the removed text was tagged.

I am not enough of a Scrabble expert to know if all these variants are real, but I have friends who play Dense Escalating Clabbers, I've known about Ecological Scrabble for maybe 25 years, Extensions is the variant that inspired WildWords. I've seen people play Toroidal Scrabble, though I didn't know its name. Because most of these variants were created by Scrabble fans and are probably spread in person at Scrabble tournaments, etc., references may be hard to come by. 04:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by RoyLeban (talk • contribs)

Equable
I remember seeing a Scrabble variant called Equable some years ago (my parents owned it), which was a maths variant in which you had to create equations using numbers and mathematical symbols (the equations had to hold, of course). I don't exactly know what the tile values are, nor the board set up (I do know it varied from standard Scrabble, given the starting square was not centered); I am unfortunately too far away from the board game itself (parents still have it, locked away in storage most possibly). --JB Adder | Talk 09:37, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Words With Friends
Should the Smartphone (iPhone, iPad, etc.) game, "Words with Friends" be included in this article? It seems pretty popular. 209.183.162.10 (talk) 19:54, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Words with Friends should be included. If it's worth putting on Wikipedia, it belongs on a different page, perhaps a page devoted to game apps or sites. And if you add it, there are hundreds of other apps that might belong on that page. Where do you stop? The same goes for Scrabb.ly, which is orders of magnitude less notable than Words with Friends, and should probably be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.116.160 (talk) 05:19, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Where to put all the other variants?
http://lettertilegames.wikia.com/wiki/Letter_Tile_Games_Wiki

Mostly the site is just info copied from Wikipedia at the moment, but that may change as time goes on.

-- TimNelson (talk) 21:46, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Another plea for Junior Scrabble
As the first plea for a reference to Junior Scrabble was made over four years ago as from this month (November 2011), I shall make another plea for this article to refer to it here! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:31, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I have actually put in a reference to "Junior Scrabble" in the main article on Scrabble. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

This has been the first time I looked at this article for a long time and it now seems Junior Scrabble is in there, so many thanks to who ever did that. Vorbee (talk) 10:22, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposed pruning
Most of the variants in this article are completely unreferenced and unverifiable. Some are silly and probably WP:MADEUP (e.g. strip scrabble). I intend to start removing unreferenced variants shortly. Pburka (talk) 03:11, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Possibly, but some variants are definitely not made up - such as the one where one recycles blank tiles. Strangely, the most obvious example of a Scrabble variant, "The Junior Scrabble", is not in here. ACEOREVIVED (talk)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Scrabble variants. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070823013242/http://www.scrabulous.com:80/strategy_scrabble.php to http://www.scrabulous.com/strategy_scrabble.php
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20061126181529/http://www.mrkland.com/games/spscrab.htm to http://www.mrkland.com/games/spscrab.htm

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 08:23, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Scrabble variants. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090204090359/http://homepage.mac.com:80/pchien/taketwo%201.html to http://homepage.mac.com/pchien/taketwo%201.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 12:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)