c4countdown

What is the least amount of moves required to win a game of Scrabble?
(Not including opponent deliberately passing/playing phonies 3 times)

How many tiles are there? Do you get seven in your "rack"?

I've seen this before, but can't remember the exact solution.

To help people along their way if anyone wants a hint: the answer is 2 moves (each) and it involves playing of a few parallel words like XU (including use of one blank) which don't take any hooks, such that whatever tiles either player holds, no further plays are possible, and therefore the game ends. I think JUS gets used as well somewhere.

Matt Bayfield wrote:I've seen this before, but can't remember the exact solution.

To help people along their way if anyone wants a hint: the answer is 2 moves (each) and it involves playing of a few parallel words like XU (including use of one blank) which don't take any hooks, such that whatever tiles either player holds, no further plays are possible, and therefore the game ends. I think JUS gets used as well somewhere.

Yeah you are right
There are 2 solutions that I know of

C
WUD
CUKES
DEY
S




Also [J]
J U S
S O X
[X]U
but more contrived
sorry that the letters don't align properly

Marc Meakin wrote: sorry that the letters don't align properly

Not sure what alignment you're trying to achieve but if you put it between the Code tags then the font will be monospace and should align the way you want.

EDIT: Actually you might want to wait on that, because I'm not sure if Code tags let you change the font colour.

Ah, the second solution was the one I've seen before! I've never seen the first solution.

I'm always amazed by the ingenuity of the Scrabble fanatics who come up with these phenomenally complex solutions (like the highest possible theoretical score on a single move, which I think involves setting up OXYPHENBUTAZONE on a triple-triple-triple, etc. and scores something like 1762 points - at least I think that was once a solution for the OSPD lexicon, or maybe that word was part of the "highest scoring game" solution). Anyhow. I'm absolutely useless when it comes to that kind of puzzle.

Matt Bayfield wrote:Ah, the second solution was the one I've seen before! I've never seen the first solution.

I'm always amazed by the ingenuity of the Scrabble fanatics who come up with these phenomenally complex solutions (like the highest possible theoretical score on a single move, which I think involves setting up OXYPHENBUTAZONE on a triple-triple-triple, etc. and scores something like 1762 points - at least I think that was once a solution for the OSPD lexicon, or maybe that word was part of the "highest scoring game" solution). Anyhow. I'm absolutely useless when it comes to that kind of puzzle.

See here http://www.braingle.com/news/hallfame.p ... le.p&sol=1 for more

What, so the game ends early if there are no valid moves? Does this have to be proven?

Also regarding the highest possible score, my understanding (might be wrong) was that you can use an invalid word because your opponent has to actually challenge it. So you could presumably beat that other word mentioned with all the highest scoring letters in your go and it could go unchallenged.

The game ends automatically each player has three moves without playing a move which is not challenged off the board - so a game won't necessarily have to be uncompletable to end. It's about as common as the 50-move rule in chess - incredibly rare.