Internet Scrabble Club
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The Internet Scrabble Club, or ISC, is an online gaming site where Scrabble players compete in real time against other humans or computer programs. It was created by "Carol" in the 1990s as a school project. The ISC now has approximately 200,000 members, including several world and national champions.
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[edit] Using ISC
Potential players must go to the home page [1] to download the interface program, WordBiz. They must also create an online handle and password.
Players start games either by sending or accepting a "seek," or sending a match request. A seek is a request for a game with certain parameters, including the time limit (an integer between 3 and 60), the type of challenge (known as single, double 5-points and void), and the minimum and maximum ratings criteria that the other player must meet. Players can either send a seek and wait for it to be accepted, or accept someone else's by typing the command PLAY X for the player known as X. Players can also match opponents using the command MATCH X, which sends a match request to X and no other player. X may then either accept or decline this request.
[edit] Organisation and management
The ISC was created and is run by the player known as Carol (real name Florin Gheorghe), who lives in Romania, hence the URL www.isc.ro. The other administrator is Herve, who is the 2005 French national champion, Hervé Bohbot. The administrators invite certain players to be helpers. The primary function of helpers is to reply to questions asked by other players in the help channels. However, helpers are also given the power to censor other players. Censoring means withholding a player's right to communicate with other players, and is usually done for foul and abusive language, but also for other violations of the rules such as using an anagram-solving program or deliberately resigning or leaving games. The rest of the players are split into two broad categories -- members and contributory members.
The ISC is a free service; no member need pay to use the site's facilities. However there are benefits for contributory or support players, who pay an annual subscription. These benefits include the right to play against computer players, to save games in a library, to use an examiner program that suggests solutions for game positions, and many others. A full list of benefits can be found at the ISC website linked below.
[edit] Other languages on the ISC
The ISC does its best to use official word lists -- those used in club and tournament competition in various countries. It uses two English-language word sets: TWL05, which is used in the U.S., Canada, Thailand and Israel, and SOWPODS, which is used for the rest of the world. However, the ISC caters for multiple languages. It uses ODS 4 for French, LOC2000 for Romanian, ZINGA for Italian and SWL for Dutch. There is also the "Multi" dictionary, which consists of English, French, and Romanian words, and has proved popular for online tournaments.
There is also the option of playing Clabbers, an anagram of the word Scrabble. It is not official on the ISC, but it is available. Clabbers is a game of anagramming to fit the players' liking, in terms of points being scored and so on. You must not play with the challenge mode VOID, however, or the system will just disapprove your word formation.
[edit] Some champions on the ISC
The help file HELP BIO has a fairly extensive list of these. They include:
- Alligator - French language world champion in 2005
- Bricap - English language world champion in 2001
- Dandls - Romanian national champion and Romanian national English language champion on several occasions
- Drbing - North American champion in 2005
- Gijoel - English language world champion in 1997
- Iti61 - French language world champion 5 times
- Minibel - French Language world champion in 2004
- Trey - North American champion in 2004
- Zedoary - English language world champion in 2003
