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The Dover Scrabble Club (Delaware) plays Scrabble II, which is pure Scrabble opened up to the the longest Scrabble words played anywhere. See the Appendix at the bottom.
In each of my "Scrabble II in action!" pages, which show the striking contrast between the artificiality of modern tournament-style Scrabble and the naturalness of Scrabble II, there is a section called "The use of the Q".
I've gathered them together here, for your enlightenment, amusement, consternation, or disgust.
All the Q-words shown here are what ended up on the final boards, as distinct from what was played in separate turns. For example, someone may have played QUIT, which was later turned to QUITE.
It's interesting to note, but not relevant to this study, that we draw a fresh set of tiles for each game from a mixture of three regular sets of 100 tiles. Thus, a game may have up to three Q's, which is very rare, or no Q at all. It all averages out to one Q per game.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Words in red would not be acceptable in the Dover Scrabble Club. Generally, this means that the word is not recognized by the American Heritage 4th Edition. There is also a small handful of words now included in the American Heritage which I have specifically banished as Scrabble junk. See my Dover Scrabble Club rules page for a list of the condemned words.
Here we have all the Q-words formed on the "Table 1" games of the 28 rounds of the National Scrabble Championship held in Orlando, Florida, in July 2008. I presume that "Table 1" is reserved for the top-ranked players of the moment in the tournament.
For comparison, I extracted all the Q-words formed by the Dover club in 28 consecutive games (having a Q) starting at the beginning of September 2008.
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The National Champs:
SEQUOIA
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Us (regular people):
BANQUETS
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Notice any difference? If not, I guess I wasted my time here.
For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the 2008 National Scrabble Championship", click there. The page examines just the final four Table 1 games of the tournament.
Here's a look at Q-words formed on the "Table 1" games of the National Scrabble Championship, held in Dayton, Ohio, in August 2009. There were 31 rounds.
I chose 31 Dover games from the same time frame for a comparative study.
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The National Champs:
CLOQUES
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Us (regular people):
REQUESTING
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For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the 2009 National Scrabble Championship", click there. The page examines all 31(!) Table 1 games of the tournament, and I consider it my main "Scrabble II in action!" page.
Here's a look at Q-words formed on the "Table 1" games of the National Scrabble Championship, held in Dallas, Texas, in August 2010. There were 31 rounds.
I chose 31 Dover games from the same time frame for a comparative study.
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The National Champs:
EQUITES
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Us (regular people):
QUAINTEST
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For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the 2010 National Scrabble Championship", click there.
Here's a look at Q-words formed on the "Board 1" games of the World Scrabble Championship, held in Malaysia in November 2009. There were 24 rounds, followed by 4 play-off games to determine the champion.
For comparison, I extracted all the Q-words formed by the Dover club in 28 consecutive games (having a Q), beginning October 7 2009.
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The World Champs:
AQUIFERS
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Us (regular people):
QUARTZITE
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For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the 2009 World Scrabble Championship", click there. The page examines just the final four play-off games to determine the champion.
Here's a look at the Q-words formed in the tournament games selected for annotation by Scrabble News, the newsletter of the National Scrabble Association. It comes out 8 times a year, and each issue contains an "Annotated Game", presumably a good game played in a recent tournament.
I gathered up a year's worth of these annotated games from 8 consecutive issues essentially covering 2009, and ending with the February 2010 issue.
Accordingly, I chose 8 good Dover club games from the beginning of 2010 for a comparative study.
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Scrabble News:
QANAT
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Dover club:
SQUATTEST
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For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the 2009 Scrabble News annotated games", click there.
Here's a look at Q-words formed in the featured games of the National School Scrabble Championship, held in Orlando, Florida, in April 2011. There were 7 rounds plus one play-off game.
I chose 8 Dover games from the same time frame for a comparative study.
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School Champs:
QADI
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Dover Club:
BANQUETS
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For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the 2011 National School Scrabble Championship", click there.
In late 2008, the Columbia Scabble Club (Maryland) graciously and bravely took up my invitation to pit its finished Scrabble boards against ours. They submitted three games, presumably among their best of the evening. Hence, I selected three games from the Dover Scrabble Club session from the same week.
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Columbia:
QUITE
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Dover:
DISQUIETS
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For a more detailed look at "Scrabble II vs. the Columbia Scrabble Club, click there.
In wrapping up, I'll refrain from making my same crack again, "Tournament Scrabble boards sure do ooze with vital force!"
But how about this?
Q. How does a photographer get a roomful of Scrabble champions to smile?
A. Say "QIS"!
In any case, I leave you with this bit of advice: Look, men, the
Q was meant to be a hot potato. If it makes you quake and quiver so,
and you cannot (not qanat) quite quash those qualms, maybe you should
quickly and quietly quit.
Eat a quiche.
The Dover Scrabble Club (Delaware) plays Scrabble II, which is pure Scrabble with a few very small, very natural, long overdue fixes which rescue the game from the army of outlandish midget words which have taken over Scrabble in the decades since the game was invented. The game has been broken wide open, but, otherwise, all the strategies remain the same. In a nutshell, Scrabble II is . . .
Moreover, we use a conventional dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary 4th Edition, to further keep our boards from looking like Greek or Martian. The American Heritage is probably about 75% as inclusive as the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (OSPD), but it has more words than you'll ever use, in life or in Scrabble. You've seen in this study that, by not having some weird little word to get you out of each and every jam, you are nudged into playing longer, more respectable words. I urge you to consider a conventional dictionary. A smaller, more refined word set in Scrabble has just the opposite effect to what you would think.
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