Clabbers

Clabbers is a game played by tournament Scrabble players for fun, or occasionally at Scrabble variant tournaments. The name derives from the fact that the words CLABBERS and SCRABBLE form an anagram pair.

Rules
The rules are identical to that of Scrabble, except that valid plays are only required to form anagrams of acceptable words; in other words, the letters in a word do not need to be placed in the correct order. If a word is challenged, the player who played the word must then name an acceptable word that anagrams to the tiles played.

Because the number of "words" that can be formed is vastly larger than in standard English, the board usually ends up tightly packed in places, and necessarily quite empty in others. Game scores will often be much higher than in standard Scrabble, due to the relative ease of making high-scoring overlap plays and easier access to premium squares.

Example game (SOWPODS)


Horizontal words from top to bottom


 * ALI = AIL
 * TOD = DOT
 * ISNAETCR = CANISTER
 * WOPL = PLOW
 * DEER = DEER
 * ZIF = FIZ
 * SIATX = TAXIS
 * BTADEI = BAITED
 * MGU = GUM
 * EMING = MINGE
 * ECOPU = COUPE
 * RATHE = HEART
 * IQ = QI
 * VUEJ = JUVE
 * EWY = WEY#
 * ODOR = ODOR
 * ASSGEOU = GASEOUS
 * ROH = RHO

Vertical words from left to right


 * ATIW = WAIT
 * KAMER = MAKER
 * LOSODF = FLOODS
 * GCALINS = SCALING
 * IDNPE = PINED
 * UOT = OUT
 * ALEZ = LAZE
 * PHA = HAP
 * RSITOUEN = ROUTINES
 * FIAR = FAIR
 * EBRYE = BEERY
 * XIM = MIX
 * NAV = VAN
 * UO = OU
 * GULNED = LUNGED
 * JOR = JOR#
 * RO = OR

Dense Escalating Clabbers
This is a variant of Clabbers which addresses a few weaknesses in the more commonly played version. Because anagraming in Clabbers allows for more flexible word "hooking," a Clabbers board is more densely populated than in a normal game of Scrabble. As a result, the outer borders of the board are underutilized, because players run out of tiles before the game moves that far from the starting position.

To compensate for this, Dense Escalating Clabbers adds 1/3 more tiles. In addition, every bingo increases a player's rack size by one, and the play times are increased from 25 minutes to 33 minutes 33 seconds. There is also a 100 point bonus for playing a fifteen letter word. These modifications also make the game more challenging and interesting, and also increase the likelihood of triple-triple plays).