January 12, 2007

So have you played Speed Scrabble? Highly addictive. No board. Letter tiles go upside down in middle of table. Each player draws 7 tiles. At "Go" everyone flips their letters. Each player creates their own crossword with their own letters*. First player to use all 7 letters says "Take 2". Everyone takes another 2 tiles. Play continues (with anyone using all their letters to declare take two) until there are not enough tiles for everyone to take 2. Final call is "Take 1". First to use all tiles says "Done". Everyone counts up their points and subtracts the points of unused tiles. Repeat and play to 500 (or whatever).

* you can rearrange any/all letters at any time, however this is dangerous (suicide even) late in the round.

posted by mecurious 17 years ago
  • I've played something like this at a party (being drunk helps), but I remember it as a store-bought game specifically for this purpose (i.e. not a Scrabble tile set). I recall that the first person to complete the first round almost always finishes subsequent rounds first, and wins the game. It's also tough to verify that valid words are being used, so cheating is rampant. It was fun though.
  • hmmm... the rules are different than i remember. the rules we used to play by were: 1. secretly snort 1/2 gram biker speed 2. go play scrabble with your cousin 3. argue frequently i miss my childhood summers on the farm that was really a front for a meth lab...ah, the good old days.
  • I've played with a specific board game as well, though I can't find the link anymore. I bought it for my mom one Christmas. It wasn't as fun as I'd imagined, because it was all flailing about and there was no time to admire nice words and the like (which is one of our favourite parts of Scrabble, 'best word' is a metric for the game's success). It was kind of neat though, and had loads more letters and we had some laughs.
  • I love this game - learnt it last year and have taught it to pretty much everyone I know.
  • I forgot to mention that the first person to use ALL tiles (round over) gets 20 points bonus. There is a scoring variation called Idaho Rules that gives the 20 bonus points, not to the first person to use all the tiles, but to the person who has the most points in their "hand". (You must still deduct the unused tiles from your score before determining that, so it is beneficial to go out first, but Idaho rules rewards better word play as opposed to just speed (and usually shorter words).