Scrabble (game show)

Scrabble
Genre	Game show
Created by	Robert Noah
Directed by	Chris Darley
Presented by	Chuck Woolery
Narrated by	Jay Stewart (1984–1985) Charlie Tuna (1985–1990, 1993)
Theme music composer	Marc Ellis Ray Ellis
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	1,230 (1984–1990) 105 (1993) Total: 1,335
Production
Executive producer(s)	Robert Noah
Location(s)	NBC Studios Burbank, California
Running time	22 minutes
Production company(s)	Reg Grundy Productions Exposure Unlimited
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC
Original run	July 2, 1984 (1984-07-02) – March 23, 1990 (1990-03-23) January 18, 1993 (1993-01-18) – June 11, 1993 (1993-06-11)

Scrabble is an American television game show that was based on the Scrabble board game. The show was co-produced by Exposure Unlimited and Reg Grundy Productions. It ran from July 2, 1984 to March 23, 1990, and again from January 18 to June 11, 1993, both runs on NBC. A total of 1,335 episodes were produced from both editions; Chuck Woolery hosted both versions of the series. Jay Stewart was the announcer for the first year and was replaced by Charlie Tuna in the summer of 1985, who announced for the remainder of the original version and the entirety of the 1993 revival.

Game play

Crossword Round

The first round of every game was the Crossword round, where two players (almost always male vs. female) competed to try to be the first to guess three words correctly based on clues given by Woolery. Originally there was only one Crossword played per match, with the winner facing the champion in the Scrabble Sprint (see below). On September 29, 1986, as part of a broader format change, a second Crossword round was added. The first Crossword was played between the show's reigning champion and a challenger, and the second Crossword was played between two different players.

Each Crossword round began with a word building on the center square of a computer-generated Scrabble board, and depending on how many letters were in the word, a rack of numbered "tiles" were used corresponding to the letters. There were always three more tiles than there were letters in the word; these represented letters that were not in the puzzle and called "Stoppers".

Originally the winner of a backstage coin toss started the match, but when the second Crossword game was added in 1986 the player challenging the reigning champion started (a coin toss would determine the first player in the second Crossword at all times and would be used in the first game if there was no champion). The player in control was given a chance to guess the word immediately, but if he/she could not, that player took two tiles from the rack and placed them in a slot on their desk; this displayed two letters from which they could choose to put in the word. The contestant would then choose one of the two letters and would try to have it placed in the puzzle. If the chosen letter was in the puzzle, the player tried to have the second letter placed. If both letters were placed and the contestant still did not know the word, their turn continued. If a Stopper was chosen, that player lost control and play passed to the opponent. If there was a letter left in the display, the opposing player had to choose one tile; if not, he/she picked two. The last letter of any word was never revealed, and if neither contestant could come up with the correct answer at that point the word was thrown out and an alternate was played.

A contestant could guess at any time, but an incorrect guess passed control.

If all three Stoppers were revealed and no one could come up with the answer, the game moved into Speedword. Here, each remaining letter in the word was automatically placed at random (with the exception of the last letter) until one of the players buzzed in with the correct answer. If correct, then, the player wins the word. If incorrect, the contestant was locked out, allowing the opponent to either guess the word immediately or see more letters. Speedword was also used if time was running short in a round or as the fifth and deciding word of the round if both players had each gotten two words.

Pot

In the first two weeks of the show, a cumulative money pot was used in the crossword game. Each letter placed was worth $25, with blue squares adding $50 and pink squares $100. The first player to correctly guess three words won whatever money was in the pot and moved on to the Scrabble Sprint. After these two weeks, the winner of each Crossword won $500.

Bonus squares

Beginning in October 1984 players could win a cash bonus with the pink and blue squares. If either contestant placed a letter in one of those squares and correctly guessed the word immediately, they received the bonus. Solving the word with a letter in a blue square was worth $500 in bonus cash to the contestant while a pink square paid off at $1,000.

Beginning in 1986, the bonus rule was added to Speedword, provided a contestant guessed the word right after a letter was placed into a bonus space. Also, if a word was being built on a letter in a bonus square, an immediate solve paid the bonus.

For the 1993 version, money won from bonus squares was added to the Bonus Sprint jackpot instead of being awarded directly to the contestant.

Spelling

For three months in 1985, contestants not only had to guess each word correctly, but also had to spell the word one letter at a time. Similar to the format used during the first two weeks, each correct letter added money to a pot: Regular squares added $50, blue squares added $100, and pink squares added $200 (later $500). In one episode, two contestants repeatedly failed to spell the word "mosquitos" correctly, despite knowing it was the correct answer. This rule was abandoned by the fall of 1985.

Scrabble Sprint

The Scrabble Sprint round was the second part of the game and determined the show's champion. There were two different formats.

From the premiere until September 26, 1986, the Crossword rounds were played to determine who would face the reigning champion in the Sprint Round. If there was no champion, two Crossword rounds were played and the winners of those rounds faced off to become the champion.

First format

In the first format, both the champion and the Crossword winner played separate sets of words. The Crossword winner played first and chose either a pink envelope or blue envelope and tried to set a time that the champion had to beat with the unpicked set. Three words were played and none of the words had any Stoppers in them, meaning all letters displayed were in the word. The clock would start counting up when Woolery said "go" and each word started with two letters for the contestant to choose. The remaining letters would appear one at a time for the contestant to pick. In order to guess the word the player had to hit a plunger to stop the clock. If the contestant either guessed incorrectly or failed to come up with an immediate answer at any time, 10 seconds were added to the time as a penalty. If all the letters but the last one were revealed, a player had 5 seconds to hit the plunger and give a guess; guessing incorrectly or failing to guess resulted in the contestant being forced to play a make-up word.

After the challenger played their set of words, the champion played his/hers with the clock counting down. For fairness, the champion's word set featured three words that were the same length in letters as the challenger. A wrong answer or no answer now resulted in 10 seconds being deducted from the remaining time instead of being added to it. If the champion managed to complete their set of words within the set time, he/she won $1,500 (originally triple the pot from the Crossword round) and would face the winner of the next Crossword round. Otherwise, the challenger won and the champion left with whatever he/she had earned to that point. Winning five consecutive Scrabble Sprint rounds earned a champion $20,000 as a bonus, and if the champion managed to win five more he/she retired undefeated with a second $20,000 bonus; the minimum total for a retiring champion was $55,500.

In March 1985, both players began playing the same set of words. Again, the winner of the Crossword round set the time to beat while the champion was isolated offstage. The rules remained the same, with the champion having to beat the other player's time in order to win. Coinciding with the format change was a change in payouts, as five time champions had their winnings augmented to $20,000 while retiring champions had their final winnings augmented to $40,000. Also, the contestants had two letters to choose from each time a letter was called up until the last possible letter was put in the word, when only one letter would be displayed; this change would remain in place for the remainder of the original series and the subsequent revival. At some point, a fourth word was added to the Sprint round.

Second format

On September 29, 1986, Scrabble began a 13-week-long tournament called The $100,000 All-American Scrabble Tournament. This tournament was conducted with a different format than usual Scrabble matches, and the changes were eventually made permanent.

A total of 188 contestants were selected via a nation-wide search, with four competing on each episode in preliminary matches from Monday through Thursday. Two Crossword rounds were played (with the typical $500 and $1,000 bonuses for blue and pink squares, respectively), and each was followed by a Scrabble Sprint round. The winner of the first Crossword round won $500, and played four words of six, seven, eight, and nine letters to try to set a time for the winner of the second Crossword round between two other players. That player would try to beat the time set by the first player, and if he/she did so, they would win $1,000, and advance to the next round. On Friday, the four winners competed in two quarterfinal matches, and whoever won the second Sprint round won $5,000 and advanced to the semifinals round, for the final week of the tournament.

Because only four episodes aired during the week of November 24–28 (no episode aired that Thursday, due to Thanksgiving), a wild card player was chosen for that week's quarterfinal matches.

During the final week, from December 22–25, the 12 winners, as well as 4 wild card players, competed in semifinals matches, with the 4 finalists competing in that Fridays' final matches for the grand prize of $100,000.

With slight adjusting, the tournament format became the permanent Scrabble format on December 29, 1986. As noted above, each episode now featured four players and the champion played the first Crossword game. The winner of the first Crossword set the Sprint time to beat, and if it held up that player won $1,000. If the second Crossword winner managed to guess all four words within the limit, he/she won the $1,000.

The winner of the Sprint, as before, was the day's champion.

With the format change, Scrabble became a self-contained 30-minute program; before, play continued until time was called and episodes could straddle.

Bonus Sprint

With the adoption of the new format came a new final round. Called the Bonus Sprint, this round enabled the champion to win a cash jackpot.

The champion faced two final words, the first with at least six letters and the second with at least seven. If the champion correctly guessed both words within ten seconds, he/she won the jackpot which started at $5,000 and had $1,000 added for each unsuccessful playing. All of the Sprint rules were in effect, meaning that any incorrect answer would result in an automatic loss as the penalty would wipe out the remaining seconds.

Champions could now play until either winning five Sprint rounds or they were defeated.

When the series returned in 1993, the Bonus Sprint jackpot began at $1,000. Additional money was only added to the jackpot if a contestant landed on a blue or pink square in the Crossword game and solved the word immediately, adding either $500 or $1,000, respectively. No cash bonuses were given directly to contestants in this version; all bonuses went into the Bonus Sprint jackpot.

Theme weeks

Over the years, Scrabble had several special weeks, including Soap Week (which featured some soap opera stars from Days of our Lives, Santa Barbara and other soaps), Teen Week, College Week, and others, as well as two Tournaments of Champions (February 1985 and May 1986), at least one Tournament of Teen Champions (1986) and a $100,000 All American Tournament (1986; see above).

Once in 1987, and again in 1988, the series aired "Game Show Hosts Week". Participants for the first such week were Peter Tomarken, Marc Summers, John Davidson, Tom Kennedy, Bill Rafferty, and Jamie Farr. The latter two returned in 1988, joined by Vicki Lawrence, Jim Lange, Wink Martindale, and Jeff MacGregor.

Summers hosted during the 1987 week when Chuck Woolery played segments of the game (and earned $12,000 for a home viewer).

Licensed Merchandise

A board game based on this version was released by Selchow & Righter as TV Scrabble in 1987.^[1]

Episode status and reruns

All episodes still exist. FremantleMedia North America, which is a direct successor to Reg Grundy Productions, and Hasbro, which owns the Scrabble board game in the United States and Canada, currently own the rights to the series as well as any future revivals. Reruns aired on USA Network from September 16, 1991 to October 13, 1995 (with the exception of a brief period from February 6 to April 14, 1995). The short-lived 1993 revival has not been rerun since cancellation.

International versions

Germany

• RTL plus (as phone-in quiz show.)

References

External links

• Scrabble at the Internet Movie Database
• Scrabble at TV.com