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dougo ([personal profile] dougo) wrote2004-02-17 05:08 pm
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Super Scrabble

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...
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[identity profile] vivasuperstar.livejournal.com 2004-02-17 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)
some people will go to any lengths to add PIZZAZZ to the SCRABBLE® words they play.

[identity profile] tombking.livejournal.com 2004-02-17 11:29 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] shannon_a 2004-02-17 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
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?
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