Word Tiles

Version 1.0.0 · The letter workshop · Catalogue 32

Make something of your letters. A compact board and ten turns to build your best score.

Your objective

Build connected words on a 9×9 board using a seven-tile rack. Your score is the total from ten turns of solo play. There is no opponent and no target score to beat; the final result records your points, scoring plays and best turn.

The original bag contains 70 letter tiles with no blanks. Seven are dealt to your opening rack, leaving 63 in the bag. A valid play refills the rack toward seven while tiles remain. The page opens on a repeatable starting shuffle; New round begins another deterministic shuffle during the current visit.

The exact placement rules

Your first word must cross the centre star. On later turns, at least one new tile must touch an existing board tile horizontally or vertically; diagonal contact alone does not connect a play.

All new tiles in a play must lie in one row or one column. They must form a continuous line, with no empty gaps between them. Existing board letters may fill a gap, so you can place letters on either side of an old tile. You cannot replace or move letters already committed to the board.

Every word formed must have at least two letters and appear in this game’s word list. This includes the main word and every perpendicular crossing. One new tile is a valid play if it forms an accepted word with existing letters; it may create both an Across and a Down word. A rejected placement leaves the draft available to edit and does not use a turn or change the score.

Touch and mouse

Tap or click a rack tile to select it, then an empty board square to stage it there. The selected rack tile lifts; staged tiles have a small dot and an outline. Selection clears after each placement, so choose the next tile before placing it.

Tap a staged board tile to return it to the rack. Recall returns the whole draft without using a turn. Shuffle changes rack order without changing its letters or using a turn. Committed board letters cannot be recalled.

When your draft is ready, press Play word. The game checks the full placement and all crossings. A valid play becomes permanent, adds its score, refills the rack as far as the bag allows and advances the turn. The latest-play panel gives a score breakdown for every word created.

Physical keyboard

The arrow cursor starts at the centre star. Selecting a letter by keyboard focuses that square. Click or tap inside an embedded game before typing so the physical keys belong to the game frame. The word-checker input accepts ordinary text rather than game shortcuts.

Letter values and the original bag

Letter points are: A E I O U L N R S T = 1; D G = 2; B C M P = 3; F H V W Y = 4; K = 5; J X = 7; Q Z = 9. A tile’s small corner number shows its base value, and Table rules displays the complete value strip.

The 70-tile distribution is: A6, B2, C2, D3, E8, F1, G2, H2, I5, J1, K1, L3, M2, N4, O5, P2, Q1, R4, S4, T4, U3, V1, W1, X1, Y1, Z1. These counts, values and the compact bonus layout are original to this game. They are not a claim to a branded tournament rule set.

How scoring works

Each newly formed word scores the sum of its letters, including old board letters. A 2L square doubles the value of a newly placed letter; 3L triples it. A 2W square doubles the whole word after letter bonuses. The centre star is also 2W. If a word covers multiple fresh 2W squares, those multipliers multiply.

A newly covered bonus applies to each word made with that tile on the same turn. Once the turn is accepted, that bonus is used up. When a later play reuses an old board tile, that tile contributes only its base letter value; its old letter or word bonus does not apply again.

All words made in one valid play are added together. The latest-play panel shows letters and values, letter multipliers, word multipliers and the total for that turn. The Round notebook keeps the current round’s plays and exchanges. There is no extra bonus for using all seven rack tiles and no unused-rack deduction at the end.

A worked opening and a crossing

On the opening rack you can make DUMB. Count rows from top to bottom and columns from left to right. Stage D, U, M, B across the fifth row, columns 3–6, so M sits on the centre star.

D lands on 2L: its base 2 becomes 4. U is 1, M is 3 and B is 3. The letter sum is 4 + 1 + 3 + 3 = 11. The fresh centre star doubles the word, so the play scores 22 points. Press Play word to commit it and refill the rack.

A subsequent vertical FAME can use that existing M: place F at row 3 column 5, A at row 4 column 5, and E at row 6 column 5. The old M remains at row 5 column 5. F is on a fresh 2L, so the score is 8 + 1 + 3 + 1 = 13. The centre’s old 2W does not double FAME again. The total becomes 35.

For a multiword crossing later in a game, score the new main word and every perpendicular word it creates. If any one is absent from the list, the entire draft is rejected and you can adjust or recall it without spending a turn.

Exchanges and the ten-turn limit

Exchange first recalls any staged draft, then swaps as many rack tiles as the bag currently holds, up to the rack’s size. New tiles are drawn before the returned tiles are mixed back into the bag. If fewer tiles remain in the bag than in the rack, only that many rack tiles are replaced. This uses one turn and scores no points.

When the bag is empty, the same control reads Pass turn and advances one turn without changing the rack. You can therefore complete a round even when no useful play is available. Recall, Shuffle, word checks and rejected drafts are free.

After exactly ten accepted plays, exchanges or passes in total, the round ends. The board and rack stop accepting play. Round complete shows final points, the number of scoring plays and the best turn. An exchange is not a scoring play. New round clears the board, score and notebook, then deals a fresh rack; it can also end an unfinished round immediately.

A useful approach

Start with a short word you know, then look for ways to borrow its letters. Keeping a useful vowel can make the next rack easier to use. A high-value letter is more helpful on a fresh letter bonus, especially when it scores in two crossing words at once.

Check every crossing before pressing Play word. A long word may be worth less than a short placement that creates several smaller words. The word checker is useful when a possible crossing is unfamiliar. Exchange is a valid use of a turn when the rack is awkward, but remember that each exchange leaves fewer scoring turns.

The word list and word checker

Open Table rules and enter a word in Will this word fit the list?. Press Check word. This does not place tiles or spend a turn. The checker accepts input of two to nine letters and looks up the same list used for all board validation.

The locally bundled list is ENABLE, compiled by Alan Beale and M. Cooper, and is public domain. This historical edition dates from about 2000 and is not an official Scrabble dictionary. Its 2–9-letter subset contains 105,241 words. Only ASCII alphabetic length filtering was applied, with the original order retained.

It is an unfiltered historical word-game list and accepts some offensive words. It may reject newer vocabulary or accept unfamiliar inflections. A rejection says not in this game’s word list (ENABLE, public domain); it does not claim that the spelling can never be a word. There is no challenge, adjudication or content-filtering mode.

Settings, results and session-only progress

This edition has one solo ten-turn profile. It has no difficulty selector, opponent, blank tiles, timer, alternative dictionary or separate game modes. The available round actions are New round, Recall, Shuffle, Exchange/Pass and Play word.

Your board, rack, points and notebook last only in the live page. Reloading, closing and reopening, or reconnecting an embedded game starts a new session with no saved round. New round intentionally discards the current round. There is no account, cloud save or persistent high-score history.

Full guide opens these instructions in a separate tab so the game can stay open. Multiple embedded copies are independent; removing and reconnecting one begins a fresh page rather than resuming its removed round.

Install and play offline

Visit the standalone game online over HTTPS, or localhost for local use. Choose Install game if the browser supports an installation prompt. Otherwise use the displayed browser-menu instructions to install the page or add it to the home screen. On iPhone and iPad, that generally uses Safari’s Share → Add to Home Screen.

After the first complete online visit has cached the application, the game, word list and this guide can open offline. The dictionary is loaded from the game’s own files, with no external dictionary service. Offline caching stores those files, not live progress. The first visit on a new device or after clearing browser storage still needs a connection.

Embedded games do not register their own service workers. Their Install control asks the host page to handle installation; an unhandled request explains how to open and install the standalone game. Browser support and exact wording vary.

If something seems wrong

Provenance and limits

All game code, wooden-tile artwork, interface text, letter values, bag counts and bonus layout are original. ENABLE is the only imported content. Its source copy came from dolph/dictionary, and the public-domain release is documented in the ENABLE2K readme.

The bundled original licence notes and machine-readable provenance preserve the download date, exact source URL, filtering rule and source/subset SHA-256 hashes. These dictionary and licence bytes are unchanged from the accepted collection. The release adds no new content-curation project, word list, opponent, challenge mode, accounts or saved-score system.