Game: Super Scrabble

Thread: Re: Deluxe Edition - Warped game board?

WinningMoves — 2008-08-27T20:46:05+00:00

I'm sorry your board is in such bad shape. I'll be trying to contact you privately, but certainly if anyone else has had this issue, please contact us. We want to make sure that our customers have the best play experiences and a bad game board would certainly prevent that! Let us know and we'll work to correct the problem.

Thread: Deluxe Edition - Warped game board?

kabsandiego — 2008-04-03T05:06:13+00:00

Deluxe Edition - Warped game board?
Just throwing this post out to see if any other people are having the same experience.

Short and sweet:
Has anyone else bought the Super Scrabble "Deluxe Edition" and found the soft plastic board warped and the way it rotates annoying? I'm pretty disappointed with this version of the game! Buyer beware if you're looking to buy or upgrade with this new edition.

Long winded version:
I picked up the new Super Scrabble "Deluxe Edition" as a gift for my grandmother and my aunts, who play at least 3-5 times a week. They had the regular Super Scrabble, but were always lamenting about how nice it would be if it rotated and, more importantly, had the raised plastic grid to keep the letter tiles in place. How exciting, that "Due to overwhelming demand, the Scrabble game with More Spaces, More Points and More Tiles is now available with a rotating game board and raised grid spaces. This is the perfect upgrade to an already great game!" the new Deluxe Edition would soon be released. I pre-ordered it online, waited a few weeks, it arrived safety on my doorstep, and last weekend I presented the surprise gift to my family. Only to open the game and be dissappointed by the "deluxelessness" of it. The board is made out of a soft plastic that was slightly warped throughout, but most annoyingly at the very center where the game folds in half (leaving about a 1/4" vertical gap and letter tiles struggling to hold on). Also, not very deluxe, but maybe less of a downer, is the way the board rotates. It doesn't sit on a stationary base and rotate in 360 degree circle, but instead this new design has a few ball bearings that let it roll around the table. The fact that it says "rotating game board" is a lie..."rolling game board, that one could akwardly spin around" is more like it. Maybe this will just take some getting used to... I hope.

Overall, the new deluxe board is a let down. I've been thinking that maybe I could pry off the plastic grid, flatten it out, and reattach it to a normal flat board (and just use an old Lazy Susan to rotate it) and we'd be much better off. I really hope they go back to the drawing board with this one and return it with a hard plastic grid on a solid, non-folding board, with a real rotating base.

-Kevin
P.S. - Sorry for the lack of photographic evidence, but I forgot to bring my camera with me that day. I will try to take pics next time I visit.

Thread: Re: Alone Again, Naturally

cgund — 2008-03-22T01:33:14+00:00

Friendless wrote:
For the curious and the obsessed, here are the words and what they scored:
{snip}

CORMS 24

Thread: Re: Solitaire Super Scrabble

cgund — 2008-03-22T01:27:31+00:00

Friendless wrote:

Here are the words and what they scored:
{snip}

WHY 30
ZEE 41

I just like this.

Thread: A much better way to play...

zurround — 2008-03-17T04:40:58+00:00

This started out as an experiment but worked so well that now my friends and I do this always. The gameplay can be greatly improved using the 8 letter rack system.

1.replenish racks to 8 instead of 7
2.minimum number of letters in bag needed for exchange is 8 instead of 7
3. "bingo" is all but one of the letters so if you use seven letters you still get fifty point bonus
4. A special bonus of SEVENTY FIVE points for using the ENTIRE eight letter rack which is called a SUPER BINGO!

the 8 letter racks allow longer words, more bingos, and quicken the game making for better gameplay.

Image

miggor — 2008-02-16T22:00:24+00:00

2006 UK Release

Thread: Re: User Review

miggor — 2008-01-26T22:16:08+00:00

Only played one game so far with the girlfriend and it took two hours compared to our usual average 45mins. We're both Scrabble heads so enjoyed it a lot. However, this version is EXHAUSTING even compared to playing two or three normal games in a session. The size of the board makes you think options are plentiful, but as we both play fairly tight games that tend to stick along the double-word diagonals, it can REALLY shrink your openings. (I'd especially like to point out the letter "C" for it's failure to cooperate with expanding the board!)

I think Toulouse is a little unfair in his appraisal of it's size. Yes it's BIG. Um, that'll be the "Super" part of the name :-) It doesn't shy away from it. It says it in quite big letters on the box! Clearly a different strategic and tactical approach is needed. That in itself should make it an essential purchase if you've played Scrabble a lot.

(I'd recommend the Simpsons Scrabble version with it's chaotic board layout and card-based word bonuses for the same reason. It's NOT your standard tournament rules obviously, but it's fun and the basis of the game is always the same. Let's face it, even if you lose, there'll always be the pride you feel when you've played a personally very satisfying word!)

A final point, the new tile distribution is printed on the board in both directions so you can still easily count the letters. (Don't fear change!)

Thread: Alone Again, Naturally

Friendless — 2007-12-02T05:47:55+00:00

I've been reading Joe Edley's Scrabble book, and with my girlfriend working to some deadline I had an evening to myself. I have a feeling the book has been helping, so I sat down to attack my solitaire Super Scrabble P.B. of 1776.

]]>

The game started cursed. I drew ADIJLTT, so the best I could make was JAIL. Well, I could have made TIDAL but it would have been a waste of good letters on a 12 point word. At least JAIL was 22 points. If I could have made a 5 letter word I could have got the J on a DLS for another 16 or so points. My racks were then BDFIOTT, BDLROTZ, ABLRRTV, and finally BELRSTV. I kept trying to play away the hard lettters to get a better rack, but I couldn't draw vowels. After I made BELTS my racks were ADDRSVW, DKNNSUV, DFKNQTU where I finally gave in and swapped tiles. What would Joe Edley make of that rubbish? I drew my second E of the game on turn 11.

I was consciously working towards a bingo rack, and on turn 12 found HILLIEST, on turn 15 found LETCHING and on turn 17 RESONATE. It looked like the game was turning for me, though I was well behind the pace for my P.B. However the board was badly closed - notice how I had to come through GAZER to get to the top left corner, as I couldn't build off PUFF / PEKOE / WEFTS / CH, and I had to get to the middle bottom through QUARE as I couldn't build off BELTS or BEAU? This game was seriously hard work. All of the consonants at the beginning of the game had resulted in a board with few places to build from.

My 4th and last bingo for the game was NETTIER. After that I had a blank for a while but suffered another run of nasty consonants until I caved in and built TAIPAN so I could extend into another corner of the board. My total of 4 bingos was better than last time, but nowhere near enough points to make up for the generally much worse words I was building.

My total score was 1623 after 60 turns, which was only 27.05 points per turn. In the previous game I averaged about 34 points per turn. I did start to understand about how closed boards come about, but I still don't know how to deal with them. I'll have to keep reading that book.

For the curious and the obsessed, here are the words and what they scored:

JAIL 22
FIAT 15
DZO 26
JAR 12
BELTS 21
WARDS 42
VANS 33
(swap 7 tiles)
WHO 24
BIGS 10
HOLD 8
HILLIEST 64
WEPT 18
OX 54
LETCHING 68
BEAU 17
RESONATE 60
CORMS 24
PUFF 24
HUE 23
AA 18
MEETS 31
PEKOE 22
TREY 37
RIMS 28
UNLEASH 20
KENS 35
STUDY 15
HANDY 24
QUARE 72
COME 48
WOW 28
NOBLER 32
ROOD 33
ANNS 30
COVEN 26
FLETCHING 26
GAZER 17
WRY 29
(swap 1 tile - a Q)
LICK 11
ARK 14
QI 11
NETTIER 70
DOOM 16
JIG 33
CAMEO 24
XU 38
DIVE 35
EGGY 18
DUSTED 21
TAIPAN 21
RETRAIN 15
SH 21
PLANAR 20
BEEP 50
CH 14
PIT 15
IO 12
TI 6

Thread: Re: Solitaire Super Scrabble

Friendless — 2007-10-26T05:53:53+00:00

It was in whatever I was using - OSW I think it must be. Remember I'm in Australia - we use the other bit of SOWPODS.

BTW, FUNCTOR is a real word:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functor

If SESQUIOXIDIZING is valid so should be the words I know!

Thread: Re: Solitaire Super Scrabble

Vaughn — 2007-10-26T04:12:04+00:00

Is UNSATING in SOWPODS because it isn't in the dictionary that I use.

You should have challenged yourself.

Thread: Solitaire Super Scrabble

Friendless — 2007-10-25T23:19:17+00:00

With my girlfriend allegedly studying this evening, I set myself a project of playing Super Scrabble Solitaire. Super Scrabble is just like normal Scrabble with but a 21x21 board and 200 tiles, so roughly twice as large. Also, the tile mix is slightly friendlier - proportionally there are fewer Js and Vs and more Ts and Ss.

]]>

I thought about the assessment rules on the way home. It would be possible to attempt to set myself up for a really big score through careful planning... get the Q on the quadruple letter score, and the Z on the triple word score, and so on, but that would be really boring and not at all like the real game. So to compare games of solitaire Super Scrabble I will compare average points per turn. Hence I'm usually motivated to play the best word for any move. I did find myself not wanting to waste spaces that I thought I could get a good score on. The 7 spaces where BENEFITS ended up was an example - I knew it would be easy to play a 7 letter bingo ending in S on a triple word score, so I left the spot available until I had one.

The game lasted 2.5 hours and I found myself tiring about halfway through. The board is so big and there are so many places to play (though not as many as you'd expect) that you get worn out trying to consider all of the possibilities. Sometimes I just played a word because I liked the word and wanted to remember it later - BIOTA, VATIC, ZORI, ARIEL. And sometimes I played a poor word to get rid of some letters to try to get something decent on my rack.

Here are the words and what they scored:

DICING 22
SPLINTS 36
JILT 27
MOAN 22
JEANS 24
TORNADO 66 (bingo #1)
VANE 38 - if there had been an L I could have played HEAVENLY!
YAWNED 30
AXON 40
PACE 44
COW 21
BENEFITS 77 (bingo #2)
DOCTOR 27
FUSED 23
GRUBS 38
BIOTA 24
CUE 10
SQUAT 77
PIXIES 69
DAMN 37
MOW 32
UNSATING 58 (bingo #3)
WONTS 40
WHY 30
ZEE 41
VATIC 20
HULK 38
PORGY 46
DIMMER 42
WEDGE 20
QI 21
EVER 16
KNEEL 18
ZITS 69
MANY 42
USHER 51
FIB 33
LARCH 44
ZORI 57
RAJ 28
IDLE 15
OVER 20
FORGED 39
HEAD 49
RAFTER 36
TUP 16
ARIEL 20
OFTEN 20
KNOT 28
TOE 17
ZIT 12
PI 6

for a total score of 1776 in 52 turns = 34.2 points per turn.

My impression is that rack management is more important in this game than in the small game. If you think 3 Us on your rack is bad, consider the possibility of having 7! Also, although scores were slightly higher than the original game, they weren't dramatically so. The quadruple letter tiles and quadruple word tiles are way out in the boondocks, and a word like WONTS on a DWS and QLS is worth 40, when in the original if you got it on a DWS and a TLS it would still be worth 32. If I average about 340 points per game, and this counts as 4 games, then that's about 30% higher. High yes, but not silly.

Anyway, this game was hard work. I allow myself to look in the dictionary (because I'm here to learn, not to compete fairly) and 2.5 hours of anagramming, considering possibilities and looking up words that don't exist (e.g. BIOTECH and FUNCTOR) sucks the energy out of you. That's why I have to go to bed now.

Thread: Re: User Review

jcikal — 2007-09-19T03:02:03+00:00

I play regular (or classic) Scrabble with 6 players and it takes approximately 50 minutes or so. The only thing that bothers me about Super Scrabble is the tile distribution. I'll just use my 2 sets of tiles from my scrabble games.

Image

mardeck — 2006-10-14T08:41:31+00:00

Super Scrabble in a so-called collector's tin comes with cloth tile bag, and rule booklet with history and tips.

Image

mardeck — 2006-10-14T08:41:24+00:00

Super Scrabble in a so-called collector's tin

Image

ZiggyZambo — 2006-01-18T06:35:43+00:00

Image

Verkisto — 2006-01-13T04:38:23+00:00

Hey, Verne! This game ain't so bad when you use a differnt dikshnary!

Thread: Super Scrabble

West2 — 2006-01-03T17:55:01+00:00

I like my games bigger and better, and Super Scrabble delivers. Here you have much of what you wished was there when you were playing the original - the extra "z" especially.

The game makes beautiful plays possible - I got squinty onto two triple word scores for a devastating 239 points. One day, when someone thinks they have done well with zen, i will play mizzenmast for 338.

The game obviously takes longer to play, with double the tiles. And the more players, the longer it tends to run as well. Two experienced players will finish up a game in around 2 hours, while a four-player game has taken us up to six.

If you hate Scrabble, you will just hate this even more - but if you like Scrabble for the pure joy of the wordplay, this can't be beat.

Thread: Super tile set with old board?

EvilTimmy — 2005-12-29T05:20:21+00:00

Has anyone tried the new tile set with the old, smaller board? One of the things I hate about original Scrabble is the letter distribution.

I finally scored all the requisite pieces for the experiment at thrift stores. If I get to it, I'll let you know how it goes.

Image

EJKemp — 2005-03-15T19:56:14+00:00

Image

EJKemp — 2005-03-15T19:56:14+00:00

Thread: Re:User Review

TamiWhitsett — 2005-02-13T19:25:17+00:00

My experience with Super Scrabble was much different. I played with 4 people; 2 of us considered ourselves "good" Scrabble players, 1 considered himself "fair" or "average", and the other person said from the beginning that he was horrible at the game, but enjoyed trying.

Toulouse has given a great description of game play, so I won't go into it here. However, regarding bits, I found a few things were different than Toulouse described. My game board lays perfectly flat. Better than most of my "new" game boards, in fact. And the scoring sheets, which are indeed the same ones I remember from the original Scrabble, were perfect for a 4-player game. In fact, we used 15 of the 20 spaces. However, even in the original version, we often needed to flip the page over and continue, depending on our letter distributions. Of course, as in the original version, I suspect that once the pad runs out, I'll go to regular old scraps of paper.

The game I played was a lot of fun; the two "good" players sat opposite each other, with the two players who didn't consider themselves as good playing between us. The two "good" players battled for points, while the other two players played spoilers. The double-double opportunities were rare, because of the way game play turned out, although I can see where the concern comes in.

I felt that this game was a lot of fun, and was better with 4 players than regular Scrabble. Maybe, in the end, this is another of those games that is best with 4, but can be played with fewer? I also wonder whether it could accommodate 5 or 6 players, and how it would play then?

Thread: User Review

toulouse — 2004-08-26T20:13:52+00:00

Big. Too big. Or maybe Long. Too long. Those are the easiest ways to sum up Super Scrabble, a variation on the classic Scrabble game.

Super Scrabble differs from "classic" Scrabble in that there's a bigger game board (21x21 instead of 15x15), new "Quadruple" letter and word spaces, and twice the number of letter tiles (though not exactly doubling the original letter distribution). The components resemble classic Scrabble bits, with wood tiles and racks, and a game board that didn't lay quite flat. The rules are lifted from classic Scrabble, to the point where there's a typo that refers to "2" blank tiles (there are now 4). One thing that seems like a clear oversight and a direct result of little or no play testing is that the classic Scrabble scoring sheets are included, which have 20 rows on them - this was perfect for a two -player game of Classic Scrabble, but now isn't even enough lines for a three-player game!

Gameplay follows classic Scrabble rules: each player has 7 tiles and takes turns laying down words off of the existing words. The big difference is that your score tends to skyrocket easily, as the traditional constraints of the original game board don't come into play, allowing for bigger words, and (thanks to the 3-space border filled with more bonus spaces) a lot more bonuses. The placement of the bonuses is too frequent, as there are several opportunities for double-double word scores (x4 of the score), and even some triple-triples. What this does is reduce the defensive strategy typically used in Scrabble, as there are just too many high-scoring placements to defend against, and turns the game into a "who can score the biggest words" fest. Which in some ways is good, because this game will easily take 2 hours to play, and you'll need something to keep you interested and involved.

The length of play is not just a result of more tiles, but because there are more tiles on the board and more options to build from, each turn takes a great deal longer than in classic Scrabble, as the opportunities seem somewhat endless, especially during the last few rounds.

I'm concerned that the tile distribution isn't optimal - There are 10 S's (up from 4 in the original game) and the way-too-many 4 blanks. In addition, the greater number of tiles increases the chance of getting a dead set of tiles (all vowels or consonants). Counting letters is a part of classic Scrabble strategy that is made much more difficult here--for example, I used to constantly monitor the board for the four "U" tiles, but with 7 in Super Scrabble, and such a large board, it's a longer, more frustrating process.

Super Scrabble is a novelty item that'll intrigue classic Scrabble players (like myself) for a game or two, but then will undoubtedly find its way to the back of the game closet, only to be pulled out after the tedium of game play has been forgotten.

Image

toulouse — 2004-08-25T00:22:24+00:00

A finished game of Super Scrabble

Image

toulouse — 2004-08-25T00:21:21+00:00

Super Scrabble game board

Image

Verkisto — 2004-06-04T21:31:31+00:00

Very good product shot that illustrates the size of the board.