History YMMV / Scrabble

* ReplacementScrappy: Steve Edwards, who hosted the 1990 pilot.

* StealthPun: In the "CHICKENS" puzzle below under Suddenly Significant Rule, the stoppers happen to be F, R, Y.
* SuddenlySignificantRule:
** During [[SpeedRound Speedword]], Woolery always included "Wait until I say go" in his RulesSpiel. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VinW8M3bab8&t=1s However, in this video,]] contestant Jim buzzed in immediately after Woolery read the clue not once, but twice. Both times, he was reminded to wait until Woolery said go, and his answer was ignored. The other contestant, Denise, waited, and buzzed in almost immediately after Woolery said go, and won the game with Jim's answer.
** Any contestant who draws any tiles is required to play at least one before offering a guess, even if the contestant knew they're both Stoppers. While this occasionally happened during the original run, one example from 1993 stands out as detrimental to a contestant's success: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMKncwifM9Y&t=705s In this video]], contestant Greg takes his tiles and, either suspecting they're both stoppers or realizing the answer, buzzes in to offer a guess. It turns out that he can't do that; having taken a tile to fill his rack, he has to play one. His answer is ignored, and he does attempt to place a letter. It was indeed a stopper; opponent Michelle immediately solves with Greg's guess, and it turned out the other letter was also a stopper. (For context, the clue was: "Some women pluck them before a big dinner party.")
--->'''Chuck''' ''[after Michelle plays a stopper]'': No, stopper, and it may work to your advantage. Greg, we'll see.\\
'''Greg:''' I don't have a guess, so I will take [tile] 4.\\
'''Chuck:''' You have a Y and an R.\\
'''Greg:''' Um, I'll take a guess. ''[buzzes in]'' Chickens.\\
'''Chuck:''' Actually, hang on, before we do this, I gotta tell you something. Unfortunately, for ''you'', since you picked a Y or an R--and I can't tell you whether you're right or not--you ''must use'' one of the letters. And if it disqualifies you, then it's just ''tough,'' Greg. ''[laughs]'' 'Cause you already picked a letter, so spend one.\\
'''Greg:''' A Y.\\
''[letter is revealed to be a stopper]''\\
'''Chuck:''' Sorry. It's a stopper. Michelle.\\
'''Michelle:''' ''[buzzes in]'' Chickens.\\
'''Chuck:''' ''[as correct answer music plays]'' [[TakeThat Thank Greg very much.]]
* TakeAThirdOption: Once the player took their tiles and placed one, if the second letter is suspected to be a stopper, they could attempt to solve. Worst case, they're wrong but their opponent now has a stopper and can only take one tile to fill their rack. Woolery mentioned this strategy suggestion in the 1993 finale. [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome However, most people in this situation dutifully attempted to place the letter when they didn't know the answer.]] Greg under SuddenlySignificantRule above also attempted this; however, as noted there, he had just filled his rack with a tile, so he was required to use one before he had the option of guessing.

* DarthWiki/WhatAnIdiot: Contestants are susceptible to acing themselves out of money on the bonus squares. After drawing two tiles, they play a safe tile, see the other as a Stopper, ring in and solve a puzzle that actually has the remaining letter in it.

*** 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.

** Meanwhile, dictionaries ''do'' account for the 15x15 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 tile. 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.

** ''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.

** 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 electronic drumbeat that playes just before the OpeningSpiel.

** Any contestant who draws any times is required to play at least one before offering a guess, even if the contestant knew they're both Stoppers. While this occasionally happened during the original run, one example from 1993 stands out as detrimental to a contestant's success: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMKncwifM9Y&t=705s In this video]], contestant Greg takes his tiles and, either suspecting they're both stoppers or realizing the answer, buzzes in to offer a guess. It turns out that he can't do that; having taken a tile to fill his rack, he has to play one. His answer is ignored, and he does attempt to place a letter. It was indeed a stopper; opponent Michelle immediately solves with Greg's guess, and it turned out the other letter was also a stopper. (For context, the clue was: "Some women pluck them before a big dinner party.")

* TakeAThirdOption: Once the player took their tiles and placed one, if second letter is suspected to be a stopper, they could attempt to solve. Worst case, they're wrong but their opponent now has a stopper and can only take one tile to fill their rack. Woolery mentioned this strategy suggestion in the 1993 finale. [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome However, most people in this situation dutifully attempted to place the letter when they didn't know the answer.]] Greg under SuddenlySignificantRule above also attempted this, however, as noted there, he had just filled his rack with a tile, so he was required to use one before he had the option of guessing.

** he letter C also applies. Despite being compatible with more consonants than V, there are no valid two-letter words that contain a C.

* BrokenBase: 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.

** Any contestant who draws any times is required to play at least one before offering a guess, even if the contestant knew they're both Stoppers. While this occasionally played out during the original run, one example from 1993 stands out as detrimental: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMKncwifM9Y&t=705s In this video]], contestant Greg takes his tiles and, either suspecting they're both stoppers or realizing the answer, buzzes in to offer a guess. It turns out, however, that he can't do that; having taken a tile to fill his rack, he has to play one. His answer is ignored, and he does attempt to place a letter. It was indeed a stopper; opponent Michelle immediately solves with Greg's guess, and it turned out the other letter was also a stopper. (For context, the clue was: "Some women pluck them before a big dinner party.")

'''Chuck:''' Actually, hang on, before we do this, I gotta tell you something. Unfortunately, for ''you,'' since you picked a Y or an R - and I can't tell you whether you're right or not - you ''must use'' one of the letters. And if it disqualifies you, then it's just ''tough,'' Greg. ''[laughs]'' 'Cause you already picked a letter, so spend one.\\

* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The sound that plays as the crossword board is revealed. Ditto the pulsating sound that plays as Chuck reads the clues.

* SuddenlySignificantRule: During [[SpeedRound Speedword]], Woolery always included "Wait until I say go" in his RulesSpiel. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VinW8M3bab8&t=1s However, in this video,]] contestant Jim buzzed in immediately after Woolery read the clue not once, but twice. Both times, he was reminded to wait until Woolery said go, and his answer was ignored. The other contestant, Denise, waited, and buzzed in almost immediately after Woolery said go, and won the game with Jim's answer.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMKncwifM9Y&t=705s In this video,]] contestant Greg takes his tiles and, either suspecting they're both stoppers or realizing the answer, buzzes in to offer a guess. It turns out, however, that he can't do that; having taken a tile to fill his rack, he has to play one. His answer is ignored, and he does attempt to place a letter. It was indeed a stopper; opponent Michelle immediately solves with Greg's guess, and it turned out the other letter was also a stopper. (For context, the clue was: "Some women pluck them before a big dinner party.")

''[Letter is revealed to be a stopper]''\\

* TheScrappy:
** 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 V, especially late in the game, can become TheMillstone [[http://2letterwords.com/ScrabbleVWords.php due to its inability to form any two-letter words and knocking four points off your score if your opponent plays off his letters first.]]
** Getting a hand of nothing but vowels or consonants. While there are many words that can be made off just one or the other (and of course using the letters on the board), it's generally frustrating to get a decent play out of hands like these.
** 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.

** 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 acronyms in French.

** 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.

*** 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 vice a paper dictionary.

*** Averted in that what the electronic version ''does'' help with is 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.

* BrokenBase: A case where ''everyone'', with few to no exceptions, is either a StopHavingFunGuy or a {{Scrub}}. There are essentially two types of ''TabletopGame/{{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.

* ScrappyMechanic: Unless you have the ability to read upside down or have a board with a turnstyle below, turning the board to face each player is this.

** Creator/CharlesEsten was a contestant during the final week of the original version, going by Chip Puskar.