Scrabble

Game play

All words used in the game were between five and nine letters in length. For each word, Woolery gave a clue that often involved a pun or play on words (e.g., "Some people want him to get off their case" for "detective"). Viewers could win a Scrabble T-shirt by submitting a word and clue and having them selected for use in the show's opening sequence.

Crossword Round

The first round of every game was the Crossword round, in which two contestants competed to guess words as they were laid out on a computer-generated Scrabble board. Each matchup in Crossword was always male vs. female and was played until one contestant won by solving three words.

Originally, the Crossword round was played to determine who would face the show's returning champion, if there was one, in the Scrabble Sprint. In cases where there was no returning champion, two Crosswords were played and the winners faced each other in the Sprint to determine the new champion.

Beginning on September 29, 1986, as part of a broader format change, the show began featuring two Crossword rounds per episode. The winners competed against each other in the Sprint to determine the winner. The change was made as part of a special tournament that was taking place at the time. Once the show returned to regular play in December 1986, the first Crossword of the day began featuring the returning champion.

A horizontal or vertical row of squares was outlined to indicate the number of letters, with one already filled in and referred to as the letter the contestants were "building on". The first word of each game was oriented horizontally and built on a letter placed in the center square of the board. Each subsequent word built on one of the letters in the previous word and was laid out perpendicular to it (i.e., the first word was played horizontally, the second vertically, and so on). If a game went on so long that the board became too crowded to hold any more words, it was cleared and the next was played horizontally from a letter in the center square.

Initially, the winner of a backstage coin toss got to start each game. When the second Crossword was introduced and the champion was inserted into the first game, his/her opponent started. If a champion retired after five days, a backstage coin toss in the first Crossword determined who began the first game. The second game used a coin toss to determine who began.

The contestant with initial control of a word could either try to guess it immediately or draw two numbered tiles from a rack. Each tile represented a letter, which was revealed on a screen when the contestant inserted it into a slot at his/her desk. Once a contestant drew tiles, he/she could only guess after playing at least one of the two letters.

Scrabble Sprint

The Scrabble Sprint round was the second part of the game and determined the show's champion. In this round, the goal was to solve a set of words of increasing length as quickly as possible. There were two different formats.

From the premiere until September 26, 1986, the Crossword rounds were played to determine who faced 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 determine a new champion.

In the first format, both the champion and the Crossword winner played separate sets of words against the clock. The Crossword winner played first and chose one of two envelopes, leaving the other for the champion. A row of blanks was shown, and Woolery read a clue. Once the contestant stated that he/she was ready, the clock began to count up from zero and two letters were displayed, which the contestant called one at a time to place in the word. Additional letters were then displayed one at a time, but as in Crossword, the last letter was not given. Every displayed letter appeared in the word. No stoppers were used in the Sprint.

Before trying to guess the word, the contestant had to press a plunger in order to stop the clock. If the guess was correct, the remaining letters were filled in. If incorrect, or if the contestant did not immediately offer a guess, a ten-second penalty was added to the clock and play continued with the same word. Once all but one of the letters were placed, the contestant had five seconds to guess. If he/she either missed the word or did not press the plunger, the word was removed and an alternate was played.

Once the Crossword winner correctly solved three words, the champion took his/her turn with the unused envelope. The clock counted toward zero, starting at the Crossword winner's final time, and any penalties were deducted from it. If the champion completed his/her words before time ran out, he/she won the Scrabble Sprint. If not, the opponent became the new champion. The prize for winning was originally three times the pot from the preceding Crossword round, but was changed to a flat $1,500 after the first week.

Under this format, a champion could play up to ten Sprint rounds. Winning five consecutive Sprints earned any contestant that did so a $20,000 bonus. If a contestant managed to reach the maximum ten wins, he/she would win another $20,000 bonus.

Other Tournaments

During the 1984–90 run, Scrabble held occasional tournaments, including two Tournament of Champions in February 1985 and May 1986, a $25,000 TV Game Contestants vs. Board Game Contestants tournament in November 1985, a $50,000 Teen Tournament in July 1986, and the All-American Tournament. In the February 1985 tournament the final grand prize was determined by the amount of $500 and $1,000 bonuses won in the Crossword Round, with $35,000 as the base amount, a payout structure later used for the Bonus Sprint in the 1993 revival. The other tournament in May 1986 was played for $50,000.

Licensed merchandise

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

Broadcast history

Original run

Scrabble premiered in the 11:30 am time slot on July 2, 1984. The time slot had been occupied by the Bob Eubanks-hosted game show Dream House for the past 20 months. The show went up against the highly rated CBS game show The Price Is Right and four ABC game shows (Family Feud, All-Star Blitz, Double Talk, and Bargain Hunters) in its time slot during the first three years of its run. On September 7, 1987, Scrabble was moved to the 12:30 p.m. time slot in order to make room for the daytime version of Win, Lose or Draw (replacing Wordplay, which had been canceled by NBC earlier that summer). The competitors in that time slot were the soap operas The Young and the Restless and Loving. The show lasted 1+1⁄2 years in that time slot, as it was moved to the 10:00 a.m. time slot on March 27, 1989, after both Sale of the Century (another Reg Grundy show) and Super Password ended their runs. The 12:30 p.m. time slot was taken over by the soap opera Generations. Scrabble aired against the CBS version of Family Feud in that time slot, and remained there until its final episode aired on March 23, 1990. Three days later, the show's time slot was occupied by reruns of 227.

This version of Scrabble aired in reruns from September 16, 1991 to October 13, 1995 (except for a period from February 6 to April 14, 1995) on USA Network. Reruns also briefly aired exclusively on WNBC-TV in New York City from March 26 to September 7, 1990.

1993 revival

In late 1992, NBC cancelled the soap opera Santa Barbara after an eight-year run. The network announced it was trading the 3:00 pm timeslot in exchange for the 12:00 pm timeslot from its affiliates. NBC brough back Scrabble and paired it with a new program based on the board game Scattergories hosted by Dick Clark in the noon hour.

However, not all of NBC's affiliates aired the revived Scrabble at its scheduled time due to their continuing practice of airing local newscasts or other syndicated programming at noon. This resulted in some NBC stations airing the show in a different spot on their schedule while others did not air it at all, often relegating it to independent stations in some media markets. In the markets that did air Scrabble at its scheduled time, the show faced off against local programming on other network affiliates, but never fared well enough against them. As a result, NBC canceled Scrabble after twenty-one weeks of episodes and aired its last episode on June 11, 1993. Reruns of Classic Concentration replaced Scrabble on June 14, which aired until December 31. Following this, the final two weeks of Caesars Challenge, which replaced Scattergories, aired at noon before NBC gave the time slot back to its affiliates.

Scrabble Showdown

In September 2011, a game show based on the board game Scrabble titled Scrabble Showdown appeared on the cable network The Hub. Hosted by Justin Willman, the show featured two families, each consisting of a parent and a child, competing against each other in mini games to solve word puzzles for a chance at a grand prize of a trip anywhere in the world. The program, which had no ties to the Woolery version, lasted 30 episodes before ending in April 2012.

2024 revival

In February 2024, it was announced that Scrabble would be revived and would move to The CW, with Raven-Symoné as host. The revival was promoted as a "straight" adaptation of the board game that would depart from the Woolery version. The revival's first season, which consisted of twenty-six half-hour episodes presented as thirteen hour-long broadcasts, premiered on October 3, 2024. On May 19, 2025, the revival was renewed for a second season of 30 episodes, alongside its sister series, Trivial Pursuit, with Craig Ferguson as host, replacing Raven, who stays as an executive producer. On August 3, 2026, the revival was renewed for a third season to air in 2027.