Forum Thread: Scrabble for one?

I'm sure there's more than a few ways you can play, but here's a couple I've used in the past…

1.  Me vs. Me

Basically, you're playing yourself here. Just act like you are playing a normal two-player game with a worthy opponent, only this worthy opponent is yourself.

Sure, you're always going to know what letters your alter-ego has on his/her rack, but if you're playing cutthroat Scrabble, making sure that you screw your other self over and over again, it ups your defensive game and forces you to see things you normally wouldn't ever see.

To improve upon this, limit yourself time-wise. Only allow yourself two minutes per turn, then work your way up to one minute, or whatever. This will help improve your speed, so if you ever want to go beyond playing with friends or just yourself and take your skills to the competitive circuit.

2.  Strictly Solo

With this version, instead of playing yourself, you're building on your ability to score points. Your goal is to get the highest score ever!

Start as usual, with seven letters, placing your first word in the center. Score it, then dump your remaining letters back in the bag. Next, draw seven more letters and place your highest scoring word down. Score it, and repeat the process until you're out of letters.

Keep track of your scores so you can always try to one-up yourself. You're not going to learn any new words this way, but that's unlikely in any solo game of Scrabble (using just a physical Scrabble board, anyway).

3.  Strictly Solo Variant

For this version, it's exactly the same as the one above, only instead of dumping your letters back in the bag after you make a turn, you set them aside, then draw new letters. Then you can dump the old ones back in, that way you won't get those exact letters tiles again... at least for another turn.

To make it more challenging, if at any time you cannot spell a word, the game ends. This forces you to concentrate harder, making sure you don't end until all of the letters are gone.

There's probably more out there, but this is all I know. I usually play an AI opponent on the computer or iPhone when I want to play alone. Or I'll just solve some anagrams and point scoring puzzles from the many Scrabble game books out there. Sometimes I mess around with Scrabble Flash, but I get bored easily with them for some reason.

Thanks Justin, that helps alot.
I must admit theres something weird when you look forward to trying to beat yourself with 2 different set of letters (!)

No problem. Yes, it's definitely weird playing a solo game with two sets of letters. I suppose it works best if you had two personalities, aka dissociative identity disorder. Only, I don't think you'd be able to switch identities fast enough to play a quick solo game!