My obsessed SO regularly hands me my ass when we play Scrabble. Last night, we started wondering what the maximum number of points possible in one play would be. She says it would have to involve both a “bingo”, the 50-point bonus one gets from using all of ones letters, and the fabled “triple double”, a word which stretches across two triple word scores. i’m sure a “Q”, “Z”, and “J” would be involved as well. She believes the answer is unknowable due to the huge amount of variation in the game. I think given the finite number of allowable words, there should be an answer. So, if there is an answer, what would the word be and how many points is it worth?
I’m guessing it would also possibly involve landing the high-point letters on a multiplier for the letter and/or adding to an existing word such that the whole length of the new word is actually longer than the 7 tile letters (or is it 8?). Dunno if the former would be possible to arrange – haven’t played Scrabble in a while – but I’ve done the latter, creating 10 and 12 letter words and the like.
I’ve thought about this as well, and if I had the resources I would do the following:
Set up and run a program (in Java, maybe?) that would run through an electronic dictionary and assign each word its value according to Scrabble’s letter tiles. You then take the highest-scoring word, make sure it’s in the Scrabble dictionary (if the scanned dictionary was a different one), and then apply the highest-scoring situation to that word (triple word scores, 7 letter bonus, etc).
Or you can go through the dictionary and do it by hand. Personally, I think the former would be a bit easier (unless you had to generate the electronic dictionary. Then it would be kinda pointless).
Anyone with some free time and the know-how to give this a shot?
And, as an added thought, adding the word in such a way that it interlocks or runs alongside existing letters such that several new words are created in the perpendicular direction. A lot depends on the existing board setup prior to placing the word.
Some people need more than a hobby…
Holy crap! Not one, but two triple triples!
From http://members.ozemail.com.au/~aspa/Fame/records.html
Clearly this is harder, as your opponent isn’t trying to set up a huge word score.
I just read the book “Word Freak” (awesome book on Scrabble, I highly recomend it).
I thought I read the highest scoring word in a Scrabble tournament was “QUIZIOTIC”. It was a souble triple and scored well over 300 points.
I may be wrong.
BTW any word score over 900 points (let alone two in a row) I would think would be statistically impossible. I’m not a math all-star, but come on…
MtM
I’m afraid my list based off a brute-force dictionary attack was pitiful compared to what can be had with letter and word multiplying squares. Here’s the tops from the standard unix dictionary:
34 psychotherapeutic
34 quizzes
34 resynchronization
34 sequentializing
35 bedazzlement
35 Byzantinizes
35 compartmentalized
35 cryptographically
35 Jonathanizations
35 Quakerization
35 quizzed
36 anthropomorphically
36 compartmentalizing
36 electroencephalograph
36 Mohammedanization
36 Quakerizations
36 quizzing
37 Czechization
37 Czechoslovakia
37 Elizabethanize
37 lexicographically
37 Mohammedanizations
37 sympathizingly
38 antidisestablishmentarianism
38 Czechizations
38 Elizabethanizes
38 quizzical
and the kings:
40 electroencephalography
40 Nebuchadnezzar
#!/usr/bin/perl
my %letters;
$letters{'A'} = 1;
$letters{'B'} = 3;
$letters{'C'} = 3;
$letters{'D'} = 2;
$letters{'E'} = 1;
$letters{'F'} = 4;
$letters{'G'} = 2;
$letters{'H'} = 4;
$letters{'I'} = 1;
$letters{'J'} = 8;
$letters{'K'} = 5;
$letters{'L'} = 1;
$letters{'M'} = 3;
$letters{'N'} = 1;
$letters{'O'} = 1;
$letters{'P'} = 3;
$letters{'Q'} = 10;
$letters{'R'} = 1;
$letters{'X'} = 1;
$letters{'T'} = 1;
$letters{'U'} = 1;
$letters{'V'} = 4;
$letters{'W'} = 4;
$letters{'X'} = 8;
$letters{'Y'} = 4;
$letters{'Z'} = 10;
$letters{'a'} = 1;
$letters{'b'} = 3;
$letters{'c'} = 3;
$letters{'d'} = 2;
$letters{'e'} = 1;
$letters{'f'} = 4;
$letters{'g'} = 2;
$letters{'h'} = 4;
$letters{'i'} = 1;
$letters{'j'} = 8;
$letters{'k'} = 5;
$letters{'l'} = 1;
$letters{'m'} = 3;
$letters{'n'} = 1;
$letters{'o'} = 1;
$letters{'p'} = 3;
$letters{'q'} = 10;
$letters{'r'} = 1;
$letters{'s'} = 1;
$letters{'t'} = 1;
$letters{'u'} = 1;
$letters{'v'} = 4;
$letters{'w'} = 4;
$letters{'x'} = 8;
$letters{'y'} = 4;
$letters{'z'} = 10;
while (<>) {
chop();
$total = 0;
@chars = split(//);
foreach $letter ( @chars ) {
$total = $total + $letters{$letter};
}
print "$total $_
";
}
cat /usr/share/dict/linux.words | ./big_scrabble | sort -n
I just read the book “Word Freak” (awesome book on Scrabble, I highly recomend it).
I thought I read the highest scoring word in a Scrabble tournament was “QUIZIOTIC”. It was a souble triple and scored well over 300 points.
I may be wrong.
BTW any word score over 900 points (let alone two in a row) I would think would be statistically impossible. I’m not a math all-star, but come on…
MtM
Using the official Scrabble word sources in North America (Official Word List for 2-9 letter words and their inflections; Long Word list for 10-15 letter words), the highest possible score is 1778:
http://home.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/faqtext.html
The highest-scoring single play, found by Dan Stock of Ohio, shown with the hooked words:
A1 OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1458
1A OPACIFYING 63
3A YELKS 12
4a PREInTERVIEWED 25
H1 BRAINWASHING 63
K1 AMELIORATIVE 17
L1 ZARFS 27
15A EJACULATING 63
+bonus 50
----
1778
In numerous online trivia games (there’s a reputable source of info for sure… ahem… so take this for what its worth) the answer to the highest scoring scrabble word is “quartzy”
This answer (if it’s even correct) would be limited to single words that you can form with 7 letters, and therefore could not possibly take into account building off of existing words, which would obviously score more points.
Bill H., a lot of your entries are invalid, too. Proper nouns aren’t allowed, you’re limited to 15 letters, and a lot of your words use two zs (you could use a blank for one, but blanks score zero points).
True, Chronos. Also, I’m told there’s a “Scrabble Dictionary”, which seems to be more comprehensive than “standard” ones, though how that’s possible I don’t understand. I did some searching for it but couldn’t find a text one.
Actually since I did that last code above, I realized that It’s relatively simple to apply different board positions with the associated double/triple values, simply by entering the “board” into the program and trying every board position for each word.
Which I’d actually enjoy doing, but first I need the a text version of the “Scrabble dictionary”. It can’t be one of these online ones where you enter what you believe is a word and it verifies it; it has to be a list of words I can download.
Anybody?
Tournament Scrabble player here, checking in.
Regarding dictionaries: The officially acceptable English language lexicon in use depends on where in the world you play. It is also periodically revised.
In North America, the official lexicon is “The Official Tournament and Club Word List” (OWL). It is Published by Merriam-Webster, Inc. and is supposed to only be available via the National Scrabble Associate for purchase by its members. It covers words 2-10 letters long, including all plurals, verb inflections, etc. but contains no definitions.
Most of the words in OWL can also be found in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (3rd edition) (OSPD3) with brief definitions. Not among these, are 167 or so racial slurs and other vulgar words. These were removed in the process of going from OSPD2–>OSPD3, primarily for the benefit of the promotion of Scrabble in elementary school settings. The list of these removed words, which are in OWL and thus accpetable in tournament play, can be found in various places.
For words 10-15 letters long, there is the aptly titled tome “Official Long Words List” with similar availability as OWL. Words of this length are rarely played in Scrabble, even at high levels of play.
With a few exceptions, OWL is comprised of all non-proper, non-abbreviations, non-acronyms found in at least one of the following college dictionaries or editions thereof:
- Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary (1973 printing)
- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (First and Second College Editions)
- Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (Merriam-Webster; Eighth thru Tenth Editions)
- Webster’s New World Dictionary (2nd and 3rd College Editions)
- Random House College Dictionary (Original Edition and Revised Edition
English language Scrabble is played all over the world. Some places use OWL, others use the British lexicon, which is contained in the book “Official Scrabble Words” 4th edition (OSW4). It contains all words whose uninflected roots are 9 letters or less and words of nine or fewer letters which are inflections of longer wordsthat are found in the Chambers Dictionary.
Many places as well as important international tournaments, including the semi-annual World Scrabble Championship tournament use both OWL + OSW. This combined lexicon is known as SOWPODS. (The “PODS” anagrams from “OSPD”, as OWL is essentially OSPD2 minus vulgarity and because the anagram “SOWPODS” pre-dates OWL). In Britian, SOWPODS may now also be known as OSWI (where “I” stands for international).
So there you have it.
Most of this can be found in even more detail in:
Scrabble FAQ
Thanks ataraxy22. In my initial search, I had run across the terms “OWL” and “SOWPODS” and wasn’t sure what they were. However, even through more searching, I wasn’t able to find downloadable versions. Do you know where I can?
Download the ENABLE 2K word list from here it comes with the free unzipper and creates word.lst
How I’d go about finding the highest score would be:
Assume you play all seven letters.
Assume you form a 15 letter word across 3 triple-word-scores.
Find the highest scoring such word (taking into account the double letter scores).
Find which seven letters could have been added (making sure to put 5 on the triple word and double letter scores.)
Find as high scoring words as possible across the board to be completed by the added letters.
Try and put in checks for 'z’s, etc.
Obviously this is by no means exhaustive (eg. a 15 letter word with lots of 's’s in might be better because it’s easy to add an ‘s’ to the end of a 14 letter word with lots of 'x’s and 'q’s in.)
But if I knew perl, this is what I’d do (hint, hint 
)
from one of the links above: http://www.mit.edu/people/lmtancre/doc2/scrabbalia.html
d i s e q u i l i b r a t e D
. . . . . . . e . . . . . . e
. . . . . . . e . . . . . o m
r a d i o a u t o g r a p[h]Y
. . . . . . . . . . . w a s T
. . . . . . . . . . b e . . h
. . . . . . . . . . a . . g o
. . . c o n j u n c t i v a L
. . . . . . . . . . . . . n o
. . . . . . . f i n i k i n G
. . . . . . . a . . . [l] e i
. . . . . . . d . s p e l t Z
. . . . . . w e . . . . . . e
. . . . . . r . . . . . . o r
m e t h o x y f l u r a n e S
Hmmm, I don’t think the 1682 point play from the board above is possible in a game of scrabble. The reason being is I do not see how the scrabble board could be set up in that manner. My major concern is I do not see any valid first turn word.
If I recall the scrabble rules correctly, the first person to play a word would have to play a word with 7 letters or less, and it must contain the “u” from the word “conjunctiva.” I don’t see a valid word that satisfies this. Am I missing something here?
Since when is “hs” a word as seen in the upper right quadrant?