Scrabble variants are games created by changing the normal Scrabble rules or equipment.
Variants with standard board and/or tiles
Anagrab Anagrab is a word game which is usually played with Scrabble tiles. The name is an amalgam of the words anagram (the basic game mechanism) and grab - because a player's words may at any time be taken by opponents. The game was first described in 1976 in Richard Sharp's The Best Games People Play,Sharp, Richard, The Best Games People Play London: Ward Lock Limited. but his description suggests that he did not invent it.
Gameplay Letter tiles are placed face down and turned over one at a time. At any point (there are no turns) any player may call out a word of at least four letters. This word can be made either entirely from the pool of letters, or by adding at least one new letter to an existing word. If the new word is acceptable the person who said the word first takes the letters and places them as a word in front of them. When making a new word the root of the existing word must be changed - for example D could not be added to the word LIVE to make LIVED, but it could make DEVIL. All the letters in an existing word must be included in the new one, plus at least one more.
When a new letter is turned over, the first person to say a valid word takes it. If more than one is said at the same time the longer word takes it. If the two are the same length (or the same word) then those words are banned for the rest of the game and nobody takes it.
Scoring Sharp suggests that the score for each word is the face value of the tiles multiplied by the number of letters in that word. In practice any reasonable system, such as totaling the number of letters held, is acceptable.
Anagrams
Anagrams (also called Snatch or Snatch-words) is a fast-paced, non-turn-based Scrabble variant played without a board. The tiles are placed face-down in the middle of the table, and players take turns flipping a single tile, leaving it in clear view of all players. Otherwise the game is not turn-based, and the rules are very simple: any player who sees a Scrabble-valid word can call it out, take the letters, and lay the word out in front of herself. At the end of the game each player's collection of individual words is scored.
To create the words, players can: take whole words (of 3 or more letters) from the communal pool of exposed, unused letters; add letters to an existing word on the table—whether their own or any opponent's. (Therefore, even if a player has found a word and placed it in front of herself, it can be stolen at any time if someone can combine its tiles with any loose tiles to make a new valid word. For example, if Sally already has SATE in front of her and a G comes up in the pool, any player can steal it by calling out "GATES". Sally can prevent the theft by calling out the word herself.); take multiple words from the table and combine them with a letter (or letters) from the pool to create a new word. For example, a player may combine FEW, SATE and the G to steal WEFTAGES. Some versions forbid combining existing words without adding at least one extra letter.
A version of the game seems to be popular among tournament Scrabble players. Writers John Ciardi, James Merrill, John Malcolm Brinnin, and Richard Wilbur reputedly played together regularly in Key West, Florida, with novelist John Hersey also sometimes sitting in.Hills, Rust, "Wordplay" an article in Esquire; March 1996, Vol. 125, Issue 3
Clabbers
Clabbers is the best known variant to tournament Scrabble players. All of the rules are identical to Scrabble with one exception: words played only have to be anagrams of real words. For example, MPORCTEU is a valid play in Clabbers because it is an anagram of COMPUTER. The increased ability to play parallel to pre-existing words makes for much higher scores.
A variant of this is Multi-Anagram Clabbers, in which players receive the basic score for any set of letters played multiplied by the number of valid anagrams for that set of letters. Opponents may "steal" points, once the initial player has declared their turn complete, by announcing other anagrams that the first player neglected to mention. In finding such anagrams, the blank must be declared as only one letter and may not change. For example, with a rack of AEILNS? (? = blank), a player announcing that the blank was a C and announcing the words SANICLE and INLACES would receive twice the base score; their opponent could steal the word SCALENI and score the base amount, but could not change the C to a T and earn points for SALTINE.
Duplicate
Duplicate Scrabble is a form of organized tournament Scrabble popular in French-speaking countries, in which in each round all players receive the same tiles and, within a fixed time limit, have to find the highest scoring word. Players only receive points for their own words, and at the end, when there are no more consonants or no more vowels, the player with the most points wins the game. This form of Scrabble can often result in many players participating simultaneously; the official record for participation in France, where Duplicate Scrabble is the preferred form of the game, is 1485 at the 1998 tournament in Vichy. It is also the predominant format used in the French World Scrabble Championships.
Ecological Scrabble The name of this variant stems from the fact that the blank tiles can be recycled. If a blank is played, any player may remove it from the board at the start of their turn and replace it with the letter it was declared to represent. For example, if PEAk is played (with a blank K), a player may take the blank and lay an actual K in its place. However, they may not replace it with any other letter that would form a valid word, such as L (PEAL), R (PEAR), S (PEAS), or T (PEAT).
Solitaire Scrabble Solitaire Scrabble follows the same rules and word acceptability as normal Scrabble, but there is only one player. Solitaire Scrabble can be played against a clock, trying to get the most points in a certain length of time or for highest maximum score.
Tag Team This variant is played with two teams of two players each, with each player possessing his/her own rack. On each team's turn, one of the players makes a play, followed immediately by a play by the teammate. Set-ups are quite common; a team set up a 302-point triple-triple MENAZo(N)S at the 2010 National Scrabble Championship's Tag Team Tournament.
Take Two Take Two (also called Speed Scrabble and similar to Bananagrams) is a fast-paced, non-turn-based Scrabble variant played without a board. Tiles are placed face-down in the middle of the table in a communal pool and each player is given a small number of face-up starting tiles. From their starting tiles, each player tries to build his own valid Scrabble grid—players do not use each other's grid or tiles. When a player successfully uses all of his face-up tiles, he shouts "take two", and every player takes two more tiles. Play continues until there are no more tiles left to draw. In some variants, the person who creates the first complete grid when all the tiles run out is the winner. In others, a calculation based on word length is used to determine the winner.
Some variants allow for the exchange of unwanted tiles. Local variants include Take One or Take Four; the banning of 2 letter words; having a dictionary on hand for any players to use (but since it is a game of speed, this doesn't get used much); a bonus of 50 points for building a specific word, a bonus for longest word (number of letters in word, not tile values; and only if a single player has longest word), etc.
Team Speed Scrabble Team Speed Scrabble is when teams of 2, 3, or 4 race to play legal Scrabble words as quickly as possible. Scoring does not matter; all that matters is how quickly words are played. This can be a co-operative game where all players are simply trying to complete the game as fast as possible.
Variants with non-standard equipment
Super Scrabble
This game has the same rules and tiles as Scrabble, but the board is larger (21x21 vs. 15x15 in the original). With the larger board there are more premium squares, going up to quadruple letter and quadruple word scores. There are also twice as many tiles with a slightly different distribution, such as two S's added when compared to the original distribution doubled.*
Scrabble Slam! This game uses cards for tiles where players throw down a card with a letter to change a four-letter word to another four-letter word by placing the card on top of one of the four piles of cards that form the word. So if the word shown is LACE, one player can put the M on the L to make it MACE and the next player could put a Z on the C to make the word MAZE and so on. Scoring is based on how many words are formed. This variation is also used on Scrabble Showdown.
Scrabble Trickster
A variant of Scrabble introduced by Mattel on April 6, 2010, Scrabble Trickster has spaces on the board which let players draw cards, which let the players take certain actions not allowed in traditional Scrabble.
WildWords
This game has the same size board and nearly the same scoring system as Scrabble. The major differences are the inclusion of twelve wild tiles marked with an asterisk that may represent one letter or any series of letters and special board squares that convert a regular letter tile into a wild tile (the tile in question is placed upside down on such a square). The nature of these changes shifts the emphasis of the game from playing short words to playing words of any length. For example, QUA*IST, could be the word QUARTERFINALIST. Good players must find 7-tile bonus plays a majority of the time, and the short odd words that are a staple in Scrabble are of little use in WildWords.
Scarabeo Scarabeo is an Italian variant of Scrabble that is much more popular in its native country than the original game. It features a 17×17 board, 8 tiles per rack instead of 7, and a 30-point bonus for using 7 tiles as well as the 50-point "bingo". Instead of blank tiles, the tiles which can be used as any letter have scarabs on them, hence the name.
Scrabble Junior Scrabble Junior child-friendly version of Scrabble can pretty much grow with the age of the child. The double-sided game board incorporates a variant for children five to seven years of age on one side and a version for older children aged seven to ten on the other. Two to four players can take part in a game. In the simpler version, young players connect letters with words on the game board. The words have been preprinted on the playing field and only have to be covered by the letter tiles until a complete word has been constructed. If the board is flipped, words must be constructed independently, as they are in regular Scrabble.
Wordox This game is a cross between Othello and Scrabble played on a 13 x13 board. Each player has different coloured tiles. The rack is common and always contains 7 tiles. All tiles have the same value, one point. Points are scored for how many tiles are currently your own colour. The special squares are pink and orange. A word with a tile on a pink square clears the board. When this happens a bonus point is received for each tile you placed on an orange square on that board.
Literaxx
Literaxx is the English version of Literaki, a popular online Polish variant. Tiles are worth 1, 2, 3 or 5 points and are coloured according to their value. Double and triple word squares function in the same manner as standard Scrabble. However, the coloured triple letter squares are only active when the tile colour matches that of the square.
Literaxx is available at PlayOK.
Anadrome