Yet another scrabble dispute.

Hi everyone!

I'll get straight to the point.

I had two letters that I wanted to use, namely "B" and "F".

There was the word ET on the board and I simultaneously added B right before the ET and F underneath my B, thus forming two words (BET horizontal and BF vertical).

My opponent claims this is against the rules and I can only add the B for BET.

Who's in the right?

Cheers

1 Response

FIRST off, what you did was totally legit. It's called a "hook" and hooks are definitely legal moves in Scrabble.

On the Hasbro Scrabble website (and in the actual board game instructions), they state that new words may be formed by:

Adding one or more letters to a word or letters already on the board.
Placing a word at right angles to a word already on the board. The new word must use one of the letters already on the board or must add a letter to it. (See Turns 2, 3 and 4 below.)
Placing a complete word parallel to a word already played so that adjacent letters also form complete words. (See Turn 5 below.)

You can also see some examples of "hooking" in How to Master SCRABBLE, in Step 5: Board Placement Concepts.

SECOND, your opponent should have challenged you. Although spelling a word off of "ET" is legal, one of your words was not legal, i.e. "BF". That is an acronym (or more accurately, text-talk) for "BOYFRIEND" and is not an acceptable word in SCRABBLE.

Overall, you played a legal move, but played an illegal word. But hey, if your opponent doesn't catch it, they it's all good.

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