NOTE: VERY WIP
I made an idea of creating a Scrabble variant that uses the exact same rules except for the word validity, called "Crabble". The name is derived by removing the first letter of "Scrabble". It is somewhat inspired by the Scrabble variant called "Clabbers", where you can play the anagrams of valid words.
The only key difference of the Crabble rules is that words played can be either a real word or a partial pattern of the real word. For example, ECEDENT is a valid play in Crabble because it is a partial pattern of the real word PRECEDENT. Similarly, given your rack of AEILNTU, while you can play ALUNITE in the regular Scrabble, you can also play its anagram UANTILE in Crabble as well since it takes a front Q hook to form a real word QUANTILE. On the other hand, a small handful of short words like JQ and III and are unacceptable, since there are no words in the entire Scrabble dictionary that have these patterns in them.
This also increases the ability to hook to pre-existing words for additional points, increasing opportunities for high-scoring seven-letter bingo plays. It also features in a numerous high-scoring consonant-heavy parallel plays as well, further increasing scoring opportunities with consonant-heavy racks. For example, the two-letter word CK, while it is not valid in the regular Scrabble, it's valid in Crabble because there are a tons of words that have the CK combination next to each other, known as the "digraph", and you can also take multiple consecutive hooks to CK, with a healthy dose of long words to choose from (e.g. CK hooked four consecutive times to make JACKET). Similarly, the two-letter word HY is also valid in Crabble as there are also thousands of words in the entire English-language Scrabble dictionaries. In the North American lexicon (NWL), HY takes four unique "real word" hooks, the front S, T, and W hooks onto SHY, THY, and WHY, respectively, as well as the back P hook onto HYP.
It is also worth noting that there are way more valid two-letter words in Crabble than the existing variant Clabbers. For instance, the H not only makes 10 two-letter words that are valid in the regular Scrabble (AH, EH, HA, HE, HI, HM, HO, OH, SH, and UH) and 4 additional two-letter words that are valid in Clabbers (HS, HU, IH, and MH), but also makes many more two-letter words with other consonants and vowels, including CH, GH, HY, KH, NH, PH, RH, TH, WH, XH, and even ZH (found in the words CAZH, NUDZH, QUINZHEE, PIROZHOK (pl. PIROZHKI), and MUZHIK).
UPDATE 12/19/2025: There is one big catch to this variant of Scrabble - the double word score at the center square for opening plays is replaced with the triple word score. This catch increases the opening play's score to justify the average non-bingo score of the subsequent turns (~60-70 points).
There is a critical thing to consider related to the number of valid words in Crabble. In the NWL2023 lexicon, there are 196,601 words in total. When we count the number of words per length (from 2 to 15 letter word) clearly, there are:
2s: 107
3s: 1,085
4s: 4,247
5s: 9,476
6s: 16,706
7s: 25,473
8s: 31,736
9s: 31,229
10s: 25,028
11s: 18,735
12s: 13,515
13s: 9,323
14s: 6,102
15s: 3,839
In the CSW24 lexicon, there are way more (280,887 words):
2s: 127
3s: 1,351
4s: 5,662
5s: 13,018
6s: 23,140
7s: 34,506
8s: 42,341
9s: 43,180
10s: 37,434
11s: 29,175
12s: 21,125
13s: 14,435
14s: 9,437
15s: 5,956
So, what we can calculate the maximum number of sequences of valid words in the entire NWL2023 lexicon, including duplicates, we can use the formula as follows:
Number of sequence by specific length = Σ(valid words of the exact length + (sequence from longer words by additional letters in length × (1 + number of additional letters in length)))
So we can estimate the raw maximum as:
2s: 676
3s: 17,576
4s: 456,976
5s: 978,985
6s: 787,823
7s: 606,137
8s: 441,157
9s: 301,650
10s: 193,879
11s: 117,337
12s: 65,823
13s: 33,044
14s: 13,780
15s: 3,839
So, the estimated raw maximum number of valid patterns in Crabble is around 4,000,000 patterns. The actual number must be significantly lower than the raw maximum due to numerous duplicates, presumably around 1,600,000 valid patterns due to the fact that longer words generally inherit roots from shorter words.
UPDATE: After taking a couple of hours to create the complete list of 2-15 letter sequences using the NWL lexicon by default (CSW lexicon marked with #), the final result is:
Total: 1,166,659 words (#CSW: 1,653,471 words)
2s: 598 words (#CSW: 614 words)
3s: 7,357 words (#CSW: 7,866 words)
4s: 44,170 words (#CSW: 51,551 words)
5s: 118,566 words (#CSW: 150,052 words)
6s: 180,099 words (#CSW: 240,469 words)
7s: 202,613 words (#CSW: 279,956 words)
8s: 188,209 words (#CSW: 268,572 words)
9s: 148,362 words (#CSW: 225,043 words)
10s: 111,847 words (#CSW: 170,368 words)
11s: 76,348 words (#CSW: 117,797 words)
12s: 48,112 words (#CSW: 74,239 words)
13s: 23,960 words (#CSW: 41,599 words)
14s: 12,579 words (#CSW: 19,389 words)
15s: 3,839 words (#CSW: 5,956 words)
Note that the final numbers are not 100% accurate.
The strategy in Crabble is completely different from both the regular Scrabble and its existing variant Clabbers where anagram of words can be played.
Let's start from a few general catches in comparison with the regular Scrabble
The double word score (DWS) in the center square for opening plays is replaced with the triple word score (TWS) to balance with the average score of the subsequent turns, since the average score in Crabble is 60 points or higher, which is on par with the average bingo score in the regular Scrabble. You almost never score less than 30 points or exchange tiles in that case when you have poor draws in particular.
High-pointers and premium squares play a much larger role in Crabble than the regular Scrabble, due to the vastly increased opportunity of parallel plays thanks to the massive number of two- and three-letter words, and every single word can be made solely by hooking onto them. In addition, opportunities for bingoing is greatly increased due to the flexibility of parallel plays next to the existing short words since they take hooks with many different unique letters. In that case, seven-overlap bingos are not uncommon, especially right after the very start of the game.
Several high-scoring letters gain a massive utility in Crabble when compared to the regular Scrabble, especially the four power tiles (JQXZ), thanks to a massive number of short words, greatly increasing the opportunities for 60+ point non-bingo overlapping plays. The Z is especially overpowered tile in Crabble, effectively outperforming the S in all three Scrabble variants based on word validity rule. Not only since the Z is worth 10 points and forms a whopping 44 two-letter words out of 51 possible pairings and over 400 three-letter words, but also well over 13,000 seven- and eight-letter words in Crabble, which is way more than 8,000-odd for the 3-point B in the regular Scrabble. The X also boosts similarly in Crabble as the Z does, but significantly weaker. The Q also gains utility while promoting from the worst tile into a decent one, thanks to 20+ two-letter words that permit short plays scoring easy 50-80 points. The four mid-scoring tiles (C, H, M, and P) also gain utility in Crabble thanks to the massive bingo propensity (in fact, there are well over 50,000 seven- and eight-letter words containing those four letters each). The V is actually mediocre in this variant, not only due to the large presence of two- and three-letter words, but also allows frequent bailouts with a surplus of vowels (especially with E's and I's), further increasing the opportunity for turnovers. Common letters, namely one-point letters except the U (i.e. one of AEILNORST) also gain utility for bingoing and turnover flexibility as well. The I is actually outstanding for duplication in Crabble, thanks to the presence of longer inflected words, compound words, and words with prefixes and suffixes, which would often appear at a close proximity, making two I's together actually worth keeping under a fairly consonant-heavy tile pool while further mitigating the threat of triplication.
Not only due to the greatly inflated number of words up to 9 letters in length, but there are way more unique racks that form bingos, thanks to the healthy dose of partial strings of words that are imported from longer words, either common or obscure words in addition to complete words. This significantly reduces the threat of "nearly" racks right at the beginning of the game, such as AEINORT (which makes 42 Crabble-only anagrams in the NWL lexicon) and AAEINRT (which also makes a very respectable 19 Crabble-only anagrams, way more than 9 for AEINRST in the regular Scrabble: ANESTRI, ANTSIER, NASTIER, RATINES, RETAINS, RETINAS, RETSINA, STAINER, STEARIN).
The strategy on playing defense is completely different from both the regular Scrabble and Clabbers, and is highly math-dependent. To play defense, simply answer opponent's play by turning over tiles to accelerate the timing while allowing opportunities for more conclusive blocks on the very next turn. You cannot simply use individual letters like the C or V or just making overlaps to play defense. You have to consider how flexible the particular string of word can be hooked. The S is far less valuable than usual when compared to the latter two variants since strings of common nouns and verbs with incomplete endings often do not take a back S hook, and the synergy of the S by itself tends to be far more reliant with vowels and S-friendly consonants like the R, T, and H that make the strength of the S being overshadowed by other common letters like the "E", "I" and "R", therefore making the board highly dependent on S hooks is actually defensive in Crabble.
The decisive factor in competitive plays, such as in tournaments, is spread-centered rather than based on win or loss. This greatly reduces the complexity of the particular game scenario, especially when late in the game. The tournament score is calculated based on the combined score of each game. If the final combined score in the tournament has the ratio less than or equal to 1.005, then the players become a co-champion. The "challenge" in Crabble tournaments is always "10-point challenge", in which an unsuccessful challenge is penalized by 10 points, regardless of the tournament. The overtime penalty in Crabble is 20 points per minute instead of 10.
Advanced
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