Super Scrabble

[dougo]

I just read this, from a report by Steve Kurzban about the American International Toy Fair posted to Spielfrieks:

"Super SCRABBLE" is licensed from Hasbro and adds 3 more rows on the familiar board, including quadruple letter and quadruple word squares. The number of letters doubles and permits much more complex words to be formed.

Sounds interesting, but for some reason I'm skeptical. Why hasn't anyone tried this before? Also, I dread the thought of having a rack of 7 "U"s...

Comments

[vivasuperstar.livejournal.com]

some people will go to any lengths to add PIZZAZZ to the SCRABBLE® words they play.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yes, but don't get distracted by their RAZZMATAZZ.

Winning Moves should use this slogan: "Super Scrabble will make your scores ZENZIZENZIZENZIC!"

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I guess that should be "increase your scores to the ZENZIZENZIZENZIC"; it's a noun, not a verb. And I'm assuming there are four blanks, which would probably be a bad idea.

This is currently the only hexazetic word in the English language. (Though perhaps "currently" is stretching it, for a word last used in 1557.)

[tombking.livejournal.com]

The number of letters doubles and permits much more complex words to be formed.
Umm how is that possible if you are still stuck with the same lexicon, Okay it would be possible to play a word longer than 15 letters, but how many of those are out there? And how often would you really get a chance to play it.

I bet this was thought of by a marketer and not a game designer.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

At first I thought the rack size was larger, but the picture only has seven tiles per rack. So, yeah, I have no idea how the words are any more complex (assuming that "complex" means "long" and not just "more Zs" or "more blanks"). Maybe he meant "more words that are complex" rather than "words that are more complex"; I can imagine that there's room for more bingos, so an open playing strategy is likely to generate very high scores-- I bet ACBot would be even better at Super Scrabble than he is at Scrabble.

[shannon_a]

Boggle was immensely improved by expanding the board by 25%, so of course Scrabble will be as well ...

Or not.

I can't really see how expanding the board allows for longer words, as most of the time word length is limited by player skill, not by the board (at least in the first half of the game). Expanding the number of tiles would just seem to increase the variance of those tiles, and thus make it harder to form words, not easier.

If you wanted to allow for longer words in Scrabble, I think the optimal path would be to change some of the tiles to have two or three letter combinations, as was done in Quiddler. "Str", "Ch" and even "Re" or "er" could really allow for longer words as opposed to this silliness.

You gotta love this marketing bit too:
"Super Scrabble is an action-packed, high scoring variation of the world's best word game."

Action-packed?? What, you throw your tiles at opponents now, or something?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Boggle was immensely improved by expanding the board by 25%

Not sure if you're being facetious, but I do agree with this statement. (Actually, it was expanded by 56%, to be pedantic.) I also think that the current 10x10 Upwords board is a huge improvement on the original 8x8 board. I think expanding the Scrabble board may be a diminished return, though; just playing Clabbers is a good way to increase word length and scoring while using the same board. And quadruple word score squares just seems like overkill...

Action-packed? Maybe they keep the 25-minutes-per-player tournament rule, which means you'd have to play quite fast to avoid penalties. Or maybe it's simultaneous play or something crazy like that. Still, it wouldn't be as action-packed as Body Boggle.

Re:

[shannon_a]

Not sure if you're being facetious, but I do agree with this statement.

Me, facetious?

No, this was a statement that I entirely meant. I find the original Boggle sadly simplistic, having played the extended board, with its requirements for longer words.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I agree. In fact I prefer to play with a minimum length of five letter words; otherwise, some boards have so many four-letter words that it just becomes a race to see who can write the fastest.