Hobbies And Interests
Speed Scrabble
A derivative of Scrabble, Speed Scrabble does not use the Scrabble game board or the tile display boards. Instead, players must turn over letters from the pool of unused letters and attempt to form words in a Scrabble-style fashion.
Speed Scrabble starts with all the Scrabble pieces in the middle of the playing area face down. Every player draws seven pieces from the pool of pieces, and on "go" each player must construct the letters into one or more words. Players must always follow the horizontal and vertical pattern, as in traditional Scrabble, for every word formed, and every word must connect to another word on each player's own word chain. Play continues when one player uses all of his pieces to form a word; he then says, "Go," and all the other players must draw two or more pieces to incorporate into their word chain. While this is ideal for normal Scrabble pieces, a marketed version of this game is called Bananagrams, and its rules differ slightly from those of Speed Scrabble.
Duplicate
Using a traditional Scrabble board and a moderator, the game Duplicate is a fun way to incorporate Scrabble pieces. Instead of playing traditional Scrabble turns, every player receives the same Scrabble pieces to try and make words. The result is a more fast-paced, evenly matched game.
To play the game, players each get a supply of small pieces of paper. The moderator pulls out seven Scrabble pieces and places them on the tile display board, and players have three minutes to quickly think of the highest-scoring combination of those letters. Every player writes his or her highest-scoring combination on the paper, and the moderator determines which combination scores the highest. The highest combination is the word then placed on the center Scrabble game board. While this game eliminates some of the scoring components involved in Scrabble, it allows for greater equality since each player receives the same set of tiles to work with.
Anagrams
Although it is no longer in production, the game Anagrams can be played with simple Scrabble pieces. Instead of using the Scrabble board, players in Anagrams all place their Scrabble pieces directly in front of them. One by one, players draw one tile and look to see if they can combine it with any other letters to form a word. Every word formed earns the player a point, though other players may add on to the word, thus stealing the point from that player.