Broken Base: A case where everyone, with few to no exceptions, is either a "Stop Having Fun" Guy or a Scrub. There are essentially two types of Scrabble players: those who play competitively, and those who don't. Learning to play competitively makes it all but socially impossible to play with those who don't, as you won't even be able to agree as to what dictionary to use; a non-competitive player would want to use a general-purpose dictionary, because they view the competitive player bringing in a wordlist they've never heard of, with words obscure enough to not even appear in some "unabridged" dictionaries, to be unfair, while a competitive player would strongly prefer the official tournament wordlist/dictionary and would resent having to "guess" which of the words they learned is in that general-purpose dictionary and which aren't. The "double challenge" rule doesn't help, as one with a significantly better vocabulary (or better knowledge of the dictionary used) can bully the other by making words up and mixing them with real-but-obscure words, daring them to challenge; considered a legitimate tactic in tournament play, but would all but ruin a casual game that already has a significant skill difference. The gap can be somewhat bridged by allowing use of a two-letter-word list, and softening or removing the double challenge rule.
Electronic players versus tabletop players. Many traditional players hate the electronic versions, particularly the current app (available cross-platforms on desktop, Facebook, and various smart phones and tablets). While mostly similar, several changes to traditional play exist:
Players have the option of a computer "teacher" to show you a better play you could have made. While most likely that play will be unusable next turn, it can be seen as a "cheat" for the player.
The auto tile shuffler. While you can shuffle your tiles by hand in the tabletop game, the ease you can constantly do this is frowned on by traditionalists. To a lesser extent, the built in dictionary, again, totally legal in both, but easier to look up words with this versus a paper dictionary.
It's impossible to know if you're opponent is cheating unless they are in the same room. There are many word descramblers and even virtual boards online a person can use to get the best play.
Scrabble has a built-in dictionary to let you test words to see if they qualify in the game before playing them. This is equal to playing the table version and speaking out a list of words one by one to see if your opponent will accept them.
The biggest, though, is the lack of challenges. You can't play a word not in the dictionary (so this aspect of the game is completely absent), which leads into the other half of this issue: there's nothing stopping you from continually trying to play various combinations of your hand until you get something usable.
While still generally the same game, being good at the electronic version will probably not get you any respect from a lot of "real" players due to this. Though it should be noted many of the top players in the world do play it and love it for these reasons and like it as a training tool for tabletop play.
Averted in that the electronic version does help with slow players. Some Scrabble players are slower than molasses with their turns, so to be able to take turns whenever they come up lets people with different play speeds take their time.
Words described as "slurs", where players for many years argue whether or not they should be allowed to play them. But as of July 9, 2020, both the North American Scrabble Players' Association and Hasbro banned slurs (or words that primarily are slurs) outright from all official play. While many agree that there is no place for racist, sexist, or otherwise profane words in a family-friendly game, some say that it is OK to play such words as long as it is solely for scoring, letter dumps, or setting up for a better position. Furthermore, some argue that banning certain words is too inexact or arbitrary. For example, words that are more often used as slurs than not (e.g. "chink"note defined as a weak point, like a "chink in someone's armor", but often used to mock those of Asian descent or "retarded"note as in "slowed the spread of something", but often used to mock the mentally disabled) are still legal, while words like "badass"note which, per the trope, can mean something "that stands out in an impressive manner" or "poofy"note can be defined as "puffed out", like the sleeves on the trope page are considered slurs and banned outright.
Common Knowledge: A common misconception among new players is that any words played after the first turn must intersect with preexisting words, when the game rules actually only require them to be contiguous with the other words. This allows for "hook" plays which involve extending a word by a single letter while simultaneously playing a new word perpendicular to it using that letter, as well as words played adjacent and parallel to other words, forming a bunch of 2-letter words in the process. Both of these types of moves may wrongly be seen as invalid, with even the creators of one giant Scrabble-playing robot getting confused by this.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Players will almost always choose to play the opening word horizontally rather than vertically. Technically, this has no effect due to the board layout having full eight-way symmetry, though this is likely due to English words generally being read left-to-right. On the other hand, some players have argued for playing the opening word vertically specifically to throw off one's opponent.
Most standard Scrabble dictionaries include a few words that are not actually possible to play, such as "pizzazz" and "knickknack", due to containing too many of the same rare letter (and there not being enough blank tiles to make up for it). These words can be played in Super Scrabble, thanks to the larger tile bag, though the inclusion of these words predates the release of the "super" version of the game in 2004.
Meanwhile, dictionaries do account for the 15×15 size of the board, and so do not include some rather common words like "extraterrestrial" despite them being possible in Super Scrabble.
Q and Z, each worth 10 points, can become this if either is placed on a Bonus Space. There's even a simple word that everyone knows which uses both of them and two common vowels - you won't have to "quiz" us to figure out what word it is.
Merely placing one of these on a Triple Letter tile guarantees more than 30 points from that tile alone.
Triple Word score spaces placed not far from Double Letter spaces along the perimeter of the board. If properly played, these two letters alone can be worth 90 points — or possibly 270 points under even more unlikely circumstances.
To a lesser extent, the J and X tiles, which are both worth 8 points.
The high-scoring letters vary from language to language: for example, the French version has K, W, X, Y and Z as the 10 points tiles and J and Q as the 8 point tiles, while the German version has Q and Y as the 10 points tiles and Ö and X as the 8 points tiles.
Z deserves a particular mention in French. While rare and worth 10 points, it exists in a massive variety of French words provided you have a E, the most common letter, as almost every single second-person plural verbs end with Z. This makes it very easy to find the perfect word to nail a a double or triple letter square.
Speaking of French and verbs, the E, R, A and I combo all but guarantees a bingo if it's not very late in the game and your other letters are decent. They allow you to conjugate your verbs in an extremely flexible way, with all letters being removable if needed somewhere else in the word. Unsurprisingly, those four along with T, S and N form the seven letters with the most possible anagrams in French.
Genius Bonus: It helps to have a wide vocabulary, but here's the kicker - be able to spell as well as your opponent. Two people with like grasps of spelling will be fine, but if you don't spell very well and you play against someone who does it can be frustrating.
The English game is extremely popular in Thailand, with the world's largest Scrabble tournament (the Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup) being held there every year, and two world champions hailing from there, despite English not being an official language there. In general, Scrabble is also popular there as a tool to teach English.
The French game is very popular in Senegal.
Scrappy Mechanic: Unless you have the ability to read upside down or have a board with a turnstyle below, turning the board to face each player can get quite annoying.
The letter Q is entirely useless most of the time because of how few words are acceptable without a U following it, unless foreign words are allowed. Some versions of Scrabble solved this by making a Qu tile instead.
The letter C also applies. Despite being compatible with more consonants than V, in the NWL lexicon there are no valid two-letter words that contain a C, and in CSW the only valid word is "CH".
In French, the letter W is this. Being by far the rarest letter in French, the only two-letter word containing it is "Wu", and it is present in far less 3-letter words than the other big letters. As a result it competes with the Q, which also needs a U (rare words such as "cinq", "qat" and "coq" notwithstanding), but at least the latter allows for a variety of longer words in French, while the W will almost certainly force you to do a small word.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The rule change permitting proper names ruffled a few feathers in the United Kingdom, except it was widely misreported by the media and only appears in a newly launched variant of the game. The rules of the original game haven't been changed, so words beginning with capital letters are still invalid.
Accidental Innuendo: A female contestant selected two "P" tiles and said, "Chuck, I guess I'll have to take a 'P'." Cue uproarious laughter from Woolery and the audience, and a quick trip to Dick Clark's Bloopers specials.
There was also this gem of a clue: "Sometimes men have short ones." For a seven-letter word. The actual answer was TEMPERS, but well... you know.
Broken Base: The "Spelling" modification to the Crossword game for about four months in 1985, where the players had to "spell in" any remaining letters when solving. While some fans like this for making it closer to the board game, others thought it dragged the game down. An incident where neither contestant could spell "MOSQUITOS" properly is the best exemplification of the latter.
First Installment Wins: Fans feel the first version from 1984 to 1990 was better than the brief 1993 revival, and that the revival made some unnecessary changes to the Bonus Sprint jackpot.
Growing the Beard: When the show switched from straddling to self-contained shows on September 29, 1986, at the start of "The $100,000 All-American Scrabble Tournament", followed by the addition of the Bonus Sprint round on December 29 of that year.
Charles Esten was a contestant during the final week of the original version, going by the name Chip Puskar (he'd previously appeared on sister series Sale of the Century).
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans' opinion of the 1993 revival, which had a smaller set and much lower budget, among other things. A rather bad change was that the Bonus Sprint's Progressive Jackpot started at $1,000 and increased only if players solved words on pink or blue squares. This somewhat reduced the desire to solve on those squares, much to Woolery's dismay.
and Hasbro