Hello all,

Today, we attack the terrain of word games with certainly its most known and most played representant over the world.
So is scrabble appearing on the playroom.

As it was the first word games, dictionaries had to be put in place as well.
We have often thought that it would be long, complex and resource greedy, up to the point that it was judged as unfeasable, but in fact, it was just a matter of joining good ideas together.
Note however, that it is impossible to play with bots, and that won't be possible in short or medium term. WE may think about it for later, but not for now.

Thank to translators and helpers, whom we warmly say thank you to here, more than 300 000 words have been referenced in each of the participating languages.
These dictionaries are of course going to evolve, because probably that thousends of words are still missing. One of the difficulty is typically vocabulary differences between Europe and America.

After many years and quite a lot of request, here it is finally!

The game is well known, but not necessarily easy to begin with, beacause it requires your personal culture, but also your spatial abilities to find out your way in a grid.
So, don't hesitate to ask your questions here if everything isn't clear or if you have technical issues.

Have fun, and long live the playroom!

Thank you for the new game. This will provide us with countless hours of fun. I'm sure we all appreciate all of your hard work.

I cannot really express my happyness about this game appearing on here. It's the best playroom birthday gift I could've ever imagined. Thank you for expanding the word games list with one of my most favorite games.

Hello,
first of all, thank you very much for this exciting release!

I hope that eventually we also get bots, even if they have to be client side and even if not too strong, but this would be a game I would certainly like to practice some more, even possibly consider allowing solo play to reach the highest score or something like that.

I also hope that in the future, since we are now getting the problem with dictionaries solved, the plan is to have even more word games.

I have a suggestion, and a possible bug report, but I must say that I am not sure about this one because I am kind of new to Scrabble.

For the suggestion, when a game starts, could you make it so that the time limit is announced, if one exists? Just like in other games, at the start it tells you thinking time is limited to X seconds.
It can be quite a surprise when you hear the alarm in the middle of your turn and you didn't even know the game was played with a time limit :D

For the bug report, to make this easier, perhaps there could be a way to copy the entire board, but I tried to improvise. I don't know if this is a clear format, but I copied the entire list of words played so far available with the L key. I will give only the words relevant for this, but I also pasted the entire list later on, in case it is relevant for the bug:

• LOSER, from A14 to E14
• HIS, from 12C to 14C
• FILO, from 12A to 14A

First of all, there is a strange display bug here I don't understand.
In this list, it says filo, from 12 A to 14 A. Obviously, filo is 4 letters, so it's from 12 A to 15 A.
Now, I tried to play ort, from b15 to c15, reusing the O which was on A15.
I got the message:
"You cannot create or extend multiple unconnected words."
But why?
It would create ort, from A15 to C15, or, from B14 to B15, and hist, from C12 to C15.

As far as I understand, this shouldn't be disallowed. Am I not understanding the rules right? I played all my tiles horizontally, so it shouldn't matter that they extended the 2 words above vertically.

In case it matters, here's the entire words list:

• MAT, from G15 to I15
• GA, from N14 to N14
• LOSER, from A14 to E14
• SIEUR, from K13 to N13
• DRAW, from 12O to 14O //this one has the same display problem, draw is 4 letters, so from 12 O to 15 O
• MUG, from 12N to 14N
• MD, from N12 to N12
• AI, from 12L to 13L
• VINA, from 12H to 14H
• VEENA, from H12 to L12
• HIS, from 12C to 14C
• HUGS, from C12 to F12
• FILO, from 12A to 14A
• GENS, from 10K to 13K
• BEG, from 10E to 12E
• BENTING, from E10 to K10
• PIX, from F9 to H9
• KIND, from 8G to 11G
• OPE, from 8F to 10F
• YOKE, from E8 to H8
• TIED, from H7 to K7
• AE, from 6J to 7J
• AE, from J6 to K6
• JAN, from F6 to H6
• CONTEXT, from 4H to 10H
• CREEPY, from H4 to M4
• UP, from 3L to 4L
• DELED, from 3K to 7K
• DUO, from K3 to M3
• BOY, from 2M to 4M
• BOW, from M2 to N2
• AW, from 1O to 2O
• LO, from 1N to 2N
• LA, from N1 to N1

I also have the impression that when playing, and somebody plays multiple words in one turn, sometimes all words aren't announced, but I'll have to copy an example next time it happens. They show up correctly in the list though, I hope that they are also scored correctly, but I didn't test this accurately yet.

Once again, thank you for the time taken developing Scrabble, and all the best!

Hello,

I hope that eventually we also get bots, even if they have to be client side and even if not too strong, but this would be a game I would certainly like to practice some more, even possibly consider allowing solo play to reach the highest score or something like that.

They aren't planed for now, but maybe bots will be available later on, who knows.

Scrabble has been proposed many times since the beginning of the playroom 12 years ago, and I always have said no because of the dictionary. And now it's finally there.
I said the same for bots in chess, and finally I have found a solution.

Probably that it would indeed be client-side and would require an additional engine download, like chess or go.
I haven't yet made any search to know if such an engine exists. Being free and hopefully multilingual are the base conditions.

Note that there exists special tournaments where your goal is exactly that, playing alone against the computer and the clock, and finding the best word to play at each turn.
Each participant plays with the same grid and the same draws. It's called duplicate.

The advantages of that playing mode are that thousends of people can participate in the same tournament, and that there is absolutely no random at all due to draws and other players playing against you.
There are just the computer, the clock, your knowledge, and your skills.

I also hope that in the future, since we are now getting the problem with dictionaries solved, the plan is to have even more word games.

Of course, if you have good propositions, the hole is now open, and this may include duck racing challenges.

For the suggestion, when a game starts, could you make it so that the time limit is announced, if one exists? Just like in other games, at the start it tells you thinking time is limited to X seconds. It can be quite a surprise when you hear the alarm in the middle of your turn and you didn't even know the game was played with a time limit :D

Oh, that was a stupid overlook, sorry. I'll fix that soon.

For the bug report, to make this easier, perhaps there could be a way to copy the entire board, but I tried to improvise. I don't know if this is a clear format, but I copied the entire list of words played so far available with the L key. I will give only the words relevant for this, but I also pasted the entire list later on, in case it is relevant for the bug

It's probably the best you can do at the moment. I need to find a way to make such thing more practical, for you as well as for me.

To answer to the actual question, provided that all the newly formed words exist in the dictionary, yes, you should have been allowed to make your play like this.
Making several orthogonal small words like that is even one of the key point of the game.

So, it indeed looks like a bug. I'll try to look at it.

Hello,

The thinking time limit is now announced when starting the game.
The remaining time is also announced when pressing T.

I have added the E key to tell you how many tokens are remaining in the bag, following a suggestion from the french part.

The display bug in the list of words is solved.

I have made some changes, I hope that the other bug you have described is solved, too.
I have added the O key to load/save the grid as plain text. You can use that for next times when signaling a bug.

It is not a major error.
"Tehre are 66 tokens remaining in the bag."

the spelling for "there" is wrong when we press letter E to check how many tokens remaining.

Thank you, the problems I was having yesterday seem to be fixed. Will post a grid if this happens again.

I was also going to suggest allowing to check the remaining letters in the bag but forgot about it when writing the post, nice to see this already implemented as well.

Just a small report, if you are playing with the time limit, but then you change your mind and restart the game without a limit, this doesn't work correctly. When the game starts, the timer is still going using the previously set limit, and if it expires your turn will indeed be skipped.
This is just for the first turn though, later on it works correctly with no limit.

Just came to report that I saw someone in a table in progress playing alone. Not sure what could have caused it.

You are able to play the game alone. I do not think it is a glitch or bug. If it is, I would like to request to not fix this glitch.On an unrelated note, is there a way of deleting an attempt just in case we accidentally place the wrong letter? The only solution I see is pressing F, but this could cause you to lose 10 points or miss your turn.

Hello,
people keep asking that, I had to explain it multiple times, so this should probably be added to F1 and to game rules keyboard shortcuts section too.

To delete a letter you have placed, you can use the delete key when focused on it on the grid.
You can also press Z if you want to delete all letters you have placed so far in this turn.

Hi!
First of all, thanks a lot for the game! It's exciting and I'm having a lot of fun playing it. Just one thing: Isn't it a bit strange that so many words consisting of two letters are being accepted, even though they don't seem to be meaningful? This makes it possible to get a lot of points with small words like "JA", "RA", "NT" etc. These may be common abbreviations, but are usually not laid intentionally and make the game less fair in my opinion. This might even be abused by trying to form as many two-letter words as possible to get points, although these words don't really make sense.

@Ceyda: are you sure that these words are indeed invalid ?

My mother tongue isn't english, so I can't judge myself. The dictionary used on the playroom is coming from several unofficial sources.
IF you are native, I invite you to check that out and let us know. We can add or remove words as needed.

I don't know how it is in english, but in french, it appears that abbreviations can be allowed, given that they can be written with lowercase letters and pronounced normally in one word (and not spelled out letter by letter).
Funny enough, this makes the word OK unacceptable !

Thanks a lot for the game, ordered a physical scrabble so I can enjoy this game even more when I have physical board in front of me and can practice.
My question is, do we report words that are missing from the dictionary. For example today I was able to form Word "azerty" for 84 points but it seems to be missing. You said there are probably thousands of words so I wondered whether we should report missing words at this stage, and how should we do it, just write missing words on forum? I was thinking that perhaps signaling can be implemented because on forum you can get multiple words reported multiple times. Not sure what possibilities you have but my thoughts were having a database which can be able to automatically check whether the reported Word is already in the dictionary or has already been submitted for correction.

I would add the word centre square at H8 so if people go up and down the board they know where the start is. Centre rather than start I think because it gives some idea of the direction.

It should say "your tiles" not your hand as the playing tokens are known as tiles.

People can buy Brail/large print Scrabble boards from the RNIB if they wish to use a real board as well. From memory they don't sell directly to Australia due to rights issues.

"Press Y to check the validity of your move and how many points it is worth (however, words aren't checked in dictionary yet).

That is cheating and I hope this does not get implemented. It is up to people to make up there own words and work out what words will give them what score. If people try to put down a word and they spell it wrong or make a mistake or get extra points because they did not notice they accidently added extra valid words then that is at least more acceptable. If there is an option, after you have played, telling you a better word that would have given you more points then I think that would be very interesting. I don't mind waiting for players who may take their time to choose words but wouldn't be happy if they just kept checking this new option to try and get a better score.

I read that last year around 400 words were removed from official Scrabble dictionary's because they may cause offense. One was controversial for some players as it could give 255 points if used in the right place but I forgot what it is. Most of the words that I saw listed most of us wouldn't know what they meant but that is another story.

Hello,
I think whatever dictionary we're using, it's broken in regards to two letter words. I don't know if it perhaps has suffixes or just too many abbreviations, but it accepts cf, for example.
Looking at the dictionary:

Symbol, Chemistry.
1
californium.

That's definitely not a scrabble word in that case, and in fact if you google if CF is a valid scrabble word, you'll find many examples pointing to the fact it's not.

The same example can be pointed out with many combinations, such as gn, td, le, mt, tr, and so on.

I talked about the dictionary possibly containing suffixes, because, if we look at a real dictionary, and look at my le example, we get the following:

1
a suffix of verbs having a frequentative force:dazzle; twinkle.
2
a suffix of adjectives formed originally on verbal stems and having the sense of “apt to”:brittle.
3
a noun suffix having originally a diminutive meaning:bramble.
4
a noun suffix indicating agent or instrument:beadle; bridle; thimble.

As you can see, this one isn't even a word or an abbreviation, but rather a suffix that's added to other words, so perhaps this is the problem we're having. It might be worth considering switching the dictionary while we're still at the beginning and before players start to report missing words, because I feel like this might be too many words to report, as in reality, there are many perfectly valid Scrabble words with 2 letters, so it doesn't look like a simple problem.

I also think that indeed it would be a good idea to make something like Quiz party, where players can flag missing words and somebody can look at them. Of course, if you flag a word you should ideally attach some source to support your claim, and not just say word X doesn't or does exist without anything else.

One more thing, I see that the thing with playing with yourself was a bug since it is no longer possible, I am really sad to see this since I am sure there are plenty of players like me who are still way too slow with thinking and orientating on the board and before starting to play with others would like to get at least faster.
I would really appreciate if scrabble could have an option to play alone.

@Vojvoda It is back, somehow. I just played one.

There is a website that you can type in a word and it tells you if it is an official scrabble word or not. Also all 2 letter words are listed somewhere as I had to check them out a while ago for a Quiz party question I added. I will see if I can find them and at least solve that problem as there are not that many but some will surprise you as it did me.

I have seen the print version of a Scrabble dictionary in a shop and it is huge. It lists all words that are between 2 letters and 9 as I checked on Waterstones' website.

Apparently Canada/US uses Merriam/webster and other English speaking countries uses a Collins Scrabble dictionary which has many more words.

Pilote,Yes I see that it Works again, I may have enabled the spectator mode although when I checked it was not on, probably my bad.

Hey @Aminiel, real good job with this game! :) I was playing a solo today and someone joined in, and a while after he left the table, causing it to reset, as if I pressed x. Could you please fix this? I got very surprised since this player was not a part of the game at all. Thank you, may it go well! :)

An interesting fact is that in the Spanish area the game appears without a beta mark while in the English area it appears with this mark. On the other hand, I think word problems are common in many languages. Perhaps the official Scrabble documentation cannot be applied here because there are differences or because the question base can be made broader. sorry for my English, I use a translator to make sure everything reaches its destination.

Joker should be blank.

Thanks for the game.
When playing it though, there seems to be some bug with the exchanging tiles. I mean sometimes it seems we get the same letter back so retries and sometimes it skips your turn if you do so; do you think you can put something like: “you exchanged an “a” and get a “b”. I don’t know if it’s just me or others have experienced it but this is what has occured.
Once again thanks.

Hello,

The game wasn't properly prepared to be played alone, so currently it's a bug. Following your comments, though, I'm wondering if it would make sense to make it really possible.

I'm checking that out with english helpers, but we will probably reset the dictionary to take another source.
Many words are currently accepted when they shouldn't.
But before doing this, there seem still to have a bug with two letter words.

@EmeraldPupMato_cheese:
your turn is always skipped when you exchange tiles, that's the rules of the game.
If you have bad luck, it's perfectly possible to exchange a letter and get back the same one.

Hello,
@Aminiel it's possible to exchange 0 tiles by mistake though, this should probably always be blocked.
It's already blocked if you don't check anything in the list, but there are three empty spots, 8, 9 and 10, and if you check one of them and press G, you effectively exchanged nothing and skipped your turn. The game should probably not allow this as I've seen a few players do it by mistake.

About playing alone, I definitely think you should keep it. This is one game that perfectly makes sense to practice alone, and even though there are quite a few Scrabble games in English which are offline and even allow playing against bots, none of them have an interface that is this good and intuitive. Almost everybody chooses not to use coordinates for the grid at all, which is a perfectly nonsense decision to me, as when the game progresses further you have no idea where someone played a word. Either that, or the ones that do use coordinates work with SAPI and are self voicing, which is also quite annoying.

The last thing, but this probably makes sense only to me, it's easier to test bugs when you can either play alone or have some kind of AI :)

By the way, I noticed you've added Scrabble to statistics as well, but under the options usage heading, it's always displayed that the amount of people who used time limit is 0 percent, and the thinking time is displayed as "INF years", so this doesn't seem to be tracked properly.

When I was a kid I used to play on my own but had 2 racks of tiles so player A and player B if you like. A followed B and so on. The issue with just 1 player playing on their own is fine for the start but when you have terrible tiles you are not going to make big words so are only going to change your tiles 1 or 2 max at a time. With player B there is a possibility they may create new options to make better words. Keep exchanging tiles is not an exciting stratagy for a solo player. Lets see what other people think...

Hello Aminiel. I am so happy to see scrabble here. It is a great game and I will play it with pleasure. If I only Could suggest a few things:

1. To my mind it would be very helpful if There were more sounds, for example when somebody finishes his round.
2. I wish I Could still see double or triple word premiums on board even if the letters are already on board, it would help to understand number of points.
3. I Really wish I Could tern off the localisation numbers and letters, it makes me so confused as I put also letters and they have numbers about points you get for the letter. It would be great though if I Could check localisation somehow when I want ti, by pressing some shortcut.
4. When the game reads you which letters you received or may be when you press C, not so sure now, the game displays a question mark instead of joker when you have one. This is sometimes difficult to notice that you got it, not all people read all signs like question mark, me for example doesn't.

Anyway it is so great job, thanks Again.
Maks

If you do as previous post suggested

Triple word (red)
Double word (pink)
Triple letter (Dark blue)
Double letter (light blue)