Speed Scrabble Rules
Speed Scrabble Rules Guide
We’ve discussed Speed Scrabble” before, but I wanted to present you with a detailed, yet efficient, set of Speed Scrabble Rules you could print off and use in your games.
To that end, I’ll try to give you a straightforward set of rules you can use the next time everyone in your Scrabble group or Scrabble Club wants to trick things up a little bit with their favorite word game.
Speed Scrabble Rules
1. If not specifically mentioned, the rules between “Classic Scrabble” and “Speed Scrabble” are the same. If it isn’t overtly mentioned in the following rules summary, consult the Official Scrabble Rulebook from Hasbro that came with your Scrabble set.
2. Do not use a Scrabble board. Build words on the kitchen table, or whatever surface you are using.
3. At the beginning of play, all players receive 7 letter tiles apiece. Game play begins when the youngest player at the table says “Go”.
4. When the word “go” is said, everyone should immediately turn over their Scrabble letters and begin to puzzle out words with those letters. Create your own word tree and never play words off of another player’s word tree.
5. As soon as a player has a word or crossword built using all seven letters they were supplied, that player calls out “Two more letters”. Everyone immediately draws two more letter tiles from the bonepile. Your word tree must connect every letter you have received together; therefore, you cannot built two crosswords separately.
6. Continue to build words, except now with 9 letters instead of 7. You may maintain the word tree you had built before and continue to build words off of it, or you may tear down any or all of the word tree and build words. Once again, you must built one interconnected group of words and not two or more word groupings.
7. When you have your nine letters in a word tree, the person who finishes this part first once again calls out “Two More Letters” and everyone collects two more letters from the letter bonepile. Play continues just the same as before. Therefore, you will start with 7 letters, then add 2 more each round, so you will eventually have 7, then 9, then 11, then 13 and so on.
8. Continue to add letters in pairs to your word tree, rebuilding the crossword as many times as you so choose, until the group runs out of letters. When there are no longer enough letters in the bonepile to add two letters apiece, the person finished with their crossword calls out “1 More Letter”.
9. If there are not enough letter tiles remaining for everyone to receive a letter, the player finished with their crossword first calls out, “I’m out.” At this point, players should stop trying to build words and the game is over.
10. Add up your overall score by adding up the point values of all the letters you have placed in your word tree. If you have built a word which is 7 or more letters long, give yourself +10 points for each such word. If you build a word twice that size (14 letters), you only receive the +10. Therefore, it’s better to place two 7-letter words than one 14-letter word. Go figure.
Whoever finished first gets bonus points, too. That player receives the total point value of all players who still have letter tiles in their hand. Also, those players deduct from their score the point value of all letter tiles in their hand that they did not play. In other words, this is the same endgame rule for conventional Scrabble.
Speed Scrabble Variants
For more Speed Scrabble rule ideas, go to our page on “Speed Scrabble” and read under the heading “Speed Scrabble Variations”, which is towards the bottom of the page. Depending on how imaginative you and your Scrabble group want to be, your Speed Scrabble Rules can be this straightforward, or entirely exotic.
Related Scrabble Posts
How to Play Scrabble on Facebook
How to Play Strip Scrabble
How to Play Scrabble Cards
How to Play Subway Scrabble
How to Set Up a Scrabble Group
This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 11:19 pmand is filed under Scrabble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
« How To Set Up a Scrabble Group
Z Words – Scrabble Words with Z in Them »