Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Scrabble Rules Made Simple

The game of Scrabble is close to being a national pastime. Almost everyone has sat down and played a round with their family at least once in the past. If you have never played Scrabble, you should consider buying it. It will give you a great family activity to play. If you have never played Scrabble or heard of it before in the past, the rules are very easy to understand. Read on for a guide to this popular game, as well as some tips that you can use to do well. It is a game that all ages can compete at with an equal chance of doing well.

The concept is simple: there are various different tiles with letters of the alphabet on them. Each player receives seven tiles. Using these tiles, you must create as high scoring of a word as you can and place it on the playing board (which is a large grid that the letter tiles fit into.) The first word made starts in the middle of the playing board, and each word after that must be touching one of the previous words, and must incorporate letters from other words.

There are several different types of areas to place you letters, there are some called double letter score or triple letter score which, obviously, double or triple the amount of the letter that lands on that spot. Other types of places on the playing board are double word score and triple word score which double or triple the total amount of the word that you've made. The triple word score is the best area to put your word, but also the rarest.

On each tile, along with a letter, there is a number. The number is how much each letter is worth. The rarer the number is, the more points it is worth. For example: an A is worth only one point, and a Q or a Z is worth ten points.

After you have taken your turn, you replace however many letters you used with new letters. If you cannot find any words that your letters spell, you can trade out all of your letters for new ones, but you lose that turn and you cannot make a word until the turn comes back around to you.

Scrabble Junior Helps Kids with Spelling and Vocabulary

Scrabble Junior is a version of the popular word game Scrabble that is meant for usage by children. The tiles are oversized with the most-used letters in the alphabet, and are usually set up in a way that will allow your youngster to put together the basic words that are printed on the board. It is a great way to teach your child not only the vocabulary from the board, but also the letters of the alphabet and the spelling of some common words. So read on to find out how exactly Scrabble Junior works, and whether you think your child could benefit from it.

A scrabble junior board can be thought of as a jigsaw puzzle that is assembled using letters. Each column or row has a word that is very simple and is used commonly among children. Behind the text on these words is a picture that the child can use to associate the picture with the word and the letters. To play a game of scrabble junior, the child will use his own memory of letters and words to recreate the word that is meant to occupy the space that is set aside on the playing board.

Scrabble junior can come in handy for many different stages of learning. If your child has not even learned the letters of the alphabet yet, scrabble junior can be the perfect tool to begin to associate the sounds with the shapes. If your child knows the letters and needs to begin learning how to sound things out, you can use the blocks to demonstrate how each individual sound builds upon the others to create the words. Usually this is the most effective for toddlers who already have a fairly firm grasp of spoken language, and you feel are ready to begin learning the written part of English.

Any store that carries children’s toys will have some sort of word games that are meant to entertain and educate your child. However, you may want to stick with the old favorite that is scrabble junior. It has been around as long as almost any other word game, and is a proven favorite amongst parents who want to speed up the learning process.

Scrabble Dictionaries: What Sets Them Apart from Regular Dictionaries?

The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary has been around for several decades, and is meant to be a helpful reference for players of the game. It does away with scientific terms and abbreviations, since these aren’t used by scrabble players. It focuses on the words that are permitted by the rules of the game, and it is very helpful for anyone who disputes a play. So if you are wondering whether grandma was serious when she said that Zyvexaquir was a real word, you should invest in a scrabble dictionary. It will help you to settle disputes over words and play the game fairly.

Just because a word is in a regular dictionary doesn’t mean that it is compatible with the rules of scrabble. Scrabble specifically prohibits all proper nouns, so you should not expect to see any of those in a scrabble dictionary. This is very convenient, especially when you are not completely sure whether something is a proper noun or not (you would be surprised at how often the line is blurred between the two types of nouns, and how often you will find something missing from the scrabble dictionary that you would have expected to be there.

A scrabble dictionary is also helpful in finding words that you didn’t even know existed. If you have an open letter that looks simply fabulous but you can’t find any words to play on it, just flip open your scrabble dictionary. You’ll be able to find out all of the endings that could come from those letters, and see if you have any of the goods required to make those endings and get the points you need to win the game. Scrabble dictionaries also include many words that are included simply because of technicalities in the English language, and words that you wouldn’t otherwise see, or even hear of in normal conversation.

There are many different places that you could purchase a scrabble dictionary should you decide that it offers some things that you would like to have. Many book stores will include them in their game section or with the regular dictionaries. If you don’t have any luck in the local stores, you can turn to the internet for whatever you need. You can buy secondhand copies of scrabble dictionaries, or stick with the new and factory sealed copies that have never been used before.

Scrabble: A Game for People of All Ages

Scrabble is one of the few games that a grandmother can sit down and enjoy with her grandson. It is enjoyable for almost everyone that plays it, and will create some fun family memories. If you are not familiar with the game, it is played using small wooden tiles with certain alphabet letters engraved on them. Each player takes turns spelling words on the game board using some or all of his or her seven tiles, and then replenishing the supply from the pile of unused letters. There are many different gameplay elements that allow for twists in the game.

The game is played by giving each of the players an assortment of 7 letters which are engrained on small wooden blocks. These letters are first put into one central collection, and each player draws from them to keep their own personal total at 7. Each player takes a turn making a word. The first player combines two more of his or her letters to form a word and places it on the board to read either across or down with at least one letter on the center square. Diagonal words are not permitted, since they would completely throw off the dynamics of the double and triple score spaces.

You complete your turn by counting and announcing your score for the turn you just got finished with. Then, you can draw as many letters as you played during that turn. Always keep seven letters in your rack. As the game progresses, the scores of the letters are totaled for each individual player, and this reflects how well they are doing in the game. Once all of the reserve letters have been used up on the board and there are no more words that can be made, the game is over and the person with the highest score is considered the winner. It is usually a very non-competitive game, and players may even bargain letters amongst each other.

Scrabble helps all of its players to improve vital skills that will come in handy for years to come. It not only helps players to familiarize themselves with the spelling of words, but it also increases vocabulary and reading skills. Even young ones can benefit from scrabble as they begin to pick up on some of the more advanced words used by the rest of the players.

Online Scrabble: A Computer Game for Anyone

Many people have a hard time understanding the motivation to play online games. Most of the time is spent killing monsters and making a character stronger. Older generations have a difficult time understanding how this can constitute as fun. Well believe it or not, there are games available that will appeal to this group of people as well. Online scrabble is available on many different sites. If you would like to play scrabble but can’t convince any family members to play with you (maybe you beat them too often for too long), you can play against other real people in online scrabble. It will provide a huge challenge for you, and you can finally play against people with equal skill.

The first benefit of online scrabble is the flexibility in the time schedule. If you are more of a nocturnal person, you may have trouble getting people on board to play a game of scrabble at 3 in the morning. If you are hit with one of these sudden impulses, you simply have to log onto your favorite online scrabble provider and start up a game. Many people from different countries play online word games to improve spelling and vocabulary skills, so when you take the time zone changes into consideration, you can find a new friend to play with at any given time.

Online scrabble is also convenient because of the fact that you won’t have to clean up hundreds of small tiles off the table when you are done playing. The entire game is played electronically, with the letters being randomly picked by the computer. After you are done playing, you just close the game and that’s all you have to do. Because of this added convenience, you can sit down and start playing in a matter of seconds, and when you’re done you can get right back to whatever you were doing previously.

If you are interested in starting to play online scrabble, there are many different places that you can look for an outlet to do so. There are professional scrabble games sold that will get the job done perfectly well, and there are also many free, browser-based games that you can jump right in to without paying a bit. So look around today, and find out what is right for you.