Official Rules for Playing Scrabble

Game Play

• The letter tiles are either placed face down in a pile or kept within a bag. Each player draws seven tiles. The first player assembles a word that includes a tile placed on the board's center square, which is pink and contains a star. All subsequent words added to the board must join with a previous word by using a letter tile from one of those words. Players can pass on their turns if they are unable to make a word. At the beginning of each player's turn, he draws however many tiles he used in the last turn, bringing the number of tiles back to seven. The game ends when all tiles have been drawn and one player runs out or no one can make a word from the remaining tiles.

Word Rules

• Words must be assembled horizontally or vertically on the board. A player may add extra letters to an existing word to form a new word. All words must be in the language the game is designed for, and abbreviations and acronyms are not allowed. A blank tile in the game can be substituted for any letter, and it remains that letter for the rest of the game once it is played.

  If a player's word is challenged by others and confirmed by a dictionary to be an illegal word, the player removes the tiles from the board and gets no points. If the word is legal, the challenging player loses a turn.

Scoring

• Each letter has a point value in the game, from one to 10 points, which is depicted on the tile. The rarer the letter used, the more points it gives; these letters also have fewer tiles. When players assemble words, they get the total amount of points for each letter used.

  A letter tile gets double points when it is placed on a light blue square and triple points if it is placed on a dark blue square. A word gets double points if a tile is on a pink square and triple word points if a tile is on a red square. Blank tiles get no points; however, if a blank tile is put on a double or triple word score square, the word still gets the bonus. A player who added tiles to an existing word gets all the points, including those from all the tiles of the previous word.

  Once the game ends, players take the combined points of the letters they have remaining and deduct those points from their score. The player with the most points wins.