Anagrams is a board-free word game that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words. It is very often played 'out of hours' at Scrabble tournaments around the world. The game has various other names, in particular 'Snap Jarnac' in the UK.
The game has been sold separately as a commercial product, but at Scrabble tournaments is typically played by any number of players (typically 4-8) using two sets of Scrabble tiles of different colour. Tiles are placed face down on the table and then turned over one by one, and players form words by combining unused tiles with existing words, their own or others'.
Whenever a player can form a word with the tiles in the middle of the table, possibly combined with words that he or another player has already formed, he calls out the word and uses those tiles to spell it out in front of him. If two players call out words simultaneously, the longer word prevails. All words must be at least five letters long and the new word must change the root of the old, thus allowing APPEAR to become PARAPET (+T), but not APPEARED (+E+D) or REAPPEAR (+E+R). Similarly, AXONE could not be 'stolen' by KLAXONED since the original letter order has not changed. A player may modify his own words, subject to the same rule.
When all tiles have been used or deemed unusable, each player scores points for the words in front of them. The score for each word is its length squared, thus a single 9-letter word would score 81pts while a 5-letter word and 6-letter word would score 25 + 36 = 61pts. The winner is the player with the most points.
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Sandra Goss