Anagrams
Encyclopedia
Anagrams, Pirate Scrabble, Anagram, Snatch, or Grabscrab is a board-free word game
that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words.
The game pieces consist of a set of tiles with letters on them. Tiles are turned over one by one, and players form words by combining unused tiles with existing words, their own or others'. The game has never been standardized and there exist a great many varieties of sets and rules. Anagrams is now often played with tiles from another word game, such as Scrabble
. Web-based versions of this game have also been created, such as "Anagram Thief!".
word game, Anagrams have appeared in many published versions in the last century.
The first modern version seems to have been the game The Game of Letters and Anagrams on Wooden Blocks published by Parker Brothers
around 1890. Another game called Anagrams was published in 1934 by the manufacturer Selchow and Righter
, who would later publish Scrabble
in 1953. Spelling and Anagrams (a set incorporating two distinct games, Spelling and Anagrams) was also published in the 1930s.http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-1930-EDUCATIONAL-SPELLING-ANAGRAMS-GAME-NR_W0QQitemZ110101538021QQcategoryZ725QQcmdZViewItem
In 1975, Selchow published the Scrabble Scoring Anagrams version which featured tiles with point values similar to the familiar Scrabble system. Another version was published in the 1960s by the now defunct Transogram. The Embossing Company also produced a yellow-on-black Eye-Rest set. Many other versions have been produced and used sets can still be found on internet auction and specialty sites. A variation called SWIPE was published by Leslie Scott
(the creator of Jenga
) in the early 1980s and since 1990, Scott's company, Oxford Games Ltd
, has published Anagram, the ingenious game of juggling words. Up For Grabs was published by Tyco
in 1995. Portobello Games produces a version under the name Snatch.Prodijeux has been marketing a variant called wordXchange since 2000.
Many players use several Scrabble or Upwords
sets together.
A version of the game seems to be popular among tournament Scrabble players. Writers John Ciardi
, James Merrill
, John Malcolm Brinnin
, and Richard Wilbur
reputedly played together regularly in Key West, Florida
, with novelist John Hersey
also sometimes sitting in.
To begin, all the tiles are placed face down in the middle of the table. Taking turns around the table, each player
turns over one tile, placing it in clear view of all players.
Another variation is to have each player have a "bank" of tiles in front of themselves, which affords players a clearer view of the "pool" of face-up letter tiles in the middle of the table.
The minimum acceptable word length can be adjusted to a player's skill level (for example, in a game with adults and children playing together, the children may be permitted to form four-letter words, while the adults are restricted to words of at least five or six letters). Tournament Scrabble
players often play with a minimum word length of six or seven.
Players make words in one of two ways:
Words From the Pool:
Whenever any player can form a word of acceptable length from tiles in the pool, the player calls out the word and uses those tiles to spell it out in front of himself or herself. Typically, a player's words are oriented facing the center of the table (i.e. appearing upside-down to the player, and right side up to the others).
Steals:
Whenever a player can create a new word using a word that has already been formed, plus one or more tiles from the pool, the player calls out the word. If the word is acceptable, the existing word is "stolen" and the player making the "steal" spells out the new word in front of himself or herself. Players may steal (or, more technically, modify) their own words subject to whatever set of rules is being used.
New words cannot be mere plurals of existing words; rules typically require that the new word change the root of the old, thus allowing APPEAR to become PARAPET (APPEAR+T), but not APPEARED (+ED) or REAPPEAR (+ER). An even stricter application of this rule requires that the letters of the existing word must undergo at least some rearrangement. For example, under this rule MONEY could not be stolen with KS to make MONKEYS, since the letters of MONEY are not rearranged. However, MONEY could be stolen with CO to make ECONOMY. As the skill level of the players increases, it is not uncommon to see creative steals such as GUACAMOLE + F = CAMOUFLAGE.
If two players call out words simultaneously, the longer word prevails. If two players call out the SAME word simultaneously, those two players each turn a new tile face up, and the player whose letter is closest to "A" wins the word (the "tie-breaker" tiles are flipped back over and remixed with the other face-down tiles).
Some versions only allow players to make or steal words on their turn (this slows down play).
The National Scrabble Association
has published a set of rules for competitive Anagrams play in tournament setting.
There are various scoring systems:
. (There does not seem to be anything close to a comprehensive (or even representative) list of these on the internet.)
A variant with 220 letters:
The distribution of 180 letters for Scrabble Scoring Anagrams (according to a review on funagain.com):
Word game
Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...
that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words.
The game pieces consist of a set of tiles with letters on them. Tiles are turned over one by one, and players form words by combining unused tiles with existing words, their own or others'. The game has never been standardized and there exist a great many varieties of sets and rules. Anagrams is now often played with tiles from another word game, such as Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
. Web-based versions of this game have also been created, such as "Anagram Thief!".
History
Reputed to have originated as a VictorianVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
word game, Anagrams have appeared in many published versions in the last century.
The first modern version seems to have been the game The Game of Letters and Anagrams on Wooden Blocks published by Parker Brothers
Parker Brothers
Parker Brothers is a toy and game manufacturer and brand. Since 1883, the company has published more than 1,800 games; among their best known products are Monopoly, Cluedo , Sorry, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, Ouija, Aggravation, and Probe...
around 1890. Another game called Anagrams was published in 1934 by the manufacturer Selchow and Righter
Selchow and Righter
Selchow and Righter was a 19th century Bay Shore, New York game manufacturer best known for the games Parcheesi and Scrabble.It dates back to 1867when it was founded as E.G. Selchow & Co...
, who would later publish Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
in 1953. Spelling and Anagrams (a set incorporating two distinct games, Spelling and Anagrams) was also published in the 1930s.http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-1930-EDUCATIONAL-SPELLING-ANAGRAMS-GAME-NR_W0QQitemZ110101538021QQcategoryZ725QQcmdZViewItem
In 1975, Selchow published the Scrabble Scoring Anagrams version which featured tiles with point values similar to the familiar Scrabble system. Another version was published in the 1960s by the now defunct Transogram. The Embossing Company also produced a yellow-on-black Eye-Rest set. Many other versions have been produced and used sets can still be found on internet auction and specialty sites. A variation called SWIPE was published by Leslie Scott
Leslie Scott
Leslie Scott may refer to:*Leslie Scott , creator of the game "Jenga"* Leslie Scott , Conservative MP 1910–1929, Solicitor-General 1922* Leslie M. Scott, Oregon historian and politician...
(the creator of Jenga
Jenga
Jenga is a game of physical and mental skill created by Leslie Scott, and currently marketed by Parker Brothers, a division of Hasbro. During the game, players take turns to remove a block from a tower and balance it on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure as the game...
) in the early 1980s and since 1990, Scott's company, Oxford Games Ltd
Oxford Games
- History :Founded by Leslie Scott , and the graphic designer, Sara Finch.Finch & Scott co-designed Swipe and The Great Western Railway Game in 1985, and then went on to develop and design almost forty games together...
, has published Anagram, the ingenious game of juggling words. Up For Grabs was published by Tyco
Tyco Toys
Tyco Toys is an American toy manufacturer. Since 1997 it has been a division of the Mattel toy company.-History:Mantua Metal Products was a Woodbury Heights, New Jersey, metalworks business founded in 1926 by John Tyler and family...
in 1995. Portobello Games produces a version under the name Snatch.Prodijeux has been marketing a variant called wordXchange since 2000.
Many players use several Scrabble or Upwords
Upwords
Upwords, recently renamed "Scrabble Upwords" by Hasbro, is a board game invented by Elliot Rudell and originally published by the Milton Bradley Company . The game is similar to Scrabble, except that letters can be stacked on top of other words to create new words. The higher the stack of letters,...
sets together.
A version of the game seems to be popular among tournament Scrabble players. Writers John Ciardi
John Ciardi
John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante's Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and...
, James Merrill
James Merrill
James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies...
, John Malcolm Brinnin
John Malcolm Brinnin
John Malcolm Brinnin was an American poet and literary critic. Brinnin was born in Halifax Nova Scotia to two United States citizens....
, and Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....
reputedly played together regularly in Key West, Florida
Key West, Florida
Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
, with novelist John Hersey
John Hersey
John Richard Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling devices of the novel are fused with non-fiction reportage...
also sometimes sitting in.
Rules and variations
There has never been a standardized set of rules, and players now often play by house rules, but most are variants of the rules given here.To begin, all the tiles are placed face down in the middle of the table. Taking turns around the table, each player
Player (game)
A player of a game is a participant therein. The term 'player' is used with this same meaning both in game theory and in ordinary recreational games....
turns over one tile, placing it in clear view of all players.
Another variation is to have each player have a "bank" of tiles in front of themselves, which affords players a clearer view of the "pool" of face-up letter tiles in the middle of the table.
The minimum acceptable word length can be adjusted to a player's skill level (for example, in a game with adults and children playing together, the children may be permitted to form four-letter words, while the adults are restricted to words of at least five or six letters). Tournament Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
players often play with a minimum word length of six or seven.
Players make words in one of two ways:
Words From the Pool:
Whenever any player can form a word of acceptable length from tiles in the pool, the player calls out the word and uses those tiles to spell it out in front of himself or herself. Typically, a player's words are oriented facing the center of the table (i.e. appearing upside-down to the player, and right side up to the others).
Steals:
Whenever a player can create a new word using a word that has already been formed, plus one or more tiles from the pool, the player calls out the word. If the word is acceptable, the existing word is "stolen" and the player making the "steal" spells out the new word in front of himself or herself. Players may steal (or, more technically, modify) their own words subject to whatever set of rules is being used.
New words cannot be mere plurals of existing words; rules typically require that the new word change the root of the old, thus allowing APPEAR to become PARAPET (APPEAR+T), but not APPEARED (+ED) or REAPPEAR (+ER). An even stricter application of this rule requires that the letters of the existing word must undergo at least some rearrangement. For example, under this rule MONEY could not be stolen with KS to make MONKEYS, since the letters of MONEY are not rearranged. However, MONEY could be stolen with CO to make ECONOMY. As the skill level of the players increases, it is not uncommon to see creative steals such as GUACAMOLE + F = CAMOUFLAGE.
If two players call out words simultaneously, the longer word prevails. If two players call out the SAME word simultaneously, those two players each turn a new tile face up, and the player whose letter is closest to "A" wins the word (the "tie-breaker" tiles are flipped back over and remixed with the other face-down tiles).
Some versions only allow players to make or steal words on their turn (this slows down play).
The National Scrabble Association
National Scrabble Association
The National Scrabble Association was created in 1978 by Selchow & Righter, then the makers of Scrabble, to promote their game. It coordinated local clubs and Scrabble tournaments in North America, including the National Scrabble Championship, until 2009. The current director is John D...
has published a set of rules for competitive Anagrams play in tournament setting.
End of game and scoring
The game ends when all tiles are face-up and no one can create or steal any more words.There are various scoring systems:
- Simple letter count. The most tiles win.
- Simple word count. The most words win.
- Add letter point values, using Scrabble letter values.
- Remove one or two letters from each word and count the remaining tiles, rewarding longer words.
- Sum of the squares of the lengths of the words, rewarding long words more.
- First player to spell or steal 5 (or some other number) of words wins.
Variations
A host of variations come from both different versions and players' house rulesHouse rules
House rules are rules applying only in a certain location or organization. Bars and pubs in which games take place frequently have house rules posted...
. (There does not seem to be anything close to a comprehensive (or even representative) list of these on the internet.)
The "Fanagrams" variation
The rules from The Embossing Company set refer to variations by players who "have developed an interesting test of mental alertness and a highly exciting form of competition" by eliminating turns. Instead of taking turns, a dealer deals letters in and any player may call out a word. (Players may also choose to form teams.) The result, as the game's official rules note, is that it "very often happens that a quick witted player alone may defeat several others."- An even faster-paced version of these rules -- known to some as "Alaskan rules" -- has each of the players (or perhaps several, if there are too many) simultaneously turn their tiles into the pool. This results in many more possibilities being available at a time.
Miscellaneous variations
- Players may not create a word by creating a word that is already on the table or steal one resulting in such a word.
- Some versions of the game name the winner as the person who, after the round of turns has finished, first acquires eight words. If more than one player has done so, then the winner is the player is the one with the most tiles. There may be a tie. (See also Tom Jukic's review of Anagrams on boardgamegeek.com).
- A very similar rule found in The Embossing Company set simply says the "first player to complete ten words, wins."
- Players are permitted to combine two or more existing words with zero or more letters from the pot to create a single new word, although this is often difficult in practice.
Letter distribution
Though there are many variants, one standard letter distribution of 188 letters (given in the Rust Hills article) is as follows:| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| 13 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 24 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 11 | 15 | 4 | 2 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
A variant with 220 letters:
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| 14 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 20 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 14 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 12 | 14 | 6 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 14 | 10 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
The distribution of 180 letters for Scrabble Scoring Anagrams (according to a review on funagain.com):
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| 16 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 22 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 14 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 10 | 14 | 4 | 2 | 12 | 8 | 10 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
External links
- Anagram Thief!, a Web-based version of this game
- Anagram Solver
- www.gtoal.com's "Letter-by-Letter Word Games FAQ"
- www.gtoal.com's large collection images of various Anagrams sets and other wordgames.
- "Anagrams" by Michael Schreiber, Wolfram Demonstrations ProjectWolfram Demonstrations ProjectThe Wolfram Demonstrations Project is hosted by Wolfram Research, whose stated goal is to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience. It consists of an organized, open-source collection of small interactive programs called Demonstrations, which are meant to visually and...
, 2007. A computer model of anagrams.