Scrabble House Rules

This page is for variations to Scrabble which can be made by just changing one or two of the rules. Note that these are variants that pretty much work only with Scrabble; for more variant ideas, see Generic House Rules, that could apply to many letter tile games.

See also the following, which have their own pages:
 * Clabbers
 * Duplicate Scrabble

Those listed above are given separate pages, since they are widely played.

Nickolai Scrabble
Nickolai Scrabble is a solitary Scrabble game where one must create a theoretical endgame Scrabble board with 14 bingos and no invalid words. The player starts the game with all 100 tiles face up and he can pick which tiles he wants to use. The player is free to switch tiles and replace words indefinitely. Dictionary use is allowed. Anagram solvers are forbidden.

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.

Co-operative Scrabble
In this version, one big combined score is kept rather than individual scores. There are 4 main advantages of doing this: 1.It changes the emphasis from blocking play to building play and the atmosphere changes from intensity to a celebration of clever scrabble play made by anyone. 2.It allows people of varying ability to play together and each excel at their own level e.g. Adult and child. 3.It also allows people to come and go in a game as no individual score is dependent on one person so at the extreme it can be played solitare with one person competing against their personal best. 4.Everyone is always involved, so there is no waiting for other people to make their move.

Co-operative scrabble is even more fun with the rule that special squares are counted every time a word is extended not just on the initial covering (affectionately known as Danksy's rule). This leads to the technical term of milking when a word is extended on a lucrative square e.g. LOVE on a triple word score (21 points - (1+1+4+1)x3) extended to GLOVE (27 points - (2+1+1+4+1)x3) then GLOVES (30 points - (2+1+1+4+1+1)x3). It also leads to the possibility of getting two double word scores or two triple word scores in one word give a x4 (2x2) or a x9 (3x3) boost to the score of that word. Through playing regularly (using Danky's rule) the following guidelines are suggested: a par score is 700+, a good effort 850+, over 1000 is amazing and the top recorded score (on 22/5/10) is 1251.

Minimum Scrabble
Also called Reverse Scrabble or Low Scrabble. Play order and tile draw is the same as in regular Scrabble, but in this version the goal is to have the lowest possible score. Knowing two and three letter words is helpful, and players generally avoid the bonus squares. Variants allow negative small points (-10) for bingo plays. When one player empties their rack and no tiles remain to draw the other players gain whatever remains in their rack.

No Double Scoring
No Double Scoring (sometimes called "No Plural Scrabble") follows the standard rules, with the exception that a tile is only worth points when it is first played. For example, a player could play PAT, receiving five points. Another player could make PATENT from PAT, but would only receive points for ENT.