Literature Survey

In this section we are go in detail background material and technical specification that we are going
to use in our scrabble project. We will start the scrabble history in Section 2.1. In section 2.2 will read
the scrabble game and rules. In section 2.2.1 we can know the letter points in Tile points. In section
2.2.2 we will know the game description of scrabble how to play. In section 2.2.3 we will know the
game points and the scoring to respective words. In section 2.2.4 will know the game play. In section
2.3 we will know the concepts of algorithms that we can use in our project. Section 2.3.1 will know
the concept of anchor square. Section 2.3.2 will know the concept of cross checks. Section 2.3.3 there
will be three types of algorithms which we can use any one in our scrabble game for computer
player.

2.1 Scrabble History

Scrabble is a game first invented by Alfred Butts. Butt gave an initial idea of the game by the end of
year 1931 and named it as a Lexico. This Lexico game was played without a board and players score
the points on basis of length of the word. In 1938 butts gave a big breakthrough for game
crosswords. He started the idea of combining the letters to the board. Design the board with 15 by
15 square and 7-tiles in each player rack. The same procedure is using from 1938 onwards to till this
day. At last the name scrabble for the game and managed to register the trademark on 16th
December 1948. In 1991 first world championship take place in London and 2nd takes place in New
York City on 1993 [3].

board.png

Figure 2.1: Board of Scrabble game

2.2 Game details and rules

The scrabble board consists of 15-by-15 squares (225 squares) and Single Square is filled with a
letter tile. The board consists of Double Word Score (DWS), Double Letter Score (DLS), Triple Word
Score (TWS) and Triple Letter Score (TLS). The middle of the board consists of initial Anchor point.
The starting word must be placed vertically or horizontally so that the anchor point is included in it.
Initially, the game is started by placing a word and is further completed by placing the remaining
words across the board.

Initially the bag consists of 100 tiles. Amongst them only 98 tiles consist of letters and two are empty
tiles; out of which each letters have scoring in the range of 1-10. Alphabets like vowels are rapidly
used ones and thus they have a scoring point of one and the rarely used letters like Q and Z has a
scoring of ten. In this way the scores are assigned to each & every letter in the bag. When a player
gets an empty tile he selects any alphabetical letter which he requires and gives the chance to his
opposition to play the game.