DanH's Scrabble Puzzle! - 02/08/2005

For Details of how to play, and a link to the answer, click this sentence!

Player 1.ScoreCum.
Score		Player 2.ScoreCum.
Score		To comment on this puzzle, please send an email to
danscrabble [at] cubestation.co.uk
WIZ (horizontal)-30TOILED-24
RADIAL1848MUCKIER3054
OX53101FEM2477
SUGARED20121RIMY30107
FUTON30151TICE22129
VUG15166WIRES26155
QUOTE42208NIPPER25180
RAJ28236BLuSHED85265
NOBLE24260GAIT14279
VENAE16276YAM16295
BOOTEE27303KiNG16311
SH28331OE11322
NUT10341AA13335
-1340+1336


How to play
Above you can see the scoresheet from a typical game of Scrabble. Only the main word played is given. The idea of the puzzle is to use your powers of logic to reconstruct the finished board, using the words which were played in the game. The first word is always played horizontally, and must pass through the centre square (pink). When you position a word on the board, you must make sure that the score matches the score of the word when played in the actual game, and when you have finished, you must make sure that the total scores for both players match what is written on the scoresheet!

Letters written in lower case indicate where a blank tile was laid on the board, and blanks score 0 points. You can use the distribution of tiles in a Scrabble game to help you, these are:

A (1 point) = 8 tilesB (3 points) = 2 tilesC (3 points) = 2 tilesD (2 points) = 4 tilesE (1 point) = 12 tiles
F (4 points) = 2 tilesG (2 points) = 3 tilesH (4 points) = 2 tilesI (1 point) = 9 tilesJ (8 points) = 1 tile
K (5 points) = 1 tileL (1 point) = 4 tilesM (3 points) = 2 tilesN (1 point) = 6 tilesO (1 point) = 8 tiles
P (3 points) = 2 tilesQ (10 points) = 1 tileR (1 point) = 6 tilesS (1 point) = 4 tilesT (1 point) = 6 tiles
U (1 point) = 4 tilesV (4 points) = 2 tilesW (4 points) = 2 tilesX (8 points) = 1 tileY (4 points) = 2 tiles
Z (10 points) = 1 tileBlank (0 points) = 2 tiles


How to score
When scoring a word, you must first take account of the individual letters in the main word, and then the whole word.
First calculate the score of each letter, landing on a premium letter score. Pale Blue squares double the score of the individual letter, and Dark Blue squares triple the score of the indiviual letter. So if you played POKE with the K on a Dark Blue (Triple Letter Score) square, you would score 3 + 1 + 3*5 + 1 = 3 + 1 + 15 + 1 = 20 points. Once the letter has been laid on a premium square, each subsequent time it is used it only counts as face value (ie you only get the doubling or tripling effect the first time you lay it).

Next calculate the score of the whole word, by adding up the values of each letter, remembering to include any Double Letter or Triple Letter Scores. Then, if any part of the word crosses over a pink (Double Word Score) square, double the value of the entire word. If it crosses a red square (Triple Word Score), then triple the value of the word. Again, these premium squares only work the first time they are used.

Score each new word formed in this way, and find the sum total of each word, and this gives the score for the turn! For more help with scoring, please see this helpful article on Wikipedia: Scrabble Scoring Examples.

A tip to be getting on with...
You may find for some of the turns you can score the correct amount, laying the correct word on different places on the board. This means you have to look ahead to see if the rest of the game is possible. If not, then the positioning of your word must be wrong! Good Luck!

Back to the puzzleClick here for the answer to the puzzle