or
to Scrabble as all letters can be scrambled.  Words are 4 letter minimum
but can end up being very long indeed.  I've been playing this game for
so many years that I can't understand why it didn't last and take over
the world !  Some of the 'i' tiles have umlauts above them suggesting
that the game originated in a Germanic or Scandinavian country.
Does anyone know anything more about it ?

<A NAME="lingogolden">
<li><b>Lingo</b>, by Western Publishing Co., Inc., Racine, Wisc, 1985<br>
"A Golden Game #4890".  The box says Lingo is slanguage of its own,
an Adult game for 2 to 6 players. The object player to flip over a
predetermined number of category cards by identifying words or expressions
in each of the required categories wins the game. The game is
complete and contents include: 216 question cards, 72 category cards,
6 slide viewers, 6 squeakers and Instruction sheet.<BR>
<B>This is not a letter-by-letter game</B> - included here only to
help avoid confusion with the other Lingo games, if you see one for sale.

<A NAME="lingua">
<li><b>Lingua</b><br>
German game, manuf. unknown.  Crossword word game in the Scrabble vein,
board has more colored squares than Scrabble; cardboard? letter tiles (circular, for
a change) are also colored.  I presume that as in "wordy" there must be
bonus scores for matching the tile colors to the board colors?

<A NAME="linguishtik">
<li><b>LinguiSHTIK</b> by Robert W Allen, National Academic Games 1973<br>
An academic game for school children, not generally sold to
the public.  (There's an <A HREF="http://www.limbach.com/articles/allen.html">interesting side-story</A> to this 
game involving a lawsuit you might want to read.)
The game has 23 differently-coloured letter dice.
I believe part of the game is to make the rules up as you go along!
The rules are more like meta-rules.
[GT]

<A NAME="litterax">
<li><b>Litterax</b> 1994<BR>
<A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_litte.htm">French game</A> which is a cross between a word game and battleship.
(What, <em>another</em> one???)  7x7 grid.  When your opponent guesses a letter,
you have to tell him all the positions (eg A3, D5 etc) where that letter is
on your grid.

<A NAME="logol">
<li><b>Logol</b> published by Editrice Giochi<br>
Italian word game.  <A HREF="http://www.editricegiochi.it/tavolo/scatoleaperte/logol.htm">See the home page.</A>

<A NAME="logomachy">
<li><b>Logomachy, or War of Words</b> published by F.A. Wright Co., 1874.<br>
Mentioned in Sid Sackson's book, <b><i>A Gamut of Games</b></i>,
"The Premium Game of Logomachy, or War of Words"
was originally published in 1874 by F.A. Wright,
then by McLoughlin, then by Milton Bradley.  The earliest version (I
believe) had 56 cards: A4 B2 C2 D2 E4 F2 G2 I4 H2 J1 K1 L2 M2 N2 O4 P2 Q1 R2
S2 T2 U3 V1 W2 X1 Y3 Z1 (i.e. 4 of AEIO, 3 of UY, 1 of JKQVXZ, 2 of all
else).  JKVX are Prize cards, QZ are Double Prize, and they each have a
unique black-and-white drawing; all they others have the same drawing of a
song-bird.  Later there were the Victorian pastel or water-color paintings:
this deck has 72 cards: A6 B3 C3 D3 E6 F3 G2 H2 I6 J1 K1 L2 M2 N2 O6 P2 Q1
R3 S2 T2 U6 V1 W2 X1 Y3 Z1.  Then there were abstract designs: first one with
swastikas (the old Christian and Vedic/Hindu version, facing the other way
from the ones later adopted by the Nazis in WWII), then one with silhouettes of a
man's helmeted head which looks circa 1940 to me; these all have the same
letter distribution.  I did once see
one on eBay with color paintings of dogs and cats, which was said to have 42
cards.<BR>
Logomachy plays like <A HREF="http://www.pagat.com/fishing/casino.html">Casino</A> with
words: players in their turn either combine one card from the hand with
cards on the table to make words, or add a card from the hand to the pool.
At the end of the hand, one scores 3 points for taking the most cards, 1 for
each Prize card, 2 for each Double Prize card, and 1 for each sweep (a sweep
is if you remove all the cards currently on the table during your turn).<BR>
[SOS] [BS] [<A HREF="http://www.usgamesinc.com/usgs/museum/wordgames/wordgames.html">image</A>]

<A NAME="logussr">
<li><b>Logus Sr</b> from Ideal, 1971<br>
billed on the box as "the slide-letter word game."
For two players or teams.  The Logus boards
are constructed like those sliding puzzles where you have to
slide the squares around to make a picture or put the numbers
in the right order and you have only one empty space to work
with.  The boards in Logus Sr. have four rows and five columns
containing 18 letter tiles and two empty spaces in the grid.
F, J, K, P, Q, V, W, X, Y, Z are omitted, while E and O get two
tiles apiece.  You draw a card specifying the goal for each
round.  It could be anything from "make a 3-letter word beginning
with B in column three" to something similar specifying three or
four intersecting words.  Some even call for words fitting a
certain theme, such as baseball terms or boys' names.  The more
difficult cards are worth more.  Players race to slide their
letters around and whichever one fulfills the card first wins it.
After you've played however many cards you agreed to, high score
wins.  One of the cards has an ad for Logus Jr., a children's
version of the game.

<A NAME="M">

<A NAME="maestria">
<li><b>Maestria</b>, by Productions Mava, Montreal (Qc), 1991<br>
Copyright Martinez-Vachon 1991<br>
102 square tiles representing blanks, straights, knees and tees.
Two boards, rules, bag for the tiles, scorepad.
The two players (or teams) draw some 40 tiles at random each and try
to assemble them so as to spell a 5+ letter word.  Letters are three
tiles high and between one and three tiles wide.  Once a player is
satisfied, the other has a limited time in which to complete his word.
Scoring is based on the overall word width.

<pre>
> >    Maestria, by Productions Mava, Montreal (Qc), 1991
> >    Copyright Martinez-Vachon 1991
> > 102 square tiles representing blanks, straights, knees and tees.
> =

> You mean letter components, as in Runes?  Interesting - how do you do Q
> or C?
</pre>

   I cannot give you a definitive answer as I only saw that one on the
shelf and jotted down its description.  You'd make a C out of three
straights, four bends and two blanks (an O with the right-hand straight
replaced by a blank); a Q probably would be an O with the lower
right-hand bend replaced by a tee.
[DUT] Was in the "Games 100" several years ago. [CS]

<A NAME="magneticphonetics">
<li><b>Magnetic Phonetics</b> published by Cascadilla Press<br>
See <A HREF="http://www.cascadilla.com/magpho.html">their web page.</A>
Includes a version of their IPA font refrigerator magnets with scores
on the tiles meant to allow you to use them in a Scrabble-like game.
[People interested in such things may also be interested in
<A HREF="http://www.lojban.org/files/papers/scrabble.unf">Playing Scrabble in Lojban</A>]

<A NAME="maxim">
<li><b>Maxim</b> Emmor Ray Sperry<br>
Charityware?  (Not in production.)  <A HREF="http://kootweb.com/games/games5.html">See his web page.</A>
The web page says you need explicit written permission to copy these games,
but the intro page says: Any individual or group that would like to make and play these games for their own use has permission to do so, "FREE". Manufacturing, for sale or rent of these games, in whole or in part
by any means, without written permission from the "Superlative Game Co. Ltd." is strictly prohibited.

<A NAME="mensaiq">
<li><b>Mensa IQ Word and Number Puzzle Pack</b> published by Mensa, 1999<br>
72 page book, 100 cards, game board, dice, counters, several games including
9 word games.

<A NAME="mindmovers3">
<li><b>Mind Movers 3</b> by Mindmovers Limited, London, England, 1974<br>
"A multilingual word game of detection challenge and infinite variation."

<A NAME="miramis">
<li><b>Miramis</b> by Laurent Montels, 1986<br>
A <A HREF="http://jeuxsoc.free.fr/m/miram.htm">French crossword game</A> with the tweak of colored squares and
colored tiles.  Sounds like "<A HREF="#wordy">wordy</A>".

<A NAME="montage">
<li><b>Montage</b> published by Gamut of Games<br>
Designed by Prince
Joli Kansil.  You form a word on a board with chips, each color
of which signifies several different letters, and give a clue to
it; your partner tries to guess it before either opponent can.
Whichever side gets it owns those chips.  See the review
in <A HREF="http://www.gamereport.com/tgr19/eulogy_montage.html">The Game Report</A>[TU]

<A NAME="motsdetete">
<li><b>Mots de T&ecirc;te</b> by Habourdin International<br>
A <A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_motsd.htm">French game</A> where a free choice of words is played on a board cross-word style.  Unlike
Scrabble, the game is in the placement, not in the finding of words.

<A NAME="motus">
<li><b>Motus</b> 1993<br>
<A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_motus.htm">Version of a French TV Game</A> which looks a lot like <A HREF="#wordmastermind">Word Mastermind</A>.

<A NAME="mudiwoga">
<li><b>Mudiwoga</b> from Mudiwoga Distributors<br>
Name is acronym for <EM>mu</EM>lti-<EM>di</EM>mensional <EM>wo</EM>rd <EM>ga</EM>me.  Build a crossword
puzzle, tiles have multiple letters so a tile doesn't
have to represent the same letter in the across word as
in the down word.  Reviewed in Jan/Feb 1982 issue of Games Magazine.

<A NAME="mywordzigzag">
<li><b>My Word</b> published by Gamut of Games<br>
a.k.a "Zig Zag" by Prince Joli Kansil.  Similar to <A HREF="#jotto">Jotto</A>. [MK][PJK]
Made the Games Magazine's GAMES 100 in Nov 1985 and Nov 1986.

<A NAME="myword">
<li><b>My Word</b> by Waddingtons<br>
is a word-forming game very like a simplified <A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A> with
no board - but all the words are of four letters. This
not only makes it less of a strain on the brain, but also, of course,
opens up the opportunity for unofficial extra
points-scoring rules for adults in a juvenile mood. Keep it clean, and
it is suitable for children down to eight or less. It is
for 1-6 players, and works well for any of these numbers of
participants. And I like it. [DUT]<br>
(Source: <A HREF="http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/reviews.html">http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/reviews.html</A>)

<A NAME="myworddiabolo">
<li><b>My Word</b> by Out of the Box Games<br>
See the Reiner Knizia game <A HREF="#diabolo">"Diabolo"</A>.

<A NAME="N">

<A NAME="nextword">
<li><b>The Next Word</b> from Decipher Inc.<br>
This is (I think)
EXACTLY the same game as Pressman's <A HREF="#overturn">Overturn</A>.
Decipher just had an earlier
version under a different name.  Listed in the GAMES
100 in the Oct/Nov 1987 issue of Games Magazine.  Also was reviewed in
the Summer 1987 issue of Gamers Alliance Report.  [JB]

<A NAME="nexus">
<li><b>Nexus</b> published by Lodestone Games.<br>
Six variations of <A HREF="#anagrams">Anagram style games</A> for one (actually
the box says two) to four players.
100 tiles; some have letters, others syllables, the latter scoring more points.
[SOS] [AS]

<li><b>Nomina</b> published by Berliner Spiele<br>
See the <A HREF="http://www.mediacircus.de/mediacircus/spiele/keirat/nomina.htm">German description</A>.

<A NAME="O">

<A NAME="ohscrud">
<li><b>Oh Scrud!</b><br>
<A HREF="http://www.pahomeschoolers.com/ohscrud.html">Read this review, with image.</A>
108 cards, fast paced simultaneous play.  <A HREF="http://www.onpages.com/ohscrud/prices.html">Buy it here.</A>

<A NAME="online">
<li><b>On Line</b> by the Michael Kohner Corp (Swedish)<br>
<A HREF="http://www.crosswinds.net/~globetrotter/">Look for Online under word games at the left in this link</A><BR>
Trivia game where each answer must share a letter with the next.  May
not really be appropriate for this page, but I thought we could do
with more non-English listings...  Similar to <A HREF="#chainletters">Chain Letters</A>

<A NAME="onwords">
<li><b>ON-WORDS</b> from Wiff'n Proof Publishers, 1971<br>
The Game of Word Structures - objective is to spell words or
networks of words while preventing others from spelling theirs. [DR]
Designed by Layman Allen,
according to a Nov/Dec 1979 article in Games Magazine
on the National Puzzlers' League
convention.  Article also describes a solitaire version called
Word-Making that was presented at that convention.  Apparently
Word-Making was not published commercially, as it could be played
using only pencil and paper. [JB]

<A NAME="option">
<li><b>Option</b> published by Parker Brothers, 1983.<br>
A crossword game
using prisms.  Play includes flipping prisms already on the board to
switch them to the alternate letter.  Players score extra if the word
is all in one color.  Why they didn't use all three sides of the prisms
is a mystery.  [DUT]

<A NAME="ordpaord">
<li><b>Ord p&aring; ord</b><br>
<A HREF="http://www.brio.se/alga/Vuxen3.html#Ordpeord">Word on word (Ord p&aring; Ord)</A><BR>
 A very simple crossword-type family game, where
 you play head to head by randomly selecting letter
 tiles and try to create as long words as possible.
 The longer the word, the more points you score.
 When all 49 letters have been used up, the player
 with most points win. For 2 or more players, Age 9
 and up, Playing time about 20-40 minutes.
[<A HREF="http://www.brio.se/alga/pdf/baksidor/ordpord.pdf">Full-page ad</A> in pdf format, 761K]

<A NAME="ortho">
<li>A new and Amusing Social Game of <b>Orthographical Representations</b> published by William MacGill, 1870<br>
This is an early Anagrams game.  From an ebay posting:
A mahogany box containing many letters of the alphabet (over 400?).
They are made of a kind of cardboard, printed and glazed.
Called "A New and Amusing SOCIAL GAME of ORTHOGRAPHICAL RECREATIONS."
C.1870. Size of box 12 x 7 x 1 7/8 inches.<br>
This is an extremely attractive case set and looks like a real
collectors piece. The tiles are not just letters but include ligatures
and other characters, much like a printers type case.  The ebay reserve
on this was 50 pounds sterling.  I can just make out on the photo of
the label:  William MacGill, Artist-Colourman, Printseller and
Stationer, 105 Princes Street, Edinburgh.  Always on hand - a surfeit
of Artists' Material of the Best Quality.  Drawings Lent to Copy.

<A NAME="overturn">
<li><b>Overturn</b> published by Pressman.<br>
The letters are printed
right on the board in this game.  The board for a single game is
made up of 9 small squares, each with four letters on them.  There
are 18 squares included - rotate and shuffle them after each play,
and you'll get a different setup each time.  There are circles
(green on one side, silver on the other) which fit over the letters.
Spell a word as in <A HREF="#boggle">Boggle</A> and claim those letters by placing circles
around them, your color up.  The next player must use at least one
new letter and one used letter, flipping any circles around letters
used to his color.  Very good game.  I have an article on <a href
="http://www.io.com/~sos/bc/overturn.html">three-player Overturn</a>.
[SOS]  See also <A HREF="#nextword">Next Word</A> from Decipher Inc.
This is
<A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_overt.htm">also available in French</A>,
except that it is sold by Mattel!  I tell you, I have trouble keeping track
of all these companies.

<A NAME="P">

<A NAME="pagopago">
<li><b>Pago Pago</b> published by Just Games<br>
Players race to fill in
crossword puzzles, using different colors of pencils so
as to tell who filled in which squares.  Review in July
1986 issue, made the GAMES 100 in Nov 1986 issue. [JB]
(not a perfect match for the letter-by-letter games page, but
we'll include it anyway)

<A NAME="palabra">
<li><b>Palabra</b> published by Kondrick, 1990<br>
Seven-card hands. Two or
three stars on some cards serve as multipliers so you can score
2*2*3*3*3 times the base score if lucky and careful. Player
interaction is minor.  Requires some defensive strategy.
There is a detailed review in the 
<A HREF="http://www.gamereport.com/tgr2/palabra.html">Game Report Online</A>
This positive
review points out several kinds of defensive plays one can make.
[TU] [BS]


<A NAME="passthebomb">
<li><b>Pass the Bomb</b> published by Gibsons Games, 1996<br>
(box text: "Invented by Los Rodriguez and licenced by Weekend Games; Made in
Austria by Piatnik, 1994"). Like Hot Potato, you don't want to be
the one holding the bomb when it explodes. In order to pass it to
the next person, however, you must first say a valid word containing
a given sequence of letters (or, since bluffing is encouraged, make
people _think_ you did...).  [BB2]
 
<A NAME="patchword">
<li><b>Patch Word</b> manufactured by Fairchild Corp., Rochester NY<br>
Crossword card game with small cards.  No details yet.  Dated
somewhere between 30's and 50's perhaps? [GT]

<A NAME="peeko">
<li><b>Peeko</b> 1964<br>
"192 word games for the whole family".  "Open the window and find the word"

<A NAME="pendu">
<li>Le <b>Pendu</b><br>
See under <A HREF="#lependu">Le Pendu</A>.

<A NAME="perfect10">
<li><b>Perfect 10</b> published by Smethport.<br>
Yet another variant of <A HREF="#anagrams">Anagrams</A>, but with only 100 tiles.  [SOS]

<A NAME="perquackeyli">
<li><b>Perquackey</b> published by Hollingsworth Bros, a product of Cardinal Industries, Lakeside Industries, MINN, 1956<br>
(I haven't confirmed other reports that "Pressman Toys" had their name on
a Perquackey box yet, but with the across the board aquisitions
and megers of toy companies in latter years it may well be
true - GT)<br>
Old version is red box with PQ cubes showing and hourglass.  (This one has
a rules leaflet dated 1956, copyright The Shreve Company).
1970 version (Game #8313 is white box
with photo of spilled cup on front).
13 cubes; 10 black; three red. 
Players roll 10 dice, then
rattle off all 3+ letter words. You can only get points for the first 5
words with the same # of letters (5 3 letter words, 5 4 letter words).
Point scoring is based on number of words of each type. Once you are
vulnerable, you add a few red dice (with more obscure letters) and must
start with 4 letter words.  One becomes vulnerable after reaching a certain
score. When vulnerable, if you do not score at least 500 points, then you
gain NO points for that turn, AND in fact you SUBTRACT 500 points from your
previous score.   Solitairish (take turns, race point score).
One of many similar dice game.  Unlike <A HREF="#scribbage">Scribbage</A>,
<A HREF="#adlib">Ad Lib</A> and others
of that style, you do not have to form crosswords in Perquackey.
[BB] [GM]<br>
See the <A HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/perquackey.html">Games Cabinet</A> for rules.
[GT] [<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=86&src=DETAILS">image</A>]
[<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1678&src=DETAILS">1970 version image</A>]
[<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=85&src=DETAILS">1982 version image</A>]

<A NAME="phlounder">
<li><b>Phlounder</b> published by 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co), 1962.<br>
Letters are fed randomly
through chute-like troughs; players try to make words out of what comes
out. [DUT]  Here's a good external link to <A HREF="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Dennis_Matheson/3m15.htm">The Gamepile</a>.<BR>
Contents include board, 90 wooden letter tiles, metal bell, 3 special dice, score pad and
instruction folder.

<A NAME="picktwo">
<li><b>Pick Two</b> published by Tah Dah, 1993<br>
Form words with cards as
quickly as possible.  When you form one the other players have to take
two more cards and continue.  [RI] [<A HREF="http://www.albertsattic.com/Merchant/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=aa&Product_Code=04023650350&Category_Code=wd">Description here</A>]
[<A HREF="http://www.gamereport.com/tgr8/picktwo.html">Review</A>]
Games Magazine Best New Word Game of 1993.

<A NAME="piquadilly">
<li><b>PiQadilly</b>, by Chatham Hill Games<br>
Score your Wordplay with a grand PiQadilly and Riffle along the Ruffle! The Queen awaits! Welcome
     to the fabulous world of PiQadilly, the "Alice in Wonderland" of word games! Created in the fanciful spirit of Victorian whimsy, PiQadilly is both a thoughtful challenging
     crossword style word game and a wild, rousing board game that will have you "Riffling along the Ruffle" You are in a race to be the first to dine with the Queen, waiting
     majestically in the center of PiQadilly Circus. Through skillful WORDPLAY, you move around the colorful game board, "Riffling" along the "Ruffle". Move ahead while
     sending your opponents back with the right plays, and dont forget about the Q! Once youre moving along the Ruffle, the game gets "curiouser and curiouser" (as Alice
     would say). Your playing piece changes size during the game, if you plan your WORDPLAY carefully, youll be in control but its not always easy. BIG and LITTLE usually
     dont get along, so be careful you dont get BUMPED! The colorful alphabet spaces let you make BONUS plays that can speed you on your way. Once you completed your
     way around the Ruffle, you're ready to enter PiQadilly Circus, but only LITTLE can squeeze through the EXIT. If your BIG well, youll just have to wait a trun to shrink! Once
     your in PiQadilly Circus, its a wild race to enter the Palace and win the game. But remember if you or anyone can spell "QUEEN" at anytime during WORDPLAY, the
     game is over, and you win!

<A NAME="playonwords">
<li><b>Play On Words</b>, by Copp-Clark, 1971 (under licence from E. S. Lowe)<br>
Equipment consists of a <A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A>-like 9x9 board (with some double and
triple word score squares), 20 dice whose faces have letters and points, and
a timer.  Apparently, one rolls the dice and then has a time limit within which
to decide on the word to play on the board. [DUT]

<A NAME="playonwordz">
<li><b>Play On Wordz</b> published by Milton Bradley, 1986.<br>
It has a plastic case with 9 dice (called a dice roller),
and custom scoring sheets.  There are
6 dice in an outer circle and 3 dice in the middle.  Each die is
in a cavity and can't be removed.  A player rubs his hand over the
dice, rotating them, and places the game on the table for everyone
to see.  The object is to use the letters shown to make words of
4 or more letters.  Letters do not have to be adjacent.  First
player to make 10 words says STOP and players compare lists.
Duplicate words are eliminated.  Each remaining word counts one
point.  Words with more than 4 letters get an extra point for each
letter over 4.  We like it a lot, and adjust the rules for younger
players or poor spellers as needed.  [CK]  Includes score pads.
See also <A HREF="#stellarspeller">Stellar Speller</A>

<A NAME="travelplayonwordz">
<li>Travel <b>Play On Wordz</b> published by Milton Bradley, 1986<br>
See <A HREF="#playonwordz">above</A>.  Identical.  Actually there may not
even be a non-travel version...[GT]

<A NAME="plugajug">
<li><b>Plug-a-jug</b> by Parker Bros<br>
Their gimmick is 32 letters in a jug instead of the usual dice cup or bag.


<A NAME="pokari">
<li><b>Pokari</b> by Warren Paper Prod. Co. Inc, 1979<br>
Also copyright 1979 by Creative Learning Assoc.
"Play Poker with words".  25 games listed in the rule book, two decks of cards (70),
and dice.  From an <A HREF="http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewListedItems&userid=auntcee&include=0&since=-1&sort=2&rows=25">eBay seller</A>

<A NAME="pounce">
<li><b>Pounce</b><br>
No details at present [DUT]

<A NAME="predictaword">
<li>Drew Pearson's <b>Predict-a-Word</b> 1949<br>
I'm afraid I let the eBay page with this on expire before I got
around to adding it, so the images are gone and I've no idea what kind
of game this was.
<!-- it was bought by angela20001@prodigy.net - i should mail her and ask -->

<A NAME="prefix">
<li><b>Prefix</b><br>
Find all words that begin with a given prefix.

<A NAME="probe">
<li><b>Probe</b> published by PB, 1964<br>
Game #200. Word guessing game like a sort of simultaneous Hangman.
[RI] [DUT]
[Rules at the <a HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/probe.html">Games Cabinet</a>]
[<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1727&src=DETAILS">1964 image</A>]
Here is info on <A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_probe.htm">Probe in French</A>.

<A NAME="pronto">
<li><b>Pronto</b> published by Selchow and Righter in the late
1970's (1978 seen).<br>
A letter dice game, where you receive credit
for various combinations.  Similar to <A HREF="#wordyahtzee">word yahtzee</A> but with different
scoring possibilities.  Excellent solitaire.  Rule book.  Score pads.
Reviewed in Games Magazine in July 1984
[MT] [GT]

<A NAME="protiles">
<li><b>Protiles</b><BR>
<A HREF="http://www.protiles.net/">See the website.</A>  Unofficial tiles
for Scrabble playing.  See also <A HREF="#clearscrabbletiles">Transparent Tiles</A>.

<A NAME="punchline">
<li><b>Punch Line</b> from Parker Pros<BR>
It had horizontal strips
of letters that slid back and forth in a rack so you tried
to spell a word vertically that would complete the sentence
that had been drawn from the deck.
Reviewed in Games Magazine, May/Jun 1979. [JB]

<A NAME="puzzlestruggle">
<li><b>Puzzle Struggle</b> from Innotoy Inc.<BR>
"The Challenging
Crossword Game."  No review, so unsure if this is truly
letter-by-letter or not, but ads sound like it probably
is.  Ads in Oct, Nov and Dec 1986.  Ad says, "Puzzle
Struggle is the exciting new word game to play with your
family and friends.  TIRED OF WAITING for others to finish
a turn?  The unique challenge feature allows all players
or teams to participate in every turn.  There are 20
complete, reusable games in this big, 169 piece, top
quality game set." [JB]

<A NAME="pyramidcrossword">
<li><b>Pyramid Crossword Cubes</b> from Crisloid, 1969<BR>
Comes with plastic playing board, timer, dice cup, instructions, and 15 letter dice.
Looks like cross between scribbage and boggle, with dice being emptied
into a triangular shape rather than a square.

<A NAME="Q">
<A NAME="quadtriple">
<li><b>Quadtriple</b> published by Eltron.<br>
No information at present.  Once had a link to http://baymoo.sfsu.edu:4242/3333
Advertised in Games Magazine in May/June 1979.
[DUT]

<A NAME="qubila">
<li><b>Qubila</b> by NBC TV, 1955<br>
"Steve Allen's Quibila".
7 dice?, shaker, scorepad, instructions.

<A NAME="quble">
<li><b>Quble</b> by Geospace (contemporary)<br>
Rubik's Cube but with letters on the faces as well as colours.  Looks like
you make words boggle-style as well as solving the cube.  See
<A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000IZUH/qid=946668379/sr=1-17/102-3778918-3260044">Amazon.Com</A><BR>
Includes egg-timer. Sold in bubble-pack.

<A NAME="que">
<li><b>Que</b> published by Knots.<br>
Cards with letters - some have one
letter, others two-letters, and there are two wild-cards.  Many
variants given.  [SOS]

<A NAME="questique">
<li><b>Questique</b> published by David English, 1987.<br>
Questique is a strategy crossword board game that can be played in a
home, school or further educational environment and is suitable for
children, families and adults.
A simple handicapping system allows players of mixed abilities to play
together and each stand a good chance of winning.  For example, a highly
educated language teacher and a below average ability child of eight can
be a match!  The game can be played solo or by up to four players.
More about the game and its educational applications can be seen at the
<A HREF="http://www.questique.co.uk/">author's web site</A>.<BR>
Contents: 150 letters [A-15, B-4, C-3, D-6, E-20, F-3, G-5, H-3, I-14, J-1, K-1, L-6, M-5, N-9, O-11, P-4, Q-1, R-9, S-7, T-9, U-5, V-1, W-2, X-1, Y-1, Z-1, blanks-3],
letter bag, 8 blanks for excluding star squares, 4 letter racks, game board, illustrated
summary and <A HREF="http://www.questique.co.uk/THE%20GAME%20IN%20DETAIL.htm">game in detail</A> leaflets.
[<A HREF="http://www.questique.co.uk/FIG4100N.jpg">image</A>]

<A NAME="quibbix">
<li><b>Quibbix</b> published by Intelli, Author Gilbert Obermair<br>
From the <A HREF="http://www.spiel-des-jahres.org/e_sdj81quibbix.html">Spiele Des Yahres</A> site:<BR>
You take 10 tokens (each showing a letter) from a pile of 120 letter tokens (printed side
downwards) and try to use them all in forming words with a time limit of 5 minutes.
You receive points for the used letters -- depending on the difficulty of the letters 1 to 3 --
and note these points on a notepad. All points of the letters in the longest word count
twice. Then you take five more tokens and combine them with the old ones to form
new words. 
In the third round you increase your stock of letters by five more tokens (20 altogether)
and try to make as long words as possible again. Finally you add up the points of all
three rounds to find the winner. This simple rules were written by Gilbert Obermaier,
who left our jury at the same time he created one of the wittiest word puzzle games of
late.  (Uwe Petersen)  (<A HREF="http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/luding/reviews/ak/Quibbix.html">Play-test in German</A>)

<A NAME="quibble">
<li><b>Quibble</b> published by Just Games.<br>
Ten wooden sticks have
10 letters on each edge.  Randomly place them to make a 10x10 square
of letters.  Some variants require finding words in a given row,
others in the whole array.  [SOS]

<A NAME="quickspell">
<li><b>Quick Spell</b><br>
Battery-operated gadget which I think just shuffles dice, which you
then find words in.  Requires also pencil and paper (not supplied).

<A NAME="quickword">
<li><b>Quickword</b>, by US Game Systems (or Aristoplay?)<br>
"The Ultimate Word Game":
This is a wonderful word game for travelling. It calls on a number
of different word skills: listing subjects in categories, listing
subjects in categories
according to first letter of name of person or object, listing words
according to a beginning and middle letters, etc. Wonderful for
someone in a boat
or RV or tent or travelling with a suitcase. It measures only about
4 x 7 inches, about 1 1/8 inch deep. Can be played as solitaire as
well, but not as
much fun... 
Comes in a blue case the size noted above. Included is instruction
sheet, a pair of mini dice, Blue, Pink, gray and aqua cards, score
sheets, scratch
pads. egg timer, board with a built in spinner.
See it at what may be the <A HREF="http://www.aristoplay.com/quick.htm">manufacturer's site.</A>
[not 100% match for inclusion in this web page.  May remove later]

<A NAME="quiddler">
<li><b>Quiddler</b>, by SET Enterprises Inc<br>
It's a deck of letters similar to Word
Madness, with better rules.  You are dealt a varying number of cards
each round, similar to the card game "Oh Hell", and have to either make
all the letters in your hand into one or more words or discard and
draw.  There's a bonus for lots of short words, and a different bonus
for longer words, plus the letters all have point values which count
towards your score - or subtract, if you're holding them and they can't
be used in a word when someone else goes out. [SOS]  See it at
<A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000IV95/102-3778918-3260044">Amazon.Com</A><BR>
<A HREF="http://www.setgame.com/company/productquiddler.htm">More info from the manufacturer's site.</A><BR>
<A HREF="http://www.contagiousdreams.com/Reviews/Quiddler.html">Review</A>

<A NAME="quizzle">
<li><b>Quizzle</b> published by Copp Clark Games, Canada, 1978.<br>
There are four plastic crossword grids, a supply of cardboard letter
tiles (also wild blanks and black squares) and a special die marked
(1 1 2 2 3 *).  On a player's turn, he rolls the die and places
that many letters of his choice on the grid (other players
simultaneously draw the same tiles but place them on their own
grids as they choose).  A Joker (*) counts for either 3 tiles or
the replacement of an already-played tile.  The game ends once the
grid is filled.  Only completed words count for score.  [DUT]

<A NAME="qwink">
<li><b>Qwink</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1985<br>
"Quick as a wink" word game.  100 word tiles, foldable partition (battleship
style), and word-tile case.

<A NAME="R">
<A NAME="raetselturm">
<li><b>R&auml;tsel Turm</b>, a game by Heinz Meister, published by
FX Schmid, 1992.<br>
The aim of the game is to build towers with
coloured blocks, the lowest block representing the first letter of
a word, etc.  There are blocks of different colours: green means
A, B or C; yellow D, E or F, etc.  Five different games use this
basic system.  For example, each player on his turn builds a tower,
and the first other player who finds a corresponding word scores
1 point.  Another example: The first player chooses a block, and
each player on his turn must add a block on the top of the tower,
or accuse the former player of bluffing when he cannot name a
corresponding word.  [BF]  <A HREF="http://www.mediacircus.de/mediacircus/spiele/keirat/raetselt.htm">German description</A>.

<A NAME="razzle">
<li><b>Razzle</b> published by Parker Bros, 1981<br>
Try to move a carriage
towards your opponent.  The carriage has six letter dice which
rotate when the carriage is moved.  First to find a word formed
with the letters showing moves the carriage towards his opponent,
which then rotates the dice to reveal different letters.  [SOS]

<A NAME="redletter">
<li><b>Red Letter</b> published by Games Gang.<br>
Like <A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A> - not
entirely accidentally one suspects - except
all letters are worth 1 pt.  Letters can be either upper or lower case
allowing proper nouns.  Bonuses for using all red letters (especially in
the red zone -- outmost 5 rows/columns of the board) and bonuses for
using words that fit a category listed on a card and with so many
letters.  Probably a game designed more to outwit patent lawyers
than anyone else. [RI] [GT]

<A NAME="redseven">
<li><b>Red Seven</b><br>
A <A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_redse.htm">French game</A> which is a poor hybrid of Bridge and Scrabble.

<A NAME="reflective">
<li><b>Reflective Word Game</b> by Marcel Mayes<br>
Unpublished game <A HREF="http://www.invention.com/mayes.htm">looking for a manufacturer.</A>

<A NAME="republican">
<li><b>Republican Word Game</b> 1984<br>
These were handed out at the 1984 Republican National
convention.

<A NAME="reword">
<li><b>Reword</b><br>
I have no info on this other than a picture, showing a shoe-box like
container holding lettered playing cards in one of 5 compartments.
It is <em>not</em> the same game as <A HREF="#keepquietreword">Keep Quiet Reword</a>,
though the packages are very similar in style and they may be related.

<A NAME="rockandroll">
<li><b>Rock and Roll</b> by DEWL Plasti-Toy Corp, 1957<br>
200 5th Ave, Ney York 10 NY.  8 plastic dice with letters and scores,
some faces have a musical note on them.  Faces are red and black
(on same die).  A variant of Scribbage-like games with a punning musical theme.
Company slogan is "Make it a rule - Buy DEWL!"

<A NAME="rolit">
<li><b>Rol-It</b><br>
"A fast crossword game" "Educational * Fun * Exciting".
Grey box, name in red.  11 or 12 dice, maybe more, shaker.  Looks like the many
crossword dice games of the thirties to fifties.

<A NAME="rollaword">
<li><b>Roll-A-Word</b><br>
7 letter dice (I think), cheap plastic cup.  Simple game to find longest
word from throw.  Originally sold at 39c. 1950's?

<A NAME="rollawordpostcereal">
<li><b>Roll-A-Word</b> freebie with Post Cereal<br>
8 letter dice, cheap plastic cup and rule sheet.  Simple game to find longest
word from throw.  Sent off for from a Post Cereal box.  Shipped in
a brown cardboard box.  No fancy packaging.

<A NAME="oldrollaword">
<li><b>Roll-A-Word</b><br>
A different version - looks much older - with 12 wooden dice and a
cardboard cylinder cup with lid.  Spotted on eBay.  Single-sheet foldout
rule leaflet definitely says "ROLL-A-WORD" at the top.

<A NAME="rollawordball">
<li><b>Roll-A-Word</b><br>
The dice in this one look like the dice in the first Roll-A-Word above; this
variation is packaged in a transparent plastic ball and may have been
sold in a gumball machine.  The cubes are all marked "W Germany". The
container is embossed with "registered 2 V".  Just a guess, but this
may be from <A HREF="#spinaword">Keiler Corp</A>?

<li><b>Rologram</b> by Rosebud Art Co., 1934<BR>
This is a very old game by Rosebud Art Company (1934) that can be used to "play Anagrams and other entertaining games". The game is
complete with bright red playing board, 10 marbles, instruction book/score book, and dice cup. The board has 60 holes, each assigned a
letter and a number. The marbles are rolled onto the board, and the holes that they land in determine which letters are used to form
words. The box itself measures 13 by 9.5 inches, is in very good condition, and has beautiful graphics showing a boy and girl playing
Rologram. [eBay ad]

<A NAME="rondo">
<li><b>Rondo</b> published by Ravensburger/FX Schmidt (Germany), designed
by Abrahami/Netz<br>
2-4 players aged 12+, pub 97.  Stand holds letter
cards and can be extended as the length of the word increases.
Players make words by adding, changing or blanking out a letter in
the word that's already there.  [PE]  Played in the <A HREF="http://www.site.nl/antv/new/final/rondo/PAGE13.htm">Netherlands</A>
and in Spain. There may be an <A HREF="http://www.site.nl/antv/new/final/rondo/rondoon.htm">on-line version here</A> sometime.

<A NAME="rootiekazootie">
<li><b>Rootie Kazootie</b> from Ed-U-Cards<br>
30 cards? At least pre-1973.  No more info.

<A NAME="roots">
<li><b>Roots</b> from Heritage Products Ltd.<br>
An ad in the
Sept/Oct 1978 issue of Games Magazine said: "...the excitement of poker ...
the suspense of gin rummy ...the smartness of Scrabble.
America's new family word game.  ROOTS.  ROOTS is a head-to-
head competition, your brains against everyone else in the
game.  There's suspense right up until the last card is
played.  And your family name, your 'roots', can help you
be a winner." [JB]

<A NAME="rouedelafortune">
<li>La <b>Roue de la Fortune</b><br>
See under "<A HREF="#laroue">La Roue de la Fortune</A>"

<A NAME="royalty">
<li><b>Royalty</b> published by US Games, 1959<br>
Similar to <A HREF="#wordrummy">Word Rummy</A> except
you only score if no one can steal your word in one round.  [RI]
Copyright dates on the rule book I have here are 1959, 1961, 1964.
It's in a nicely presented little clasp pack.
Game has two sets of 53 cards: one pack has
RED: a 3 b 0 c 1 d 1 e 3 f 0 g 1 h 1 i 2 j 0 k 1 l 1 m 0
n 2 o 2 p 0 q 1 r 1 s 1 t 1 u 1 v 1 w 0 x 1 y 1 z 0<br>
BLACK: a 2 b 1 c 0 d 1 e 3 f 1 g 1 h 0 i 2 j 1 k 0 l 1
m 1 n 1 o 2 p 1 q 0 r 2 s 0 t 2 u 1 v 0 w 1 x 0 y 1 z 1<br>
The other pack has them swapped over:
BLACK: a 3 b 0 c 1 d 1 e 3 f 0 g 1 h 1 i 2 j 0 k 1 l 1 m 0
n 2 o 2 p 0 q 1 r 1 s 1 t 1 u 1 v 1 w 0 x 1 y 1 z 0<br>
RED: a 2 b 1 c 0 d 1 e 3 f 1 g 1 h 0 i 2 j 1 k 0 l 1
m 1 n 1 o 2 p 1 q 0 r 2 s 0 t 2 u 1 v 0 w 1 x 0 y 1 z 1<br>
Both packs have one red/black wildcard called a "Knave".<br>
The scores on the cards are:  
A 2 B 6 C 6 D 4 E 2 F 6 G 4 H 6 I 2 J 10 K 8 L 2 M 6 N 2 O 2
P 6 Q 12 R 2 S 2 T 2 U 4 V 8 W 8 X 10 Y4 Z 12<BR>
The rules to this game are couched in a royalty metaphor
throughout which personally I find makes them much harder to
understand.
[GT]  [Late news: guess what, <A HREF=""http://www.usgamesinc.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=669&prmenbr=251>this is still in production</A>]

<A NAME="runes">
<li><b>Runes</b> published by Eon.<br>
The basic component of this game is
actually the letter element: a small straight, a large straight, a
small curve and a large curve.  Each player's board lists each letter
with the one legal way to create the letter using the letter elements.
Think of a secret word (five or six letters, determine before
starting), and the others try to guess first what elements compose a
given letter, then which letter it is, then which word.  Excellent game
with four players, a bit lacking with less.
Reviewed in Games Magazine May/Jun 1982.
<a href="http://www.io.com/~sos/bc/runes.html">Longer review.</a>  [SOS]

<A NAME="S">

<A NAME="sabuca">
<li><b>Sabuca</b> by Frederic A. Herschler<br>
<A HREF="http://www.abacusspiele.com/karten/karten6.htm">German description</A>.
Card game.

<A NAME="safetydice">
<li><b>Safety Dice</b> from the Northern Illinois Gas Company, 1957<br>
Promotional item awarded as a competition prize.  Make as many words with
high points as possible (point values NOT on dice though).  Bonuses
for playing the words "safe" or "safety".

<A NAME="sark">
<li><b>Sark Crossword Cards</b> by Owens Krass Inc., Rochester NY, 1949<br>
There may be two versions of this game; one which
has two letters on them (eg "W or Z") and one that that has
just one letter.  In either cae, the letters have points.  Box is gold foil.

<A NAME="scirmish">
<li><b>Scirmish</b> by William Maclean<br>
<A HREF="http://www.boardgame.co.uk/scirmish/scirmishmore.htm">See here for more info.</A>

<A NAME="score">
<li><b>Score</b><br>
<A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_score.htm">French rip-off of Scrabble</A> on a 9x9 board.  Has some of the elements of
Scrabble such as double and triple word score squares.  Avoids copyright suit
by the two following minor tweaks: 1) each turn is played on a clean board;
and 2) it uses dice, not tiles.  In many ways this is like many of the
dice games of the past, but with the Scrabble board style bonuses and scoring
added.  Not unlike <A HREF="#addiction">Waddington's Addiction</A>.

<A NAME="scoreaword">
<li><b>Score-a-word</b> by Transogram, 1953<br>
<A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A>-like board game with enough variations to avoid a
lawsuit.  I'll post more details here once I've had a good look at it.
[GT]

<a name ="scrab">
<li><b>Scrabble</b> designed by Alfred M. Butts, published by
Selchow &amp; Righter, later Milton Bradley.<br>
Predecessors to the game were published at various times from 1931 onwards as
<em>Criss Cross Words</em> or <em>Lexiko</em>.  15x15 board with 100 tiles.  The letters
are given a value (not always in keeping with their frequency -
"H" is worth far too much, for example - Alfred got his original
distribution by counting letters on the front page of an issue of
the New York Times! - although it has been pointed out to me
that H's comprise 2.4% of Official Scrabble Words, which would
make the value and frequency about right.), and some spaces are special:  double-letter,
double-word, triple-letter, triple-word scoring spaces.
This is definitely <b>the</b> classic wordgame - one of the best.
Read the <A HREF="http://lostworld.hasbro.com/consumer/history/scrabhist.htm">Official Hasbro</A> potted history of Scrabble,
or see what the <A HREF="http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~museum/vexhibit/Whitehill/scrabble/scrabble.html">Games Museum</A> has to say about Scrabble.
(<A HREF="http://www.rehab.u-net.com/zone/steve/icon1.htm">This history</A>
is pretty good with dates and game details)<P>
Some people think Butts didn't invent anything recognisable as Scrabble
until quite some time later than the ambiguously worded official
biographies imply (in fact several biographies suggest that it was
Brunot who designed the recognisable Scrabble board as late as 1948).]
The suggestion is that the early games he came
up with - Lexiko and Criss Cross Words - with were little more than modifications of existing card games
such as <A HREF="#crosswordlexicon">Crossword Lexicon</A> and <A HREF="#crossograms">Cross-o-Grams</A>, and that the board format and bonus squares etc
came much later - perhaps even after some other companies had
similar products (cf <A HREF="#wordy">Wordy</A>, <A HREF="#lingoallfair">Lingo</A>).
One site that questions the official history is
<A HREF="http://ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story059.htm">The
Great Idea Finder</A> site.  There is also an <A HREF="http://www.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/alpha/un_hist.html">interesting letter</A>
in an addendum to the Scrabble FAQ.  However it seems that these comments are
not entirely founded.  Our current information (much of it from Philip Nelkon
at Mattel UK) is that the board was added to Lexico in 1937 or early 
1938
at which point it was renamed "Criss Cross Words".  He applied for a patent
for Criss Cross Words in March 1938 which was rejected.
Criss Cross Words looked like Scrabble except that it had 4 more premium
squares. This version was sold to a few friends between 1938 &amp; 1941. Changes
made by Brunot in 1947 were elimination of the 4 extra squares, designating
the centre as a double word score, introducing the 50 point bonus, rewriting
the rules and naming it Scrabble.  Butts described some of this timeline in
a court deposition which this site is currently trying to get access to.
<P>
We will eventually be adding here a full list of all the foreign
language versions of Scrabble, plus some tedious detail
about various different boards that were sold at different times.
See also "Skip-a-cross".<br>
Note to collectors: be wary of the shiny red plastic box version
of Scrabble often advertised as "1948".  The board may be "Production
and Marketing Co. 1948", but as far as I know they were made first
in 1953 and the giveaway is the copyright date in the
manual.  Likewise, regular Scrabble sets often have a box copyright
and perhaps a manual copyright of 1948, but the board turns out to
be something like 1952.  Be *extra* wary of a "SelRight" (Selchow
and Righter) early box with a Production and Marketing early board,
as the two may not have started life together.  Taking the earliest
parts from two sets and "marrying them up" as they say in the
antique faking trade is an easy way to increase the value of two
cheap games by a factor of ten!  You have been warned!<P>
The most convincing pre Selchow &amp; Righter set I have seen - and
I've only ever seen one of these in all the time I've been researching
word games - is a Production &amp; Marketing Company version with
a 1948/1949 copyright, where the tiles are made from two types
of wood veneered together; a light wood on top and a dark wood
underneath, with the letters printed on paper and glued to the plywood tiles.
I believe this is one of the small production run of a few thousand sets
from before S &amp; R took over mass production under the P &amp; M name.
(Independant confirmation of these early tiles can be found at the <A HREF="http://www.mattelscrabble.com/en/adults/history_1.html">official
Mattel history page</A>,
where it says:
<EM>"The tiles were similarly hand lettered, then glued to quarter inch
plywood and cut to match the squares on the board."</EM>)
[SOS] [GT] [Rules direct from <A HREF="http://www.hasbro.com/consumer/instruct/scrabble.pdf">Hasbro</A> (pdf)]
[<A HREF="http://www.adenelson.demon.co.uk/scrabble/scrabble_scoresheet.html">Scoring sheets for tournaments</A>]
[<A HREF="http://www.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/faq.html">A very good FAQ</A>]
<a name ="foreignscrab">
<li>Foreign language <b>Scrabble</b><br>
A source of confusion in keeping track of the various foreign language
versions of Scrabble is that although Spears (now Mattel) have the
rights to the rest of the world outside the USA, Selchow &amp; Righter
(now Hasbro) do actually produce foreign-language versions in the US -
ostensibly
for sale for use in the US only, primarily as a language-learning aid.
Most of the foreign sets they made were produced in the seventies; I'm
not sure if they still make them (except for Spanish which is being sold
now as a native language game to Spanish-speaking Americans, rather than
as an educational product for non-native speakers).<BR>
Here are some of the foreign language versions of Scrabble available.
This list will eventually be exhaustive, if the author is not by
then exhausted.
<P>
The information below was compiled from various sources, but a significant
part was contributed by Philip Nelkon from Spear's Games/Mattel UK.  Thank
You, Philip.<P>
<UL>
<!--
<LI><A HREF="langdist.html"><B>All latin language tiles and distributions</B></A><BR>
This is a definitive listing of the tile distributions for all
the languages served by the various ISO Latin font sets.  This copyrighted
file was
released by Spears/Mattel UK on the condition that it is NOT to be
used in any commercial projects.  This is not secret information - you
could find it out by buying all the sets and counting them up
yourself - but that would be quite a task.  Please respect Spear's
copyright in this area.
-->
<LI><A HREF="details/afrikaans/"><B>Afrikaans</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/arabic/"><B>Arabic</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/catalan/"><B>Catalan</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/croatian/"><B>Croatian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/czech/"><B>Czech</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/danish/"><B>Danish</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/dutch/"><B>Dutch</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/finnish/"><B>Finnish</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/french/"><B>French (and French Canadian)</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/german/"><B>German</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/greek/"><B>Greek</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/hebrew/"><B>Hebrew</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/hungarian/"><B>Hungarian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/icelandic/"><B>Icelandic</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/italian/"><B>Italian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/malaysian/"><B>Malaysian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/norwegian/"><B>Norwegian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/polish/"><B>Polish</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/portuguese/"><B>Portuguese</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/romanian/"><B>Romanian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/russian/"><B>Russian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/slovenian/"><B>Slovenian</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/slovak/"><B>Slovak</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/spanish/"><B>Spanish</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/swedish/"><B>Swedish</B></A>
<LI><A HREF="details/turkish/"><B>Turkish</B></A>
</UL>
<P>
I do NOT have distributions for Bulgarian and would be appreciative of
any of our readers who would
care to submit them.<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.toride.com/~yamazaki/scrabble/index.html">Scrabble in Japan is played in English</A>, but here is
the <A HREF="http://www.ky.xaxon.ne.jp/~scrabble/sd/index.html">"Scrabbler's Domain"</A> game site in Japanese, and
a <A HREF="http://www.toride.com/~yamazaki/">Japanaese Word Game homepage</A>.<BR>
There's a Thai game that as far as I can tell is <A HREF="http://www.thaicrossword.com/store/store_cross.html">a rip-off from Scrabble</A>,
called "<A HREF="http://www.thaicrossword.com/games/howto/howto_cpratom.html">Crossword Game</A>". (See also "<A HREF="#kumkom">KumKom</A>")<BR>
See also <A HREF="#magneticphonetics">Magnetic Phonetics</A> for a set of
tiles which allows you to play Scrabble using the phoneticians' <A HREF="http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/glyphimg/DLettersIPA.gif">IPA</A> characters.<BR>
Steven Alexander's excellent Scrabble FAQ has some
<A HREF="http://www.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/alpha/foreignsets.html">information
on foreign sets</A>.<BR>
<!-- [<A HREF="http://sorry.vse.cz/~xvucj01/Mensa/scrabble.html">Czech</A>] -->

<li><b>Braille and Low Vision Scrabble</b><br>
These are available from
<A HREF="http://www.clb.org/lowvision/store.htm#Toys and Games">Columbia Lighthouse</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.lighthouse.org/products/catalog.txt">The Lighthouse</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.clovernook.org/store.htm">Clovernook</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.tmx.com.au/rbs/erc.html#A19">R B S</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.henge.com/~bsistore/catalog.html">Beyond Sight</A>,
or <A HREF="http://www.sightconnection.com/sightconnection/plu-310.html">Sight Connection</A><BR>
The large type edition is described as follows:
50% Larger Type - Bigger, Bolder, Easier to Read.
Large Black Tiles with letter and values printed in large white type.
Enlarged Playing Board printed in large-type.
8-1/2" x 11" Rules Booklet printed in large-type.
9" Tile racks.
Tile bag for mixing and storing tiles (although I have to question the
point of fishing a <em>Braille</em> Scrabble tile from the concealment
of a bag!  Maybe you have to use leather gloves? :-) )<BR>
In the UK you can get Jumbo Scrabble from Nottingham Rehab. 0115 945 2345.
The board is on a mat and the tiles are wooden. I think the cost is around
£40.<br>
Mattel are working exclusively with the Royal National Institute of
the Blind to bring out a version close to the new Scrabble design,
which should be available in March/April 2001. [PN]  There is also
a "Deluxe Edition" in Braille.

<li><b>Scrabble Turntable</b><br>
Two metal arms open out from the centre to form a square onto which
you can set the game.  In the centre of the two arms is a small turntable
which 'allows the board to face each player' <BR>
<!-- scrab-turntable-spears-unfolding.JPG -->
See also the Roto-King turntable which is similar.

<li><b>Scrabble Time-Life Edition</b>, 1970<br>
Smallish board in dark plastic snap-case.  Case and rule-book are co-branded
with Time-Life name.

<li><b>Scrabble 50th Anniversary Edition</b><br>
FYI This sold for $29.95 at
<A HREF="http://www.epinions.com/kifm-Games-Word_Games-Scrabble__50th_Anniversary">ToysRUs</A>
for a long time (which is where I got mine).  I have also seen
them selling at $50 on eBay.  Suckers!  They're harder to
find now, but still not worth $50. [<A HREF="http://www.gamesimported.com/family/board/scrabble.html">image</A>]

<li><b><A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000050NO4/">Scrabble Collectors Tin</A></b> by Hasbro<br>
Of the 'fancy' scrabble sets, in my opinion this is one of the least
attractive (excluding the clear top-of-class in ugliness, the Franklin
Mint edition).  Comes in a blue tin.

<li><b>Scrabble/Monopoly twin edition</b><br>
By "Twin Play Classics": this turned out to be a surprisingly well finished product at a
reasonable price.  The board and pieces are <em>slightly</em> smaller
than a normal set, but larger than a travel set.  The board sits on
a wooden case roughly similar to the Franklin Mint table in design,
but done more tastefully.  This set would make a good present, as
it is both well made and functional; something you'd enjoy playing
with, rather than a 'collector's piece' to be left on a shelf.

<li><b>Scrabble 50th Anniversary Edition</b> by Spears/Mattel<br>
Here is the <b><em>British</em></b> <A HREF="http://www.mattelscrabble.com/de/product/50th.html">50th Anniversary Edition</A>.  This was until very recently
still available, at UK17.  Not as fancy as the US version.  (The Brits
would say it's in better taste ;-) )  I saw some idiot pay UK36 (over $50) for
this in eBay.  I suspect he thought it was the US version above :-(

<li><b>Scrabble Original</b> by Spears/Mattel<br>
The <A HREF="http://www.etoys.co.uk/toy/g/product/180/14/65/1.shtml">standard game in Britain</A>.

<li><b>Scrabble Classic</b> by Spears/Mattel<br>
Despite the name, the box is actually rather modern in styling.  Recognisable
from the motto "Get Smart.  Get ahead" on the box.  Manufactured in India.

<li><b>Millennium Scrabble</b> by Spears/Mattel<br>
And this is still UK35 at <A HREF="http://www.oneshopforall.com/cgi-local/pshopper/pshopper.pl?command=details&var=TY-027">One shop for all</A>
or UK34 at <A HREF="http://www.etoys.co.uk/toy/g/product/180/14/96/1.shtml?rsrc=ident&SID=a297011186764521">UK eToys</A>.
But can you believe <A HREF="http://www.meridian-line.com/stores/innovate/itm00950.htm">these cowboys</A> are asking GBP 61 ??!?!

<li><b>Travel Scrabble</b><br>
Regular and Deluxe.
<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1796&src=DETAILS">Game #52: 1977</A><BR>
<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1795&src=DETAILS">1954 edition</A>
There is a 1948 (really? I bet it's later) travel Scrabble in a blue plastic
box with wooden tiles, which play into a recessed surface.
One 1950's edition has thick yellow tiles with magnets inside.  The board/case
is metal.  (This one may turn out to be a pocket rather than travel edition).
There is also a British version from Spear's Games where the letters fit into a
pegged board.

<li><b>Pocket Scrabble</b><br>
At least two magnetic versions, and one surface friction
<A HREF="http://www.anjar.com/products/pocketscrabble.htm">sticky version</A> I'm told.  One magnetic version with a foldup case
is copyright 1948 and 1954.

<li><b>Deluxe Scrabble</b> Production and Marketing Co, 1953<br>
One very old Scrabble (1953) in a red simulated leather case may be the
oldest Deluxe Scrabble; modern ones have luxuries such as a spinning
board holder, competition timer, etc.  This one has cribbage-style
point counters built in to the tile racks.  Plastic tiles (much like
the current tiles used in the UK and Europe)  The manual in this set
is a joy to behold.  Hard to believe it was drawn by hand, pre computer
graphics.  This is often sold on eBay as "1948" which is the date
on the board.  It was never made that early however.  Beware a
1948 deluxe set that is sold without a manual.

<li><b>Deluxe Scrabble</b> Selchow and Righter, 1954<br>
1 Revolving 16 1/2 x 16 1/2 Scrabble Board with molded
plastic grid to hold tiles when rotating board or storing a game.
4 Blue Plastic Score Keeper Tile Holders 100 Red Wooden Letter Tiles
16 Aluminum Scoring Pegs 1 Blue cardboard box to hold Scrabble Accessories
1 Original heavy Blue cardboard storage box.<BR>
(From an eBay posting)

<li><b>Deluxe Scrabble</b> Selchow and Righter, 1982<br>
Rotating gameboard on sturdy base.  Burgundy-colored wood tiles.  Blue box
with yellow lettering.

<li><b>Scrabble</b> by Polymertex, Manilla<br>
I have very little info on this set - I tried to buy it on ebay the one
time I saw it sold there, but was sniped. (From memory I think by a certain
famous Scrabble player/author who is also a realtor in his day job...).
The only info I have is that the box says "Modern Plastics Scrabble"
and is by Polymertex, from Manilla. (A company that no longer exists
there).  This may be a licensed version but I very much doubt it.  More
likely it is a bootleg, but there's a possibility it was a trade sample.
This is possibly one of the rarest Scrabble sets I've seen.

<li>Sydney 2000 Limited Edition <b>Scrabble</b><br>
Special release from Australia:  Sydney 2000 Scrabble limited edition.
Features playing board incorporating the Sydney
Pictograms, Indigo coloured tiles, Rules with sydney 2000 word list
and Bonus word list where you earn points with GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE
Words.  (Looks like Hasbro has discovered the "Monopoly" marketing technique
of local customised releases.  Can't see how it will work as well for
Scrabble as it did for Monopoly!  Maybe this is a test market of
a new strategy?)

<li>Golf Edition <b>Scrabble</b> by USAopoly<br>
Looks like I was right about the *-opoly lesson being well taken -
and look who the publisher of <A HREF="http://www.boardgames.com/scrabgoled.html">this</A> is.

<A NAME="franklin">
<li>Franklin Mint <b>Scrabble</b><br>
This one is almost too embarassing to describe.  No, strike the "almost" -
I'm not going to describe it.  Should you be foolish enough to buy this
monstrosity. please do not tell any of your intellectual Scrabble-playing
friends as you will be marked for life as a <EM><A HREF="http://www.goehner.com/russinfo.htm">Nyekulturny</A></EM>.
[<A HREF="http://www.seeknet.com/scrab/thomas.jpg">image</A>]

<li><b>SCRABBLE BRAND GAMES</b><br>
Branding - and by that I don't mean something violent with
a hot poker - is a great way for a business to sell unrelated
goods to a dedicated audience.  Putting a famous name on a new
product guarantees sales to the addicts and saves considerably
on advertising expenses.  People assume "it's just like the original"
but better, because it's newer.  Selchow &amp; Righter are unfortunately
one of the worst companies for this - below are a number of Scrabble
branded games, which had they stood in their own right without the
Scrabble name would undoubtedly not have done nearly so well (or at
least, more badly) in sales.  Note that one thing they did to keep
the Scrabble metaphor throughout, was to use the same Scrabble points
for any letters in different games.

<A NAME="scrabblecards">
<li><b>Scrabble Cards</b> published by Spears/Mattel<br>
UK-only card game based on Scrabble point values.
See it at <A HREF="http://www.etoys.co.uk/toy/g/product/180/14/87/1.shtml">UK eToys</A>.
Although eToys charges 6 pounds for this, these are often found remaindered
for two or three quid at highstreet cheap book stores.

<A NAME="scrabblecrosswordcompanion">
<li><b>Scrabble Crossword Companion</b> by Hebko, 1996<br>
A "Roll-a-Puzzle" system for one person (i.e. a dispenser for pre-printed
single-sheet Scrabble puzzles).
5.5" X 9" game has drawer with built-in
pencil sharpener and space to keep pens/pencils.  Refills.
Probably out of production now, although <A HREF="http://shop.store.yahoo.com/airline/scrabthelcro.html">this very similar product</A> was
spotted on sale recently.

<A NAME="scrabblecrosswordcubes">
<li><b>Scrabble Crossword Cubes</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1968<br>
14 dice, you get two to four tosses (as in <A HREF="#wordyahtzee">Yahtzee</A>), forming words in
crossword fashion.  You can only score one word of each length from
2-8 letters.  [SOS]<br>
This is one of many similar games, the most well known probably
being <A HREF="#scribbage">Scribbage</A>.  The letters on the cubes in this game are:
[V F R N E L] [A U I Y O E] [H M E R G L] [S Z W X T N]
[G N L V D H] [C I S A O E] [G S B R K D] [O U E BLANK I A]
T B R N Q J] [C P M F T R] [I T A N O E] [P L D S W T]
[U I BLANK A O E] [O U E Y I A]<BR>
The scores for each letter are: A 1 B 3 C 3 D 2 E 1 F 4
G 2 H 4 I 1 J 8 K 5 L 1 N 3 N 1 O 1 P 3 Q 10 R 1 S 1 T 1 U 1 V 4
W 4 X 8 Y 4 Z 10 BLANK 0<BR>
Note the dice which have all vowels to guarantee that some words
can always be made. [GT] [<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1794&src=DETAILS">1976 box image</A>]

<A NAME="scrabbleanagrams">
<A NAME="scrabbleanagrams200">
<li><b>Scrabble Anagrams</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1962<br>
As below but with 200 tiles.  Blue box.

<A NAME="scrabbleanagrams180">
<li><b>Scrabble Anagrams</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1964<br>
Probably the predecessor of the game below.  This one had Scrabble-like
wooden tiles, but did not have scores on the tiles.  Much truer to the
old Anagrams games, not yet forced into the Scrabble mould.  180 tiles.

<A NAME="scoringanagrams">
<A NAME="scrabblescoringanagrams">
<li><b>Scrabble Scoring Anagrams</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1975<br>
Game #92.  Similar to <A HREF="#anagrams">Anagrams</A>, with a scoring system instead of final goal.  180 polished hardwood tiles
with red letters.  Early versions may not have had the Scrabble brand
name attached.  1975 version is definitely Scrabble Brand.
[SOS]

<A NAME="scrabblesentencecubes">
<li><b>Scrabble Sentence Cubes</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter.<br>
Although we said in the intro "no games of manipulating whole
words", I'll use my editor's discretion here to include the Scrabble
Sentence Cubes game just because it is easily confused with the
Crossword Cubes game.  In this one, the basic unit is a word and the
object is to form sentences.  I can only assume that the
sentences may be allowed to exhibit some mild grammatical errors,
such as a lack of subject/verb agreement, because as far as I can
see some of the words on the cubes could *never* strictly be used
with *any* of the other cubes.  I'll post the vocabulary here
when I get a chance. [GT]

<A NAME="scrabblecrossworddominoes">
<li><b>Scrabble Crossword Dominoes</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter.<br>
I have one of these so I've no excuse for not writing it up properly!
Until I do, however - a quick note: domino-like tiles with two letters,
reading horizontally on one side and vertically on the other.
There's a bonus for playing all five tiles in one hand, but
they must all touch each other.
Much be harder than it looks at first because the particular combinations of
tiles you get are hard to play out.  Cheating one evening, I tried to
see if I could find *any* way of playing all tiles in a crossword - looking
at them all at once, not just the few you're supposed to pick from
the bag.  It took me an hour to find a way to play them all out and
it was so interlocked I don't believe it would have been possible to play
that layout using the tiles sequentially as I should have.  This is
a game I'll be revisiting as I learn it.  It looks like it should
be most challenging. [GT] [SOS]


<A NAME="scrabbledice">
<li><b>Scrabble Dice</b> J W Spear, 1990<br>
My copy of this turned up today: the most interesting thing about it
is that although the box is in standard Spears livery, it says
"Scrabble is a registered trademark of Murfett Regency Pty Ltd"
on the box.
Murfett owned the copyright for Scrabble in Australia from some
time after 1968 (they bought it from a company called T.R. Urban
who were licensees in Aus. from 1954) to 1993 when they were bought
out by Spears.
<BR>
Anyway, it appears to be an unbelievably stupid version
of <A HREF="#scribbage">Scribbage</A> et al, with just 7 dice. (Presumably to justify
the Scrabble name?).  Three red vowel dice, 5 black consonant dice.  The
red and black are not used anywhere in the game, except perhaps to help
Australians identify which are the vowels.  The letters have scores
and blanks as in Scrabble.  Tabled scoring system favours longer words
(close to other games that simply give the square of the word length as the score)
[GT]

<A NAME="scrabblechallenge">
<li><b>Scrabble Challenge</b> by Spear's Jeux, 1997<br>
I found a reference to this game on a <A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_scrac.htm">French Web site</A>
(<A HREF="http://persoweb.francenet.fr/~fac/ludotheque/BUL01P02.html">and this one</A>).
The latter page says:<BLOCKQUOTE>
2 joueurs / à partir de 10 ans.
Le jeu se présente sous la forme d'un plateau avec 3 rangées par camp, et au centre un chariot mobile contenant des lettres-dès.
L'objectif est alors de trouver le meilleur mot (même tirage de lettres pour les deux joueurs) afin d'amener le chariot au fond du camp
adverse. 
175 Francs environ.</BLOCKQUOTE>
"Scrabble Challenge" is the French name for "Scrabble Head to
Head". This was a variant of Scrabble Dice; the game was played on a plastic
frame with ratchets every couple of inches. There were 7 dice with letters
and values on them in a container which flipped over when they came into
contact with the ratchets. Each time this occurred you had 30 seconds to
make the highest scoring word. If you got the higher word then the frame
moved away from you towards your opponent's end. Depending on where you were
on the frame it was marked double word, triple letter etc. The object was to
get the dice to your opponents end of the frame. [PN]

<li><b>Scrabble - Competition</b> by Mattel UK<br>
5 Travel Scrabble boards + pieces in one box (pegboard version).
You can then play Duplicate Scrabble with 3 of your friends using
the fifth board as the master containing the best words played.

<A NAME="scrabbleduplicate">
<li><b>Scrabble Duplicate</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1975<br>
In France, where I presume they have an unimaginable dread of allowing
something as unpleasant as actual *luck* into their games, the normal
form of Scrabble in tournaments is duplicate Scrabble.  In these
games, both teams get the same tiles and the same board layout, and
the scoring is for the highest play with those tiles.  The best play
is kept, the tiles are removed from both teams, and the next play
again starts with an identical board and identical tiles.  This makes
for a game with *NO* strategy, and one that would always be won by
a computer playing the highest play.  If a computer were playing a 
human (a very good human that is) in regular Scrabble, the human would
have a chance of winning because he could play a less than high-scoring
move on one play to lead the computer into opening up a high-scoring
area.<br>

Anyway - this vesion of Duplicate Scrabble doesn't use two boards,
but rather 7 cards (playing-card versions of Scrabble tiles) which
were displayed in a rack.  Each player uses their own scorepad (with
a Scrabble board on it) and writes in the word they used.  And then 7
new letters are displayed.<BR>
Apparently there is a variant that includes (and I quote) 
'a really neat "Automatic Letter Dealer" with deals out Scrabble cards with letters on them as you slide it across the platform."
<BR>
Reviewed in Games Magazine June 1983.
[GT] [RI]

<A NAME="scrabblegotaminute">
<li><b>Scrabble Got a Minute</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1975<br>
Seven cubes
with red letters (no point values) are encased in a clear 3x3x3 cube &amp; with a minute sand timer.
You have 1 minute to find as many words using the 7 letters.  [RI]  See also
<A HREF="#gotaminute">"Got A Minute"</A>

<A NAME="scrabbleipswich">
<li><b>Scrabble Ipswich</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1983.<br>
Each of
the up to 4 players has a board with crossword spaces on it (4
intersecting word tracks).  Each player draws 14 tiles and arranges
as many of them as possible to make up words on his board within
10 minutes. Within the first minute, you have the option of trading
tiles in for new ones (this costs score).  There are bonuses for
making words that intersect.  After this first round, players retain
any 4 tiles of their choice and then pass the boards, with their
remaining tiles, to the left.  Each player draws 2 more tiles.
Repeat for a total of 5 rounds.  153 letter tiles, bag, 4 boards,
score sheets and advertising leaflet.  Better quality hardware than
the average word game.
Reviewed in Games Magazine Jan 1984.
[DUT] [GT] [<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1496&src=DETAILS">image</A>]

<A NAME="scrabblejuniors">
<li><b>Scrabble for Juniors</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter.<br>
Actually the side of the board where you could make your own words
would count as a legitimate game.  [RI]  (I had originally requested no
pure children's game, listing this game as an example, but Rich Irving
rightly points out that it should be included.)  [SOS]
NOTE: I did see a reference to "Scrabble Rebus" which may be the
same as one side of the Scrabble Jr board.

<A NAME="scrabblesentencegame">
<li><b>Scrabble Sentence Game for Juniors</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter.<br>
No information at present.

<A NAME="scrabbleoverturn">
<li><b>Scrabble Overturn(?)</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter.<br>
The
letters were on cylinders which could be rotated to change the color of
the player getting credit for it.  Different from the Pressman game
<A HREF="#overturn">Overturn</A>.
[RI]<BR>
This game is similar to Scramble which was the subject of legal discussions
between Spears and the makers. There was a French version of this which
Spears - France sold but I don't recall its name. [PN]

<A NAME="scrabbleplastrix">
<li><b>Scrabble pocket puzzle</b> by Plas-Trix Co., Brooklyn 8, NY 1954<br>
Made under licence.  Take a standard sliding block
puzzle (such as placing the numbers 1-15 into order) and replace the
numbers with Scrabble tiles (27 of them, 4 wide by 7 tall)  Letters
present are: g b u y f t m e h r a i o i p w s j s d a c k n o l e.
Frame is red.  Letters have usual Scrabble scores attached.
There may be two products by this name from Plas-Trix,
because one descibes the box as 9.5in x 11in with the puzzles being
3in x 5in.  This does not fit with the sliding block puzzle
description - unless there were more than one of the sliding block
puzzles in every box?

<A NAME="scrabblequipqubes">
<li><b>Scrabble Quip Qubes</b> 1971 Selchow &amp; Righter Co. <br>
A sentence game played on a board.  Uses wooden dice rather than tiles
(14 of which are on the box photo) - I
suspect this similar to the Scrabble Sentence Cubes game but with the
constraint of a board.  Undoubtedly to make it more "Scrabble-like".
Included is the game board, 27 red cubes, 27 blue cubes, red cup, blue cup, score
pad, and instructions.

<A NAME="scrabblerpm">
<li><b>Scrabble RPM</b> 1971 Selchow &amp; Righter Co. <br>
The revolving word game for quick-thinking players.<br>

"RPM is a word game for 2 to 4 players played on a revolving board.  The
revolving board is divided into 4 Quarters.  Each quarter has a top and
bottom section.  The object of the game is to form and capture words of 2
or more letters by placing letter tiles, one per quarter, as the board
revolves.  All players make their moves at the same time.  The board makes
exactly 5 revolutions before it is automatically stopped.  This gives each
player 20 opportunities to place his tiles.  Colored tiles are used to
capture completed words."  One set is reported as having 76 letter tiles
and 20 color tiles.  Don't know if this is the full complement.
[CL] [FB]

<A NAME="scrabblersvp">
<li><b>Scrabble RSVP</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1970<br>
You have an upright grid, in which letters can be placed from either side.  A
letter placed shows on both sides - but if one reads "BY" on one
side of the grid, it reads "YB" on the other.  Object is to score
more words than your opponent, taking turns placing one letter at
a time.  [SOS]

<A NAME="tvscrabble">
<li><b>TV Scrabble</b>: Selchow &amp; Righter, 1987<br>
The game was based on the televison game show. It was a Hangman variant with
clever clues. [AS]

<A NAME="rotoking">
<li><b>Roto King (Scrabble) Turntable</b> by Natslo Products, Brooklyn.<br>
Independantly manufactured turntable for Scrabble games.

<A NAME="scrabbleturntiles">
<li><b>Scrabble Turntiles</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter, 1986.<br>
Extra-large 1.25in Scrabble tiles, printed on both sides, played Scribbage-fashion
without a board.  Drawstring bag, timer.  61 tiles. Letter pairs are: [AU] [BD] [CN]
[DB] [EK] [FY] [GT] [HL] [IS] [JX] [KE] [LH] [MV] [NC] [OP]
[PO] [QZ] [RW] [SI] [TG] [UA] [VM] [WR] [XJ] [YF] [ZQ].

<A NAME="scrabbleup">
<li><b>Scrabble Up</b> published by MB.<br>
Build words up a rack while
the letter come sliding down another track.  [RI]

<A NAME="scrabbleupperhand">
<li>Scrabble Brand <b>Upperhand</b> Selchow and Righter, 1970's? (def.1981)<br>
Game combines Bridge and Scrabble as letter tiles have
suits. Players bid to score the highest amount of points in their
suit by placing their tiles on a Scrabble like board. The board
has various bonus squares on it. Better game for 4 than for 2.  [MT]

<A NAME="scrabblewordrummy">
<li><b>Scrabble Word Rummy</b><br>
Details to follow.  I believe this is not the same game as
<A HREF="#wordrummy">Word Rummy</A> listed below.
Made Games Magazine's GAMES 100 list in Oct/Nov 1987.
[GT]

<A NAME="scrabbleboard">
<li>Something that is NOT a <b>Scrabble Board</b> from a company that happens by coincidence to have a website called scrabbleboard.com<br>
A piece of art that has some resemblance to a <A HREF="http://www.scrabbleboard.com/board.htm">Scrabble Board</A> apparently,
which one could if so inclined play a game of Scrabble on.  These guys are walking
that thin copyright tightrope that many computer-based Scrabble-like games
have walked right into a battle with Hasbro & Mattel's lawyers!<BR>
Related products: See <A HREF="http://www.protiles.net/">Protiles</A>

<A NAME="scrabbleboards">
<li>Some other things that may or may not be <b>Scrabble Boards</b> from 
a company that happens by coincidence to have a website called <A HREF="http://www.scrabbleboards.com/boards.htm">scrabbleboards.com</A><br>
If it wasn't for the fact that I've actually seen the <A HREF="#franklin">Franklin Mint</A> Scrabble
board, I'd say these were the ugliest Scrabble boards I've ever seen.
There seems to be a lot of it around.  I'm just waiting for the next guy
to camp on "scrabble-boards.com"...

<A NAME="clearscrabbletiles">
<li><b>Transparent Scrabble Tiles</b> from Walter Dray<BR>
See his <A HREF="http://www.seeknet.com/scrab/draytile.htm">web page.</A>
See also <A HREF="#protiles">Protiles</A>.

<A NAME="scramble">
<li><b>Scramble</b><br>
See <A HREF="#scrabbleoverturn">Scrabble Overturn</A>.

<A NAME="scrambles">
<li><b>Scrambles</b> published by Frederick H Beach, 1937.<br>
Pre-printed anagram puzzles to solve  Sheets have themes such
as "English and American Authors".  Several sheets come wrapped
in a sleeve (similar to new paper money from a bank).  Interesting
mainly as an early use of the word "scramble" meaning anagrams,
perhaps influencing the choice of "Scrabble"...

<A NAME="scribbage">
<li><b>Scribbage</b> published by E.S. Lowe.<br>
Archetypal (although not necessarily the first!) game of shake
the dice, roll them out, you have X minutes to create words in a
crossword pattern using as many dice as you can, pass the dice and
cup to the next player, etc.  The dice in Scribbage have both
letters and a value for each letter on the faces - many dice games
have just letters.  [SOS]<BR>
The 13 dice have faces as follows: [I A G F Q L] [E O H R N T]
[D E A W T V] [O L E R T I] [V K O N U C] [R D E I BLANK S]
[M I BLANK E P G] [B M O N U S] [A S B X E Y]
[Y W P M O U] [D J E A N R] [L T S H A E] [E A F I C Z]<BR>
Scores on the letters are: A 1 B 4 C 4 D 3 E 1 F 4 G 4 H 3 I 2
J 6 K 5 L 2 M 3 N 2 O 1 P 4 Q 8 R 2 S 4 T 2 U 3 V 4 W 4 X 8 Y 4 Z 10
BLANK 0<BR>
NOTE: from the Scrabble FAQ - a reference to a lawsuit over this game:<BR>
<EM>Production and Marketing Co. v. E.S. Lowe Co., 390 F.2d 1013 (Ct. of Cust.
&amp; Pat. App. 1968) (denying defendant use of the name
"Scribbage" for a crossword game, as infringing on "Scrabble")</EM><BR>
- the FAQ does not mention who won!  However... I have seen a reference
to "<A HREF="#adlib">Ad Lib</A> (formerly Scribbage)" so I suspect P &amp; M won.  This
is reinforced by looking at the letter distribution on the Ad Lib
cubes, which are identical to Scribbage.

<A NAME="twinscribbage">
<li><b>Twin Scribbage</b> published by E.S. Lowe.<br>
As <A HREF="#scribbage">above</A>, but with one set of red and one set of black dice.  Players
each play what they throw, note their scores down, then swap the dice
so that both players get to play with each set of dice.  This way the
luck of the throw is eliminated in head to head competition.  Almost
identical to <A HREF="#duplicateadlib">Duplicate Ad-Lib</A>. [GT]

<A NAME="scrosswords">
<li><b>Scrosswords</b> by Word Origin<BR>
(Was reviewed in a
recent issue of The Game Report which is not yet available online).
Scrosswords
combines elements of <A HREF="#perquackey">Perquackey</A> and
<A HREF="#picktwo">Pick Two</A>.  One player draws a bunch
of letter tiles and assembles them into a crossword as quickly as
possible.  The other players anagram the letters into as many words of 5
or more letters as they can.  The crossword builder scores points ala
Scrabble.  The anagramers score a fixed amount for each word, but only
for words unique to their list (ala <A HREF="#boggle">Boggle</A>).  Words fitting a bonus
category score extra.  The role of crossword builder rotates each turn.
Outstanding game. [PS]

<A NAME="scrummy">
<li><b>Scrummy: The First Colony</b> from Murluk Games Ltd.<br>
This was spotted in an ad in the Sept/Oct 1981 and next two issues
of Games Magazine.  Ads
simply called it "a theme word game" and also mentioned
Crossword Scrummy and Lone Scrummy.  No indication of
how any of them played, although I'd guess that last one
was the solitaire version. [JB]

<A NAME="seaofvowels">
<li><b>Sea of Vowels</b> published by Ideal<br>
Board game with a path to follow of squares which have vowels in
them.  Looks like a race to a treasure chest in the middle?

<A NAME="shakewords">
<li><b>Shake Words</b> published by Peter Pan Playthings, UK<br>
I suspect this is very like Scribbage et al.  14 letter dice.
Small box 4x4x2, cardboard tube for shaking dice.  1970's?

<A NAME="shakeaword">
<li><b>Shake A Word</b> published by Kohner Bros, NY<br>
Game #215.  "SHAKE-A-WORD the thrilling word game". it was sold
by Kohner bros. New York, Made in West Germany, packed in U.S.A.
6 red dice, 3 green ones and 3 black ones.  Instruction booklet.
[<A HREF="images/shakeaword.jpg">image</A> from Rodney Guisewite]

<A NAME="shootandspell">
<li><b>Shoot &amp; Spell</b> published by Tiger Games, 1989.<br>
Letters are
shot out of dispensers at each corner of the boxing-ring-like board.
Players must make a word as quickly as possible from the displayed
letters. [DUT]

<A NAME="sisco">
<li><b>Sisco</b><BR>
A simple <A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_sisco.htm">French game</A> in which one person choses a 10-letter word
and the other tries to guess it.  Reminiscent of "<A HREF=#wheeloffortune">Wheel of fortune</A>".

<A NAME="siwords">
<li><b>SI: the sporting word game</b> published by Parker Bros, 1961<br>
I own this, but no rules, so am not 100% certain that what follows is
correct.  There are 30 dice, each side a letter, and a number of cards
and a cup with "Sports Illustrated" on it in gold.
The cards are specific to a given sport, and have Bonus Words on them.
I'm assuming you draw a card, roll the dice, and have X minutes to form
as many words as you can related to the sport - scoring extra if you
can spell the Bonus Words.  [SOS]

<A NAME="skipacross">
<li><b>Skip-a-cross</b>1953<br>
A licensed clone of <A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A> from the height of the 50's Scrabble
craze, on a cheap
cardboard playing board with cheap cardboard tiles.  Clearly made
for the low end of a burgeoning market.  Despite it's rarity compared to
regular Scrabble sets overall, it's not particularly rare
compared to Scrabble sets of the same period, so be wary of paying
high prices for this!  (I bought mine for $3)<p>
There are at least two different packages of this game.  One is a large
box with a non-folded playing board nestled in the box; the other is
a half-height box with a playing board which folds in half.  Unlike a 
typical Scrabble board, this one folds *backwards* ... because it's
just a sheet of cardboard which has been scored down the center to
make it bend without creasing too badly.  The tiles come new in a cardboard
perforated block, and an unpunched set is probably more collectible
that most of the sets which are punched.  The <A HREF="http://www.cadaco.com/docs/history1.htm">Cadaco web page</A>
says this:  "<em>In 1953, (Doug) Bolton got the license for a cardboard version of
SCRABBLE, and CADACO-ELLIS sold the game under the name SKIP-ACROSS.
The popular game sold one million copies the first year it was introduced.</em>"

[GT]

<A NAME="skirmish">
<li><b>Skirmish</b> published by KDS Industries.<br>
Battleship with
letters.  Really.  You make a word using pegs to form the letters,
and try to hit the other player's pegs and guess the word.  [DB]

<A NAME="slam">
<li><b>Slam!</b> <A HREF="http://home.pacbell.net/jacmcw/slam.htm">http://home.pacbell.net/jacmcw/slam.htm</A><br>
See the website.  No further info.
[GT]

<A NAME="slipdisc">
<li><b>Slip Disc</b> by Mattel<br>
looks like a pachenko-style word game.

<A NAME="smartabc">
<li><b>Smart ABC</b><br>
Unknown alphabet game.  See it at
<A HREF="http://www.etoys.com/toy/g/product/tlc/00/12/">eToys</A>

<A NAME="speedygraffiti">
<li><b>Speedy Graffiti</b><br>
<A HREF="#anagrams">Anagram</A> game with cards, uses a noisy clockwork timer to get some
excitement going, rather than the more common egg-timer.  Details
to follow. [GT]

<A NAME="spellbinder">
<li><b>Spellbinder</b> published by Mattell.<br>
No information at present.

<A NAME="spellbinding">
<li><b>Spellbinding</b><br>
From an ebay posting:
Contents 6 playing pieces,
1 minute timer,
2 dice,
1 deck of spelling cards (approx 200?),
1 pencil,
1 spellbinders pad,
instructions.


<A NAME="spellboundscramble">
<li><b>Spellbound</b> published by Exclusive Playing Card Co, 1954.<br>
Chicago Ill. (Manuf. may also be known as Golden Rule Educational
Products Inc).
"SPELLBOUND, A Playing Card SCRAMBLE Word Game is Fascinating and
Instructive" says the box top. The box is 3 3/4" x 4 3/4" made of
cardboard with a green label pasted on top.
There are 105 alphabet/number card plus 2 joker type cards. The backs of the
cards show a picture of a puppy and a kitten with the name SPELLBOUND
and 4 cards spelling out P A L S on the bottom.  From the front page
of the instruction booklet, we see a play of "CAT" -> "CATTLE" -> "SCATTER"
which makes me think it is played like the UK version of Lexicon.
The vowel cards earn 12 to 4 points each and the consonant cards
earn 6 to 2 points each.  Yellow box and green box versions
(which probably imply a version of the rules that needs two sets
to play with, like the US crossword lexicon game with red and
blue boxes)
[From two ebay ads]

<A NAME="spellboundhasbro">
<li><b>Spellbound</b> published by Hasbro, 1975<br>
26x26in box with Jerry Lewis on the cover.  Large square plastic
card table similar to that of Waddington's Lexicon with tiles, except
it seems to have a built-in timer counting down on a display of
discrete RED LEDs.

<A NAME="spellbound">
<li><b>Spellbound</b> published by Lakeside, 1981<br>
Letter dice fall into an
upright stand which shows letters vertically, on four different sides
at once.
It has 4 rapid fire word games in it with 2 challenge levels in one unit.
Each side requires players to find a different type of word
formation.  7 white dice with letters in a Roman font.  Silver box
with cut-out to display the vertical stacker.  Timer.  
2 to 4 Players, Ages 8 to Adult.
There are four rapid
fire word games including: Free Spell- Find as many words as you can that have 3 letters or more. Chain Words - Write as many words as you can
that begin with the last letter of the previous word. First Letter Choice - Pick a letter and find as many words as you can that begin with that letter,
and Crosswords - Connect as many words as you can to form a crossword puzzle. There are two challenge levels.
[SOS] [GT]

<A NAME="spellbound">
<li><b>Spellbound</b> published by Vance Manchester. (private production)<br>
Here's a little treat for our readers: a word game that you can build yourself
from materials on the web.  Vance Manchester invented
an educational word game called SpellBound in 1994 and received a utility
patent for it in 1997.  He is a graduate student and is using the game in
his action research project.   He created a web site for his game along with
over 20 of his father's math puzzles.
<A HREF="http://web.pdx.edu/~manchest/">A free version of his game is available at his site.</A>
(We sincerely hope Vance doesn't get into trouble for his independent use
of the name SpellBound and we would like to recommend to him that he
finds an equally clever name that isn't in use already)

<A NAME="spellofun">
<li><b>Spell-O-Fun</b><br>
This is a bootleg copy of Scrabble, made in Bombay, India.
[In India, Leo-Mattel, a subsidiary of Blowplast, is the legitimate
trademark owner.]
Cheap quality.  Plastic covered board, plastic tiles that generally have
smudged printing on them.  Probably very cheap in India but I'd be wary
of buying it on eBay even as a curiosity unless you're specifically a
collector of forgeries.  (In which case you probably want one of the
two Arabic forged sets that appear on eBay frequently as well...)

<A NAME="spellway">
<li><b>Spellway</b>, from Pressman.<br>
It's an
educational game, involving drawing hands of letter cards and spelling
words with them in order to move your piece along a track.  [DB]

<A NAME="spellwell">
<li><b>Spellwell</b> published by Value Wargames.<br>
Mostly a table using
a percentile dice - roll the dice X times, make words.  Then make
sentences with your words.  [SOS]

<A NAME="spillandspell">
<A NAME="spillandspellpb">
<li><b>Spill &amp; Spell</b> published by Parker Bros, 1957<br>
10 dice, timer, make crossword-type words, longer words score more; variants
included.  [SOS] [AS]  (Conflicting information.  I've seen a 1957 Parker
Bros with 15 red dice with black letters,
although the cover had white dice with red letters.)
(<A HREF=""http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1835&src=DETAILS>justcollectors.com</A> notes one dated 1955)
Note that although this was later published by Phillips, it went back to
Parker sometime before 1966. [<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1837&src=DETAILS">1966 image</A>]

<A NAME="spillandspellphillips">
<li><b>Spill &amp; Spell</b> Phillips Publishers Inc, 1955<br>
Unless someone had simply included a stray piece from some other game,
I did see one of these on auction at eBay with a brass hourglass.  This
was in a red box with "new exciting fun game" on the cover, crossword
fashion.  Unlike the <A HREF="#spillandspellpb">Parker Bros version</A> above, this one had 15 cubes.
[GT] [Rules at the <A HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/spilnspell.html">Games Cabinet</A>]
[<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=1836&src=DETAILS">image</A>]

<A NAME="duplicatespillandspell">
<li><b>Spill &amp; Spell</b><BR>
I have also seen a Spill &amp; Spell box with two cups and two sets
of dice, which I presume is for playing duplicate style.  The box
however did not say 'Duplicate' or 'Twin' or anything such.
One set of dice were red with black letters and the other 
were ivory with black letters.  The box is red on the left, and
white on the right, where there is an image of a crossword like layout
of cubes, saying "new exciting fun game".

<A NAME="spinaword">
<li><b>Spin-a-word</b> by Keiler Corp<BR>
There is no name on this piece, but the back is marked with its maker,
Keiler Corp.  Made in USA, Pat Pend.
When you push in on the yellow button on the side, The tin disk with
letters inside spins around, making the five small steel balls spin
and flip, like a
multi-ball roulette wheel with letters instead of numbers.  You form
a word with the letters where the balls land.
The plastic unit is approx. 2in in diameter.
Note: the dice look VERY similar to those in the <A HREF="#rollawordball">Roll-A-Word</A> games,
also reported as Made in Germany...  There is also a reference to a
1930's game by "Master Toy Co" called Spin-a-Word which I'm fairly sure
is a totally different kind of game. <!-- spinawordcontents.JPG -->

<A NAME="spuddle">
<li><b>Spuddle</b> by William Maclean<BR>
Board game with 7 letter dice.  <A HREF="http://www.boardgame.co.uk/spuddle/spuddlemore.htm">See here for more info.</A>
Looks like ludo (parcheesi) crossed with Scribbage.

<A NAME="stackwords">
<li><b>Stackwords</b> by Canada Games, Concord, On, 1995 (under licence from
Joshua Toys &amp; Games Ltd.)<br>
Consists of an 8x8 upright grid into which letter tiles may be
dropped at the top of each column.  Each column fills from the bottom
up, of course.  The two players each face a different side of the grid,
so what is a legal left-to-right word for one isn't for the other.  Only
the vertical (top-to-bottom) words are in common.  The players score by
making words vertically, horizontally or diagonally.<br>
If the letter tiles were two-sided, things could get even more
twisted. [DUT]

<A NAME="starters">
<li><b>Starters...a word game</b> by Friends of Friends Fun Factory (contemporary)<BR>
See it at <A HREF="http://store.yahoo.com/hiddenpearl/startersagame.html">Yahoo Stores</A>.
Contents:
1 deck of 44 starters (letter) cards, 1 one-minute timer, 1
die, 1 Instruction sheet, 2 pads of score sheets, 9 spare
(blank) cards.
2 to 8 players or Teams. ages 8-10 to adult.

<A NAME="stellarspeller">
<li><b>Stellar Speller</b> by Discovery Toys (contemporary)<BR>
Almost a straight clone of <A HREF="#travelplayonwordz">Travel Play on Wordz</A>!  Fewer dice,
otherwise I can't see any difference.  See for youself at
<A HREF="http://www.etoys.com/toy/g/product/101/07/12/">eToys</A>.

<A NAME="sumwords">
<li><b>Sum-Words</b> published by MPH Games.<br>
Ad in Nov 1982 issue of Games Magazine says,
"Sum-Words is a brain-tantalizing card game for all ages.
It's played by one to five players who use lettered cards
to build words.  Devoted Sum-Words players soon become
intellectually stimulated wordmongers. [JB]

<A NAME="swipe">
<li><b>Swipe</b>, by Waddington-Sanders (copyright Pokonobe Associates 1988)<br>
2-10 players, contains 85 arrow-head-shaped (see below) letter
pieces.  The box states "Score the most points by making the most words
and by swiping the opponents' words".  (I didn't get to see the rules) [DUT]
<PRE>  _____
  \    \
  /____/</PRE>

<A NAME="swoggle">
<li><b>'Swoggle</b> published by Chieftan Products (Canada).<br>
One
of my favorite games and good to play with just two players.  One
problem is there's a little too much luck for my taste.  On your
turn, you roll one die and whatever you roll is how many letters
(of your choice) you can add to the board.  If you roll a one you're
really screwed.  The best house rule we found to fix this is to
just let the player roll again and add it to the 1.  [JG]
The board is a cross between a giant Scrabble board and a newspaper-style
crossword.  You write on it with magic marker (no tiles) which wipes
off at the end. [GT]



<A NAME="syzygy">
<li><b>SyZyGy</b> designed by <A HREF="http://www.smartstuf.com/syzygy/press.htm">Lorraine Spiering</A><br>
See the <A HREF="http://www.smartstuf.com/syzygy/">old web site</A> or
<A HREF="http://www.playsyzygy.com">the new website</A>.
"If you like word games and crossword puzzles, you'll love Syzygy!"
For 1-12 players, ages 9 and up. From the box description:
Each player draws 9 letter tiles.
Players use their tiles to build individual crossword puzzles as fast
as possible, then expand and rearrange their puzzle as additional tiles
are drawn. The excitement builds as players constantly shout "DRAW!"
and rearrange their tiles to create bigger and bigger puzzles.<BR>
Two different box designs seen.

<A NAME="T">
<A NAME="takealetter">
<li><b>Take A Letter</b> published by Rainbow Games, 1985.<br>
The
board is a 17 x 17 grid with two corners taken out, with a variety
of markings on it.  There is also a track going around the board
featuring letters and a few other squares.  Players strive to make
words of certain lengths or containing specific letters, as designated
by their Word Play cards.  The letter track is used to garner the
required letters; Word Play cards also allow letters to be stolen
from other players.
Listed in Games Magazine's GAMES 100 in Nov 1986.
[DUT]

<A NAME="tell">
<li><b>Tell</b> by Theodore Ulrich, 1955<br>
96 letter cards with scores.
in the instruction book, the author says "the rules for playing are
flexible... and can be made more difficult by discarding vowel cards. However, my
wife and I have found the game to be most fun, by using the regualar deck of 96
cards".

<A NAME="thatsincredible">
<li><b>That's Incredible</b> published by MPH Games.<br>
Actually nine
games, only the first one, <b><i>Zenith</b></i>, is a word game.  Using
81 letter cards, build a 9x9 crossword puzzle.  [SOS]

<A NAME="throwaword">
<li><b>Throw a word</b> Product sales associates, 1956<br>
Yet another <A HREF="#scribbage">Scribbage</A>-like game.  12 wooden dice, no point values on
the letters.  Dice faces are: [G E I T B C] [S W O W L N]
[I M X BLANK S L] [Q D Y I P H] [T H A S O N] [E O L S C F]
[G R O T M E] [K T N O A D] [F I B C A R] [P U A R H Z]
[J BLANK K V Y S] [N I U M D R]<BR>
The font is a gothic sans-serif quite like a bold helvetica; a face
that would have been popular in the Bauhaus movement of the 30's 
and which has held up well over the years.  The game describes itself
as "America's Simplest Word Game", and to that end I reproduce the
rule book here in toto.<br>
Here's how to play it:
All you do is shake, rock and roll the 12 lettered dice from your
green cup.  The object of the game is to form as many words as
possible from the letters turned up on the dice.  Any number of 
people can play.  Only words of 3 or more letters may be used.
If a player throws a dice (sic) which has a blank side showing up,
it is "wild" and he may use it as a substitute for any letter
he wishes.<br>
Here's how to score:
(1) Player gets 1 point for each letter used to form words.<br>
(2) If either of these two words: THROW or WORD is formed,
the player gets a bonus of 35 points, in addition to a point
for each letter.<br>
(3) If a player, in one throw, used all twelve dice to form words ...
he gets an additional free throw before the next player rolls.<br>
Winner of THROW-A-WORD Game is the first one to reach a total
score of 200 points.<br>
[GT]


<A NAME="throwandspell">
<li><b>Throw and Spell</b> by Toycraft Corp, 1957<br>
Contains a jar of 15 letter cubes and one number die.
The object of the game is to get the most points using
the cubes to spell words.

<A NAME="tiles">
<li><b>Tiles</b> published by Ways with Words.<br>
Detailed review in
<A HREF="http://www.gamereport.com/tgr10/tiles.html">The Game Report</A>

<A NAME="tisby">
<li><b>Tisby</b> published by Frog Gone<br>
similar to <A HREF="#alfredsothergame">Alfred's Other Game</A>. [BS]
<A HREF="http://www.contagiousdreams.com/Reviews/Tisby.html">Review by Andrew Looney</A>
Described as a cross between Boggle and Scrabble.

<A NAME="tosswords">
<li><b>Toss Words</b> by Kraek Games, 1948<br>
Yet another <A HREF="#scribbage">Scribbage</A>/<A HREF="#perquackey">Perquackey</A>
style game.
An original creation of "KRAEG GAMES...4500 SHENANDOAH AVENUE...ST.LOUIS 10,
MO.  Copyright 1948 by Adie E. Giessow.
14 lettered dice, no points values.  Make words from all
letters; not in a crossword fashion.
Cup is a short red cardboard cylinder; no timer; dice appear to be
white painted wood with hand painted black letters.  Maybe my set
has been touched up by a previous owner...  Dice faces are:
[K J I G H L] [Q R S P T O] [C F B D A E]
[R S T A N V] [T S O H U N] [T E W S A U]
[M E R O S N] [I N P O L M] [E Y A W X Z]
[Y I O A U E] [I R E F H O] [A B S C Y D]
[T M I N K L] [H I G E D C]<br>
Note one die is all vowels; and there is no blank.
[GT]

<A NAME="trapwords">
<li><b>Trapwords</b> published by Martin Collier<br>
Word game on a hex board.  <A HREF="http://www.trapwords.com/flatpack.html">See their website.</A>
<A NAME="traverse">
<li><b>Traverse</b> published by Peterson Games, 1972<br>
I don't know when Boggle came out so can't tell if this is a rip-off
of Boggle or vice-versa.  You have a 4x4 square of wooden letter tiles and
have to form words exactly like Boggle.  Only difference is that
it uses tiles instead of cubes.

<A NAME="treasurehunt">
<li><b>Treasure Hunt</b> published by Cadaco Ellis, 1940<br>
The game's objective is to dig into the pile of alphabet
letters to find those which spell a word descriptive of his card.
The first person to spell five cards calls "Pieces Of Eight". If
each word is spelled properly and suitably descriptive,
you collect from each opponent one "Piece of Eight".

<A NAME="trivirsity">
<li><b>Tri-Virsity</b> by Gentertainment Inc.<br>
See their <A HREF="http://www.spellinggames.com/">web site</A>.
132 cards in 3 colors; letter cards (5, 10 or 15 points),
wild cards (20 points) and tri-wild cards (25 points).<BR>
Object of the Game: Each player is dealt 10 cards and tries to score
the most points by spelling words of three letters or more in the
same color.  Game features include "challenges", "cards up for grabs",
and the possibility of adding on to the beginning and/or end of other
players words - or your own.

<A NAME="tryce">
<li><b>Tryce</b> published by 3M, 1970<br>
See the review at the <A HREF="http://www.gamepile.com/3mgm08.html">Gamepile.</A>
Uses regular suit cards with letters added rather than actual letter-cards.

<A NAME="tufabet">
<li><b>Tuf-abet</b> published by Avalon Hill, 1969<br>
Avalon Hill's first word game. Players roll their twenty dice and
try use make a crossword using as many dice as possible.When a player thinks
one has come up with a crossword configuration using as many letters as
possible that person yells "Tuf." A three-minute timer is started and if
anybody can use more cube in one's crossword, that person says Tuffer." A
two-minute timer is started and anyone using more letters yells "Tuffest."
The one-minute timer is started and players try to use even more letters if
possible. [AS] [<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=38&src=DETAILS">image</A>]


<A NAME="tugofwords">
<li><b>Tug of Words</b> published by Letterguys.<br>
Move letters across
the board to spell words on opponent's starting spaces.  You can
capture letters and bring them on as your pieces, as in Shogi.  In the
four-player version, you hand captured letters to your partner, who is
facing your opponent's partner on a separate board.  [SOS]<BR>
Tug of Words is a game of word strategy for ages 12 and up and 2-4 players. Play the word game everyone will love. It's a dynamic contest of word strategy. Shift,
jump and place your letters as you attempt to outspell your opponent. Be the first to spell a five-letter word on your opponent's home row. But Watch Out! Your
opponent is spelling words to take your letters! You'll want to foil his plans by taking his letters. Join the battle! Join the fun! Play Tug of Words. Comes
with two game boards and 64 playing pieces and instructions. [eBay]

<A NAME="tumblewords">
<li>HI-Q <b>Tumble Words</b> published by Kohner Bros, 1973<br>
Red box with cellophane window; orange cup, red and black dice (12 total),
instructions.  Also packaged with other dice games in a box named
"Tumble Games" (1960).

<A NAME="turnturtle">
<li><b>Turn Turtle</b> by M-K Enterprises, 1955<br>
"Turn Turtle" (The word Turtle is upside down).
The Great Word Game for Young and Old. One or a Dozen can Play.
Patented and made by M-K Enterprises, Inc. Chicago 14, Ill.
The box is a little over 6" by 4".
Contents: 77 tiles like Scrabble only made of an older material
and each have a turtle on the back along with the letter and value
on the other side along with a gray plastic rake looking stand with
the name Turn Turtle on it.  Includes a slate scoreboard which
disintegrates easily.  Instructions.

<A NAME="typdom">
<li><b>Typ-Dom</b> 1950's?<br>
Made in Austria.  This game is a combination of dominos with Crossword
Puzzles, with a "Jolly Joker" feature thrown in. Game comes with red
and white (or red and black, in one version)
jigsaw-style interlocking plastic letter tiles, and instructions.
May also be known as "Type-dominoes".<P>
From an ebay ad: Ein Kreuzwort-Spiel analog dem weltbekannten Scrabble.
Dies ist ein &Ouml;sterreichisches Produkt und heisst Typ-Dom. Bestehend aus
roten und schwarzen Bakelit-Buchstaben-Steinen, die kreuzwortartig
aneinandergeh&auml;ngt werden k&ouml;nnen.

<A NAME="U">
<A NAME="upforgrabs">
<li><b>Up for Grabs</b> by Tyco Industries Inc, 1995<br>
Game #7080, 1995 Tyco Industries Inc. Mt Laurel NJ 08054, made in China.
"The Make or Take Word Game".
Make a word with your tiles, then your opponent steals the
letters and uses them in his own word.
Ages 10 and up. For 2 or more players.
100 Letter Tiles (new sets have sealed plastic bag), Score Pad, Sand Timer,
Cloth Carrying bag for tiles and Instructions.
(it was advertised heavily in Games magazine a
couple of years ago.) [CS]

<A NAME="upwords">
<li><b>Upwords</b> published by MB.<br>
Spell words, you can place tiles
on top of previously placed tiles to create new words.  [SOS]<BR>
Note there are two versions of this game.  One is 8x8, the other
is 10x10.  I believe the 10x10 is the newer but seems to be
the less common on the secondhand market. It is however the one
currently on sale at <A HREF="http://www.etoys.com/toy/g/product/mil/00/41/">eToys</A> [GT]
The original 8-x-8 version was reviewed by Games Magazine in Sept 1983,
then made the GAMES 100 in the Nov issues of 1983-1986.
There's a free <A HREF="http://www.emailgames.com/home.html">play-by-mail</A> version of Upwords being given away 
by Hasbro at the time of writing.  (Tell me if this link ever goes stale, thanks)
[Rules direct from <A HREF="http://www.hasbro.com/consumer/instruct/upwords.pdf">Hasbro</A> (pdf)]
I don't know if Parker in the UK has the UK rights (cf Spears/Mattel vs S&R/Hasbro for Scrabble)
but <A HREF="http://www.etoys.co.uk/toy/g/product/180/08/28/1.shtml">Upwords on sale in Britain</A> is by Parker, not Hasbro.  May be that Parker
is now owned by Hasbro?  I just can't keep track any more :-(<BR>
In France, this game is called "TopWord", by Parker.
<A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_topwo.htm">Ici sont les r&egrave;gles.</A>

<A NAME="V">
<A NAME="verbatim">
<li><b>Verbatim</b> published by Lakeside, 1985.<br>
There are 26 tiles, one for each letter of the alphabet. The first
player selects a letter. Each player does the same until there are at
least 5 letters on the board (no score for words less than 5 letters
long).  Players
may pass if they see no possible word...or they may bluff, risking
a challenge.  When a player successfully adds a letter, he has one
minute to make as many words of 2 or more letters by rearranging
them.  Another player writes them down as he calls them out.  These
extra words are worth 5 points each.  The main word (using all the
letters) is worth 0 (for five letters), then 25 - 75 - 175 - 375
- 675 - 1175 - 2175 points.  The 2175-pointer is 12 letters long!
Includes timer, board, instruction sheet, 26 white plastic letter tiles,
2 black plastic tile racks and sand-timer..
[DUT]
 
<A NAME="viceversa">
<li><b>Vice Versa</b> published by Hallmark Games.<br>
This is a
<A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A>-like word game with the difference being a word played is
color-coded so the letters are that player's score.  Words can be
stolen by adding a letter to either end and changing one letter
within the word. The letters from the stolen word are thusly
subtracted from the victim and added to the prepetrator.[AS]
lastic board.  100 tiles (green on one side, orange on the other),
instruction booklet, 1 die, Hallmark Marketing Research questionaire and a glossy 1976 Hallmark games brochure.

<A NAME="vocabo">
<li><b>Vocabo</b> published by Noris, Author Joliann R&uuml;tinger<br>
From the <A HREF="http://www.spiel-des-jahres.org/e_sdj82vokabo.html">Spiel Des Jahres</A> site:<BR>
The new aspect of this game is the combination of word/lettergame with the concept of
"Rummikub".
In "Vokabo" you have to put down your 15 lettercards as fast as possible, according to
given rules. To put down the first cards for example you have to reach a point value of
20 and the words must consist of at least three letters. If you put down cards you can
continue words, already on the table, or change them to form new words.
Compared to "Scrabble" which is a slowly developing game, the situation in "Vokabo"
changes continuously. Therefore it is necessary to stay flexible and continuously
evaluate the situation. <BR> [<A HREF="http://www.spiel-des-jahres.org/vokabo.jpg">image</A>]
(Synes Ernst) 

<A NAME="W">

<A NAME="watchword">
<li><b>Watch Word</b> by Ideal, 1966<br>
"The automated word game" for 2-4 players, ages 8 and up.
Plastic spinner.  Cards.  Score sheets.

<A NAME="whatsmyword">
<li><b>What's My Word</b> published by Waddingtons, 1964.<br>
<A HREF="#jotto">Jotto</A>,
using letter tiles to from guesses with.  Similar to
<A HREF="#wordmastermind">Word Mastermind</A> [AM] [GT]

<A NAME="whatsup">
<li><b>What's Up?</b> published by Selchow &amp; Righter<br>
The first party word game by Selchow & Righter. Two teams compete for high
score by guessing a mystery name or phrase set up on a playing board with
individual letters. Although the letters are hidden, players can see how
many words are used and how long each word is. As letters are guessed more
and more of What's Up is revealed.  Playing Board,
Letter Tray, 144 Letter Tiles, Score Pad and Instructions.
[from an <A HREF="http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewListedItems&userid=rae1958">eBay ad</A>]

<A NAME="wheeloffortune">
<li><b>Wheel of Fortune</b> 1975<br>
Wheel of Fortune has had many publishers since its debut in
1975. There was Tyco; three Milton Bradley editions in the seventies; Mattel's
Electronic Play-along version; Pressman's five versions, plus a
Junior Version and two Deluxe versions; and there have been several versions for
Apple II, Commodore, Sega, Nintendo, Game Boy and PC compatibles by GameTek.
[AS]  "Just like the game show without Vanna."  [RI]
Made Games Magazine's GAMES 100 in Nov 1986.

<A NAME="wheeltrouble">
<li><b>Wheel Trouble</b> from Bedford Hills Publishing Co.<br>
This
was a puzzle as well as a game, consisting of four
nested, concentric rings that rotated independently.
They were labeled with letters and numbers for different
games and puzzles.  Looks like you tried to spell words
along the radii.  Brief review in Games Magazine, March 1986. [JB]

<A NAME="whirlingwords">
<li><b>Whirling Words</b> made by Club Aluminum Products Company, Chicago, Ill, 1942<BR>
Made of heavy cardbord and wood. The instructions are on the back of the board.
Game board Measures 9-1/2" square.

<A NAME="whizord">
<li><b>WhizORD</b> RivSys (<A HREf="http://www.rivsys.com">http://www.rivsys.com</A>)<br>
It's a word card game, and if I
understand the description, it's like draw poker with 7-letter hands -- no
betting, but each player may exchange some of his cards, and the one with
the highest scoring word gets to add that score to his total.  Letter
combinations that can spell several words (hence they're anagrams of each
other) score for each word spelled.  [BS]

<A NAME="wffnproof">
<li><b>Wff'n'Proof: WFF, Games for Thinkers</b> - The Game of Modern logic. By Layman E. Allen. mid 60's<br>
Attractive dark-blue vinyl fold-out box, wooden letter dice (12? red and blue),
manual and an hour glass. [GT]  Matthew Gray informs me that
"Wff'n'Proof" (which you had listed as "Wiff'n Proof") is not really a
word game.  The "letters" are merely symbols used to create formulas
in a propositional calculus. (Wff stands for "Well Formed Formula").

<A NAME="winaword">
<li><b>Win-a-word</b> Whitman publishing Co, Racine Wisconsin, 1954<br>
Very similar to the turn of the century <A HREF="#anagrams">Anagram</A> games, but has added
a paper fold-out board and 4 tile racks - I suspect in an attempt
to modify an old favorite in a way to make it more appealing to
Scrabble players.  Manual on my copy is Copyright 1954, and describes
"CROSS WORD and 5 other Word and Letter Games"<br>
Letters have no scores; tile distribution on my copy is:
A 18 B 7 C 10 D 14 E 41 (42?) F 9 G 8 H 14 I 26 J 3
K 6 L 16 M 9 N 19 O 24 P 6 Q 3 R 22 S 30 T 29
U 15 V 4 W 12 X 2 Y 10 Z 2.<br>
Since I think this added up to 359, I suspect I have a tile
missing as I'm guessing that this game should have 360 tiles
like Milton Bradley's Anagrams. [GT]

<A NAME="winnim">
<li><b>WINNIM</b>  1996, R-Cubed Products, Severna Park MD, 21146 (Private production?)<br>
Each card has both a vowel and a consonant
(there's a card for all 5 X 21 combinations).  It's like <A HREF="#anagrams">anagrams</A>, except
when stealing words you can flip any of them around and use their alternate
letters.  [BS]

<A NAME="theword">
<li><b>The Word</b> by Intelligames<br>
The Word, Advanced Version.
Recommended for ages thirteen to adult.
Comes with game cards which each contain 3 definitions, game board,
tokens and dice. Game board is a four piece jigsaw puzzle.
This is a very advanced game, appropriate for students with excellent vocabulary skills or adults with same.
Also known as "Word 2".

<A NAME="winningwords">
<li><b>Winning Words</b><br>
From an eBay ad: "A new word game thats fast fun and imaginative with challenges for you and your opponents.
From the author of reader's digest." (I suspect this is Peter Funk - GT;
I'll remove this if it turns out to be a book and not a game set)

<A NAME="wooddexterity">
<li><b>Wood Dexterity</b><br>
This is a wooden box with a glass lid, containing only *TWO* wooden
dice.  You shake the box to get a different combination of two letters
each time.  The aim is to find all 14 suggested two-letter words
within 14 minutes.  the words are "no on it we to be so
do as is in go at an".  Made in Japan - I very strongly suspect
for beginner Japanese students of English.  Instructions in box
say "Try your skill - 14 Different Words can be spelled in 14 minutes"

<A NAME="wordbank">
<li><b>Word Bank</b> by EE Fairchild Corp, 1945<br>
Interesting twist in the saga of ripped-off game ideas!  This is a
word game that's clearly a rip-off from Monopoly.
Playing pieces consist of the: Playing Board, Wood Markers
(1 each red, blue,green,yellow), 1 Wooden Die, Blue Money Letters
(Consonants), Green
Interest Letters (Vowels), Red Loan Letters.

<A NAME="wordcrossing">
<li><b>Word Crossing</b> by Mattel/Disney<br>
Not really one of our games, it's like "Crosswords for Dummies" (which
I haven't yet added here but should do some day, just to stop people
buying it by accident...)

<A NAME="wordfactory">
<li><b>Word Factory</b> by ???<br>
(from the makers of "the brain twister", if that helps at all?)<br>
This is an unabashed clone of Big Boggle.  5x5 container, 25 cubes, sand
timer.  If this hasn't been the subject of a lawsuit I'm a Dutchman's
uncle.  ("Wat is zo een dingetje, Onkel Graham?" vraagt mijn Neffe)

<A NAME="wordforword">
<li><b>Word For Word</b> by Family Get Together Games, 1975<br>
The object of the game is to accumulate points by forming words which are high in value...thus the winner! Gather up letters and form a word before your oppenent does! It is for ages 10-adult. 
instructions, 54 playing cards, scoring pad, travel case, pencil.
[from a <A HREF="http://auctions.yahoo.com/user/bdragon2000?u=">Yahoo Auctions ad</A>]

<A NAME="wordfun">
<li><b>Word Fun</b> by Transogram, 1954<br>
Lists seven word games -- "a game for every day in the week":
Word-Fun, Anagrams, Word Rummy, Word Dominoes, Word-Ghost,
Snatch Words and Word-Fun Solitare.  (106? 108?) white (or yellow in
one set?)
letters on black plastic tiles; 4 tile racks a la Scrabble and Transogram's
other game, <A HREF="#scoreaword">Score-a-Word</A>.
[<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=2030&src=DETAILS">image</A>]

<A NAME="wordmadness">
<li><b>Word Madness</b> published by Perfect.<br>
Actually called
"Webster's New World (TM) Word Madness".  This game has 110 cards,
each with a letter and number, and the hard ones with a bonus
notation.  Everyone is dealt ten cards, then must spell words of
four letters or more (three for children) in a two-minute time
period, all simultaneously.  Then you take turns with the leftover
cards, preceded by a "Go Fish" phase - asking other players for
certain letters.  Draw from the draw pile if you get a negative
answer.  Round ends when someone goes out; scoring is based on word
length.  Letters left in your hand count the value on the cards
against you (so easy letters have high numbers in this game).
[SOS]

<A NAME="wordmakingtaking">
<li><b>Word Making/Taking</b>, 1877<br>
No info.  Maybe an "anagrams" game.

<A NAME="wordmastermind">
<li><b>Word Mastermind</b> published by Invicta.<br>
Plastic letters (similar to <A HREF="#jotto">Jotto</A>)  [MK]
Also a French/Canadian release from Parker Bros.

<A NAME="wordnerd">
<li><b>Word Nerd</b> from Hasbro, 1979<br>
An ad in Games Magazine shows a
12-sided die with four letters per face and score sheets
with 4-by-4 grids printed on them.  The ad in the May/June
1979 issue says, "Play what's on your mind!  Word Nerd.  A
zany new word game.  Any number can play this provocative
new word game and everyone plays at the same time.  Toss
the Nerd Cube, pick a letter, and everyone places it where
they think they can spell the most 3 and 4 letter words.
Letters are worth points and words with the highest points
spell victory!" [JB]

<A NAME="kalistenics">
<li><b>Word-O</b> published for <B>Kalistenics</B>.  1950's<br>
4 dice.  Advertising medium for shoe company.

<A NAME="wordout">
<li><b>Word Out</b> 'Fine Edition' published by Milton Bradley, 1967.<br>
Word solitaire at its best, or in competition with friends.
An interesting game in which one tries to guess words as
hidden letters are exposed one at a time. (ref from <A HREF="http://www.dantiques.com/">D'Antiques</A>)
[<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=2024&src=DETAILS">image</A>]

<A NAME="wordplay">
<li><b>Word Play</b><br>
"Be a Wordplayer and Win! The Action-packed game of skill and chance. Roll the dice, score words, set back opponents, and have fun! Ages 8 to adult."
Includes letter tiles, a board, score pads, and instructions.

<A NAME="wordpyramid">
<li><b>Word Pyramid</b> by Abracadabra, 1986<br>
See <A HREF="http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/02130">Funagain Games</A>

<A NAME="wordrummy">
<li><b>Word Rummy</b> published by Gabriel.<br>
Similar to <A HREF="#bali">Bali</A> and one must presume
also <A HREF="#scrabblewordrummy">Scrabble Word Rummy</A>.  [RI]
Reviewed in Games Magazine, Mar/Apr 1981.

<A NAME="wordthrowing">
<li><b>Word Throwing</b> publisher unknown.  Germany.<br>
The German Word game ("Word-Throwing") has 10 letter dice with 6
different letters on each cube.  It has a pad of paper for keeping
score, a cup for throwing the dice and the complete set of rules on the
underside of the cover.  It is marked "KFL No. 7407"
on the bottom next to the words, "Made in Germany." [from nylen@DELETETHIS.ulster.net]
[<A HREF="images/wordthrowing.jpg">image</A>]
There is at least one newer packaging of this game (similar picture,
blue and yellow background), and possibly one quite different one (small
cubic box).

<A NAME="wordable">
<li><b>Wordable</b><br>
Very little info I'm afraid.  This may be some sort of Upwords clone,
as it has stackable tiles.  Limited edition.  May be private press?
I also found this website selling a game called <A HREF="http://members.aol.com/wordable/">Wordable</A>, but I have
a strong suspicion it is an entirely different game, with the same name:
Five Starting Locations/Color Coded Gameboard/The patented Dual ChipTM/Internet Playable/More ways to score

<A NAME="wordarts">
<li><b>Wordarts</b> from Rossky Co, 1978<br>
Very little info yet.  There's a circular board - 4 concentric rings marked
with '4' on the inside to '1' on the outer.  There are tile holders as
in Scrabble.  Can't see much else from the picture.  Box contents
are: Instructions, rules, board, tiles, tile bag, racks, and advertising flier.

<A NAME="wordsaic">
<li><b>Wordsaic</b> by Maguire Game Co.<br>
Ad in Dec 1984 and following two issues of Games Magazine
had photo of equipment and read,
"Unique new word game that combines components of words in a new
and unusual way to provide a mosaic of words and pictures.
15,000 clues to identify 6000 words, 5400 adult words and 600
children's words.  Played by 2 to 24 players.  Word buffs will
love Wordsaic." [JB]

<A NAME="wordsearch">
<li><b>Wordsearch</b> by Pressman, 1988<br>
"The Game Of Finding Words!"
Slide tiles together to form words.
The more tiles you use, the more points you score.
The gameboard is constantly changing and the strategy never stops.
Start out by placing the wood letter tiles on the Wordsearch board.
On your turn, slide one or more letters in a straight line - moving
the tiles horizontally, vertically or diagonally, to create a word.
Form your word in a straight line in any direction. Then remove the
completed word from the board. The more letters you use - the more
points you score.  For 2 to 4 players.  Ages 8 to adult.  Contents:
1 black-backed gameboard, 96 round wooden letter tiles, instruction sheet.
[From an <A HREF="http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewListedItems&userid=kcthecat">eBay ad</A>]

<li><b>Word Search</b> by United Toys, India(?), earlier than 1997<br>
2-4 players.   The board is 10x10, with diagonals as well as rank and file.
There are 96 Scrabble-style (i.e. with individual values) round letter tiles.
Place the tiles on the board randomly, leaving the central 2x2 square free.
On your turn, slide as many tiles as you wish in straight lines (no
skipping over other tiles) to form a word.  The word can read in any
orientation, rather like a hidden word puzzle (acrostiche).
Harvest the letters and score. [DUT]  This game looks very similar to the
Pressman Wordsearch above.  I wonder if it is made under license?

<A NAME="wordspin">
<li><b>Word Spin</b> manufactured by Geospace<br>
8 side by side reels, like a wide slot machine, and each reel
has 10 letters on it.  This is a cute looking little toy.  The
'wheels' are magnetic - they stick to their neighbor - and they
don't rotate freely as you'd imagine from the pictures.  Rotating
the wheels relative to one another is actually a rather clunky
business.  There's no central axle to keep them together and you can
pull the wheels apart and shuffle the order of wheels if you like.
I haven't played it yet but it does look like an ideal word game
for playing on a car trip.<BR>
(This may or may not be the same
game listed below as <A HREF="#wordspinscramble">Wordspin Scramble</A>)<BR>
Note there are several versions of this game in various
packagings.  An image of a different one from <A HREF="http://www.spingames.com/img/wordspin_clam.gif">the one I have</A> is available
at <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000IZXW/qid=946668379/sr=1-14/102-3778918-3260044">Amazon.Com</A> - I think
that one is "Word Spin Game and Deluxe Pouch".  I also heard mention
of a "Word Spin Jr" but I don't see it listed at the
<A HREF="http://www.spingames.com/wordspin.html">definitive Geospace site.</A>
There's also <A HREF="http://www.spingames.com/img/deluxewordspin.gif">Deluxe Wordspin</A> for two.
[GT]  (This German description of <A HREF="http://www.ebe-online.de/home/wwichman/besprech/leumathe.htm">Lesespin</A> may be the same game)


<A NAME="wordshaker">
<li><b>Word Shaker</b> by Alabe, 1974<br>
Game #29033 by ALABE Products inc.
See how many words you can make in two minutes
from the letters on the tiles that spill from
the shaker, which is a large ball with a round opening on one
side (think of a 'magic 8-ball' that opens).  Instructions are
printed on the box.  Letter cubes are red with white lettering and
border.

<A NAME="wordster">
<li><b>Wordsters</b> by Milton Bradley<br>
See the <A HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/wordster.html">Games Cabinet</A> for details.
Given a trigram, find a word to match.

<A NAME="wordstothewise">
<li><b>Words to the Wise</b> by Mind Sets<br>
See <A HREF="http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/07745">Funagain Games</A>

<A NAME="wordtrek">
<li><b>Word Trek</b> by ???<br>
Basically Lewis Carroll's "Doublets", but with pre-determined pairs of
words on cards.  Two decks of cards, plastic travel case.

<A NAME="wordup">
<li><b>Word Up</b> by ???<br>
Although you might think from a title like this that it is a copy
of Upwords, in fact "Word Up" is more a cross between a word game
and Monopoly.  Unfortunately <A HREF="http://www.thaicrossword.com/games/howto/howto_wordup.html">the only web page I can find that
describes this game is in Thai</A>, so have fun!

<A NAME="worthywords">
<li><b>Worthy Words</b> by Beatrice Henshaw, Petoskey MI<br>
<A HREF="http://www.worthywords.com/">See the home page</A>.
Pretty board.  Scrabble-like variation.  Privately published.

<A NAME="wordwar">
<li>Whitman's <b>Word War</b> from Western Publishing Company, 1983<br>
1 to 4 players (aged 8 to adult) use vocabulary skills and
the turn of a card to compose words, letter by letter, on a wipe-off board.
Players rack up points as letters merge and cross, forming completed
words. The more "word power," the higher a player's score.
Contents: 4 Felt Tip Pens, 54 Letter Cards, Instructions.
[from an ebay ad]

<A NAME="wordwars">
<li><b>Word Wars</b> from Timco Games<br>
It involved building word in
such a way to build a bridge across the board. Opponent's words could
be attacked by crossing them.  [RI]  Reviewed in Games Magazine, Apr 1984.

<A NAME="wordwheel">
<li><b>Word Wheel</b> published by Ravensburger, 1984<br>
"Pit your wits against the clock and your
opponents!" Game is for 2-10 players, age 10 to adult.
Includes playing board, 10 white letters dice,
one yellow letters die and rules.

<A NAME="wordwild">
<li><b>Word Wild</b> published by MB, 1967<br>
3 to 8 players.
The object of the game is to create words by adding one letter at a time to the
same word as it is passed among the players on sheets of paper as the
categories are constantly changed. You score points as you create new words
and at the same time try to prevent your opponents from using your word. At
the end of play high score wins. And the trick is speed..... you have a timer
to keep the game moving along. A real challenge for most people but a lot of
fun.  The game includes a
deck of 54 word categories cards, sheets to create words on, a score pad, 6
pencils and a timer with 5 or 6 pegs? [From an <A HREF="http://auctions.yahoo.com/user/ebayspeppermintpatty?u=">Yahoo Auctions seller</A>]

<A NAME="wordwise">
<li><b>Word Wise</b> published by MB.<br>
Similar to <A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A>, but
some tiles have a simple picture on them, which you can use in a
word.  For example, if a tile shows an ape, you can spell "SH[ape]"
using just three tiles.  You are allowed to use just the <i>sound</i>
of the pictured word, ignoring its spelling. For example, you can
spell SH[ape]ING or CR[ape].  [SOS] (Memo: try to remember the other
rebus-based games like this and make appropriate note.  I think
maybe Pictionary?)  I have seen two VERY different packages with this
name, and do not yet know if they are just variants in packaging or
different games with the same name.  (The French site mentioned in the
intro at the top has a French version of this game that I haven't
yet catalogued, called <A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_rebss.htm">Rebustory</A>)
Clever name, eh?<BR>
I am in two minds as to whether these rebus games belong in this
listing.  I have left more of them out than I have put in, and for
consistency may well decide to remove the remaining ones later.

<A NAME="wordyahtzee">
<li><b>Word Yahtzee</b> published by Lowe, 1978<br>
(Also Milton Bradley?)
The goal here was to simply
form words of certain lengths for the upper section and verious letter
combos (such as all vowels) for the lower section.  [RI]
[Rules at the <A HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/wordyahtzee.html">Games Cabinet</A>]
[Emergency replacement scoresheets at the <A HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/scorshet.html">Games Cabinet</A>]
[<A HREF="http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/scorepads.pdf">MB Order form for score cards</A>]
Note different boxes; 
<A HREF="http://www.justcollectors.com/cgi-bin/miva?games/listall.mv+look4=2029&src=DETAILS">1982 box</A>
is green with green cup.
1978 box
is mostly orange with a green-capped timer on the cover.

<A NAME="wordwhiz">
<li><b>Word-Whiz</b>, a game by Hajo B&uuml;cken, published by
Editrice Giocchi ("eg Spiele"), 1996.<br>
Three cards, each with one consonant, are
placed face up.  The first player to find a word which contain
these three consonants moves his vowel markers one square for each
vowel in the word.  One of the consonant cards is then replaced.
The goal is to be the first to move all your vowel markers through
the board.  [BF]  See the writeup at the
<A HREF="http://www.spiel-des-jahres.org/e_sdj96wordwhiz.html">Spiel Des Jahres</A> site.

<A NAME="wordhound">
<li><b>WordHound</b> published by Professional Marketing Group.<br>
Detailed review in
<a href ="http://www.gamereport.com/tgr1/wordhound.html">The Game Report</a>

<A NAME="wordmaster">
<li><b>Wordmaster</b> published by Invicta.<br>
Blank black tiles are
included to delimit words, as in crossword puzzles.  [SOS]

<A NAME="wordsworth">
<li><b>Words Worth</b> published by Invicta, 1975.<br>
Mastermind with letters.  Completely unoriginal version of "Bulls and Cows"
which describes itself as "a word game for two that is really different".
made in England. (c) 1975 Invicta Plastics Ltd, Leicester England.
Invicta Plastics, (USA) Ltd., 200, 5th Ave., New York, USA.
Re-order No. 2072.  UK, USA and other patents pending.

<A NAME="wordsearch">
<li><b>Wordsearch</b> published by Pressman.  Start with grid of
letters (with a few empty spaces in the middle) on round disks and
form words by sliding the letters along straight paths.  Remove the
letters you score, which opens up the board for future moves.  [RI] [SOS]

<A NAME="wordspinscramble">
<li><b>Wordspin Scramble</b> published by Geospace.<br>
Each player has a
number of wheels with letters on them.  He must arrange them to form as
many words simultaneously as possible.   [RI]  (See also <A HREF="#wordspin">Word Spin</A>
above - GT)

<A NAME="wordthief">
<li><b>Word Thief</b> published by Farley Games (Canada), designed by
George Yemec, 1994<br>
For players aged 9+.
Place letter cards to make
words and score points according to the value of the letters. You can
also steal other people's words if you can make word(s) from them +
cards in hand - the player who lost the word loses the score for that
word!  [PE]  (See <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000IZZ1/qid=946668379/sr=1-25/102-3778918-3260044">Amazon.Com</A>

<A NAME="wordypressman">
<li><b>Wordy</b> J Pressman &amp; Co. Inc., New York<br>
Card game: either a precursor to or much more likely a copy of
<A HREF="#crosswordlexicon">Crossword Lexicon</A>.
No copyright date on box or rules, although by inference from the 1938
date on Pressman's "Wordy" boardgame, they must have stopped production
of the Wordy card game by then.
I'm sure from the almost
identical box layout, card size, and rule book appearance that this
is one of the first game clones.  It even has the crown logo of
Parker Bros worked into its design, which suggests that the
earliest date for this game is the same as for Crossword Lexicon
which is 1935.
<blockquote>
One other possibility that cannot be ruled out is this: the Wordy
boardgame may be an invention of the early 1950's, and the 1938 copyright
date on the board-game box refers to the Wordy <em>card</em>-game,
in an underhand attempt
to make Wordy look like a predecessor to Scrabble.  I don't really think this
is the case, but it is consistent with the dates and needs investigating.
</blockquote>Letter card distribution is:
A 4 B 1 C 2 D 1 E 4 F 1 G 2 H 2 I 3 J 1 K 1 L 3 M 2
N 2 O 3 P 1 Q 1 R 3 S 3 T 2 U 2 V 1 W 2 X 1 Y 1 Z 1 Joker 2.<br>
Card scores are: A 12 B 3 C 7 D 5 E 12 F 3 G 6 H 7 I 12
J 5 K 5 L 7 M 7 N 7 O 7 P 5 Q 3 R 7 S 7 T 7 U 7 V 5 W 7 X 3 Y 3 Z 3
Joker 18<br>

<A NAME="wordy">
<li><b>Wordy</b> by Pressman, 1938<br>
This 1938 game is not identical to Scrabble, but either Butts copied this
or this copied Butts.  Both the date and the internal evidence of the game
design suggest that this was actually first, by which I mean that it is
often clear by looking at the differences between games, that one has 
had cosmetic changes to make it a "lawyer-proof" rip-off of the other;
however, you would not make the changes to Scrabble that would turn it
into this game if you had any sense.  It is much more consistent that
you would make the changes to this game which would turn it into
Scrabble (simplifying it and making it more playable).  The date
predates the official release date for Scrabble (and there is some
evidence to suggest that the Modern Scrabble board layout wasn't
invented until Brunot worked on the project in 1948).  The only question is
whether Wordy predates the claimed date of invention of Scrabble (as
opposed to the copyright date of 1948), and
whether anyone responsible for this game could have seen any of
Butts' prototypes.  It is
<em>very</em> hard from the various biographies of Butts to work out exactly when
he produced what, and although his family has been asked to produce
a timeline, none has ever been forthcoming.  My personal opinion is that
Butts leaned heavily on this game for his inspiration for Scrabble,
and that it is an important but sadly forgotten piece of Scrabble History.<BR>
Note that Wordy was published in New York, home of Butts.
I emailed Pressman asking if they knew any of the history of this
game but they very rudely did not even reply.
<P>
The details of Wordy are as follows: the <A HREF="images/wordybd.png" ALT="IMAGE is 460K!">cardboard board is 13x13</A>.  All the squares
are coloured, to match the <A HREF="images/wordytiles.gif">cardboard
tiles which are also coloured</A>.
Like some other early games, the set includes a couple of blank tiles which
can be written on, to replace up to 3 missing tiles.  The game also has
4 wild-card tiles which have "FREE" printed on them.
The colours are a way to represent points - red is 1, yellow is 2,
blue is 3, green is 4, orange is 5, gray is 6, purple is 7, and pink is 8.
There are also black squares and white squares on the board which are
triple word and double word respectively.  If you play a letter
on its own colour you get double letter scores.  There may be somewhere
between 94 and 96 letter tiles, as well as the spares and wild-cards.
Play starts on the center square.
Note: although the box has a 1938 copyright on it, my copy of this game
includes a dictionary dated 1953, which does somewhat call into question
the accuracy of the advertising description "The new cross word game"...
[GT] (Warman's Antique American Board Games 1840-1940 confirms the
1938 date on this game))

<A NAME="wordz">
<li><b>Wordz</b> published by MB.<br>
No information at present.

<A NAME="worldmaster">
<li><b>Worldmaster</b>, by the Rubbens Marketing Co., Stouffville (On), 1982<br>
Author: J. A. Leslie.  2-6 players, ages 9 and above.<br>
An odd cross between Risk and <A HREF="#scrab">Scrabble</A>:
components include six sets of 191 letter tiles and a board that
displays a map of the world divided into 25 regions, each one having its
name spelled out.  You must cover at least half of a region's name with
your own colour of letter tiles to "control" the region.  You must
control 12 connected regions to win. [DUT]

<A NAME="wrdz">
<li><b>Wrdz</b> published by WRDZ, Inc.<br>
Detailed review in
<a href = "http://www.gamereport.com/tgr3/wrdz.html">The Game Report</a>

<A NAME="wwiii">
<li><b>WW-III</b> published by Genco, 1993.<br>
See <A HREF="http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/07746">Funagain Games</A><BR>
Hybrid of Chess and word games.
The objective is to
move markers (in a chess-like, but simpler, manner)
to different squares that contain letters
in order to connect letters, form words, and score points.

<A NAME="X">
<A NAME="Y">
<A NAME="Z">

<A NAME="zakhia">
<li>La <b>Zakhia</b> by Dr Fr&eacute;d&eacute;rick Zakhia<br>
<A HREF="http://web.avo.fr/haffner/jeuxsoc/js_zakhi.htm">French game</A> in which you get
bonus points for theme words, Proper names are allowed (as in Red Letter).
Nothing original; another 'avoid the lawyers by tweaking the game' Scrabble
rip-off.

<A NAME="zigzag">
<li><b>Zig Zag</b> by Xanadu Leisure<br>
See <A HREF="#mywordzigzag">My Word</A>  [MK]

<li><b>Zypher</b> by US Games Systems, 1999<br>
See <A HREF="http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/06530">Funagain Games</A>  [MK]

</ol>

<A NAME="contrib"><b>Contributors</b>:</A>
<P>
[AM] = Andrew Merritt<br>
[AS] = Alfonzo Smith<BR>
[BB] = Brian Bankler<BR>
[BB2] = Bryan Bowe<BR>
[BF] = Bruno Faidutti <BR>
[BS] = Bryan Stout<BR>
[CK] = Carol Kramer<BR>
[CL] = classic@DELETETHIS.planet.net<BR>
[Cookie] = Cookie@DELETETHIS.main.clara.co.uk<BR>
[CS] = Chris Sjoholm<BR>
[DB] = Dan Blum<BR>
[DJ] = David Johnson<BR>
[DR] = Dana Richmond<BR>
[DUT] = Daniel U. Thibault<BR>
[DW] = David Wall<BR>
[FB] = Frank Branham<BR>
[GT] = Graham Toal<BR>
[GM] = Gary Mines<BR>
[JB] = Jerry Bailey<BR>
[JG] = Justin Brent Green<BR>
[JP] = Jon Pailson<BR>
[JT] = Jim Tocco<BR>
[KM] = Kevin Maroney<BR>
[MK] = Michael Keller<BR>
[MS] = MattS@DELETETHIS.aol.com<BR>
[MT] = Mitchell Thomashow <BR>
[PE] = Paul Evans<BR>
[PJK] = Prince Joli Kansil<BR>
[PN] = Philip Nelkon<BR>
[PS] = Peter Sarrett<BR>
[RF] = Robert Fraser<BR>
[RI] = Richard Irving<br>
[SA] = Stan Anderson<br>
[SA2] = Steven Alexander<br>
[SOS] = Steffan O'Sullivan<br>
[TH] = Tom Hansen<br>
[TU] = Treesong (ucalegon@DELETETHIS.aol.com)<br>
<p>
<hr noshade>
Back to <a href ="http://www.io.com/~sos/gviews.html">SOS' Gameviews</a><BR>
Back to <a href ="http://www.io.com/~sos/">Steffan O'Sullivan's Home Page</a>
<P>

<HR>
<A NAME="computergames"></A>
<H2>A Programmer's guide to writing Word Games</H2>
by Graham Toal.<BR>
[<A HREF="#archive">Skip straight ahead to the Archive</A>]
<P>
Some years ago I wrote a Scrabble program for the Acorn Archimedes.  There
was one paper I found at the time to guide me, but really there was a great
lack of any source material for people who wanted to write word games.<P>
Since then, I found a few like-minded folks on an internet mailing list
called <A HREF="http://www.egroups.com/archive/wordgame-programmers">wordgame-programmers@egroups.com</A> (previously @onelist.com and before that @mit.edu.  The list
manager is still with MIT).<BR>
<center>
              <a href="http://www.egroups.com/subscribe/wordgame-programmers">
              <img src="http://www.egroups.com/img/ui/join.gif" border=0><br>
              Click to subscribe to wordgame-programmers</a>
</center>
This site is going
to be a resource for the folks on that mailing list, and for anyone else
about to write a word game and looking for source code to help them.  I'm
a firm believer that most programers learn algorithms best not from books
but from looking at other programmers' code.
<P>
As well as document what has been written already and released to the
public, I want this site to also document the physical word games that
people play, as a resource for people wanting to try their hand at
writing a new game.  This is why I've teamed up with Steffan O'Sullivan
to expand his excellent "Letter by letter word games" page above.  Specifically
I want to document things such as the frequency of letters in tile and
dice games, and the rules of these games.  We have to draw a fine line
here because many of these games are still in production, and most
are still in copyright, but for those games out of copyright I would
like to also include scans of the games, boxes, rules etc.
<P>
PLEASE NOTE these sources are for academic use only, in learning more
about how to solve lexical problems.  These are not games you can download
and play.  Mostly the sources are for unix, but in any case, there are no
binaries here.  One of the specific research areas I'd like to see
explored using this code is how to make games more enjoyable by making
them play as much like a human as possible, ie by manipulation of skill
level and vocabulary so that a game could convincingly imitate a human
in a modified Turing test.  Currently too many games just play the
best possible play, and discourage the human opponent; or they are
naively dumbed down so it is obvious that your computer opponent is
'throwing the match'.
<P>
I'd like to suggest that people writing new word games write them in
standard portable C.  Write a basic internal engine for your game
as a subroutine first; write a simple testing front-end as a 'dumb
terminal' program that will run on any system with a C compiler,
and then write a version that runs as a web cgi program.  This will
let it be used on any system - Windows, Unix, Mac etc - and be much more
useful than a custom version for, say, X windows or Win98.
<P>
Here now are the sources for word games (and some related utilities)
I've found on the net.  Some of them I've written myself.  I have not
included here the many word games that are commercial and shareware
if they are only available as binaries.  If you are just looking for
games to play, check out the software libraries or find a list of
<A HREF="http://dmoz.org/Games/Webgames/Word_Games/">word games</A> and
<A HREF="http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Humor/Wordplay/">word play</A>
on the web.
<P>
I would like to enhance this archive with various word lists to support
the games, but that opens a whole bag of copyright worms that I don't
want to get into.  My understanding is that it's reasonable to release
sources of games like Scrabble for academic study.  It's not reasonable
to release binaries of copyright games for play, and that's the
line I've chosen not to cross in this site.
<P>
There is a <A HREF="http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/mac/info-mac/game/_Word_&_Text/">Macintosh Word Games Archive</A> at wustl.edu.  I have not fetched
and unpacked all the word games there so I do not know
which ones come with sources.  Check for yourself in
the <A HREF="http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/mac/info-mac/game/_Word_&_Text/00word-abstracts.txt">Abstracts</A>.
Tucows also has some <A HREF="http://allmacintosh.xs4all.be/strawberry/wrdpuzmac.html">Macintosh word games</A>
and <A HREF="http://gamingplace.xs4all.be/wordpuzzles.html">PC word games</A>.
<P>
We also have a complete snapshot of the
<A HREF="gatekeeper/">DEC Gatekeeper archive of
crossword games</A> (originally at http://ftp.digital.com/pub/micro/msdos/misc/crossword-archive/), which is the archive
referred to in the <A HREF="http://thinks.com/faq/crosswords/">Crossword FAQ</A>.
<P>
These files are all hosted on my machine at home on a 128K ISDN line.
Do me a favour please and don't do multiple fetches at once during
USA central time 9am-10pm if you can avoid it.  Thanks!  (One day someone
on a cable modem in France downloaded the entire archive and I wasn't
able to get any work done that day!)
<HR>
<P>
<A NAME="archive">
<B>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<CENTER><H1><A HREF="archive.html">WORD GAMES SOURCE CODE ARCHIVE</A></H1></CENTER>
<P>I'll start by trying to bring together the three most common
programs - in the order that people tend to experiment with this
stuff, and in order of increasing difficulty, we have
<A HREF="anagrams.html">anagrams</A> (including Jumbles and Word Scrambles), <A HREF="boggle.html">Boggle
games</A>, and <A HREF="scrabble.html">Scrabble games.</A>
<P>
Other word games which form natural collections:
<A HREF="crosswords.html">generating and solving crossword puzzles</A>,
<A HREF="wordsearch.html">generating and solving
word-search squares</A>, <A HREF="wordsquares.html">generating word-squares and close variants</A>.
There is some interest in the UK TV show <A HREF="countdown.html">Countdown</A>, with it's
letters and numbers games.  Related to numbers we have <A HREF="cryptarithms.html">cryptarithms</A>;
and we also have <A HREF="cryptograms.html">cryptogram solvers</A>.  Don't forget <A HREF="guess.html">letter-guessing
games such as hangman, and word-mastermind
(aka jotto)</A>.  Hassard Dodgson would be interested in <A HREF="ladders.html">word ladders</A>, and
some new variants thereof.
<P>
80% of the directories in this archive are now properly organised under the
subjects above.  See the <A HREF="directory.html">full directory list</A>
for the complete listing and the <A HREF="unfiled.html">unfiled directory
list</A>
for those sources which don't yet have a home in the hierarchy above.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
</B>
<A NAME="tm">
<HR>
Boggle is a trademark of Hasbro Inc. (formerly Parker Brothers).<BR>
Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro Inc in the US (formerly Selchow
and Righter) and Mattel (formerly J.W. Spears) elsewhere.
</body>
</html>