Revisionist Scrabble: Pad 39 Paperback – February 23, 2026

Revisionist Scrabble in a nutshell:The eligible words are exclusively drawn from a given list; so, as a corollary, there is no need whatsoever for a dictionary.Words are crossed off said list as they are spelled out on the Scrabble board; so, as a corollary, so-called words such as et, qi, er, ne, and en can be played at most once if at all.The same said list, albeit with fewer and fewer eligible words remaining on it, is in principle intended to be reused ad infinitum until it is exhausted.Players respectively play two racks at a time, rather than just a single rack each.This is not my first attempt to revise Scrabble.In A Quant's Critique of Scrabble, which I published way back on August 3, 2017, I wrote the following:During an investigative set of one hundred, two-perfect-player Scrabble Crossword Board Game contests, one specifically conducted in a one-of-a-kind Scrabble lab to rigorously establish an unchallengeable statistical baseline, all 101 of Joe Edley's two-letter words, each and every one of them, and precisely 704 of his 1015 three-letter words, some 69 percent of them, were individually played at least once.4025 of the total 6111 words played, some 66 percent of them, were two- or three-letter words. Only 2086 (that is, 6111 minus 4025) of those played were four-letter words or longer. No less than 98 percent of the acceptable, four- to fifteen-letter words were NOT PLAYED AT ALL. Not once! By "perfect players," yet!Fully two thirds of the words that were actually played by my pair of robotic avatars were twos or threes, which is arguably noncontroversial evidence of a textbook example of the unintentional dumbing-down of America. What is worse, excluding bonus points awarded for bingos, 29,086 of the total 66,695 points scored, some 44 percent of them, were scored by the teeny, tiny (and typically innocuous) two- or three-letter words!There being something not quite right about a word game whereat the most often played, so-called words are et, qi, er, ne, and en, Francis Gurtowski proposes a subtle tweak to the ancient rules which is hereby self-branded Spelling-Bee Scrabble. As a part of the pre-game ritual, some arbitrary player rolls an everyday dice cube to establish the shortest words subsequently permitted throughout the course of the game. Besides excluding all phony words, which is, of course, par for the course, Spelling-Bee Scrabble players may now also challenge words as short as, or shorter than, the digit shown on the die, be it a one, a two, a three, a four, a five, or even a six.If a 1 is rolled then only two-letter words and longer are permitted (as usual); only phony and one-letter words are categorically forbidden (as usual).Similarly, if instead a 2 is rolled then only three-letter words and longer are permitted; both one- and two-letter words are forbidden.If instead a 3 is rolled then only four-letter words and longer are permitted; one- and two- and three-letter words are forbidden.If instead a 4 is rolled then only five-letter words and longer are permitted; one- and two- and three- and four-letter words are forbidden.If instead a 5 is rolled then only six-letter words and longer are permitted; one- and two- and three- and four- and five-letter words are forbidden.If instead a 6 is rolled then only seven-letter words and longer are permitted; one- and two- and three- and four- and five- and six-letter words are forbidden.Five hundred follow-up Spelling-Bee Scrabble contests, in five sets of one hundred per, roll two, roll three, roll four, roll five, or roll six, respectively, confirmed the feasibility of Spelling-Bee Scrabble.The six statistical profiles are tabulated verbatim in A Quant's Critique of Scrabble by Francis Gurtowski, ISBN-10: 1973845539. Read more