Scrabble FAQ
	Newest version: 2.51 (compiled April 30, 2003) Languages available: Dutch, English, French, German, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish Author of this game: Arne 'Timwi' Heizmann <timwi@gmx.net> This game is available as freeware to the community of Scrabble enthusiasts and therefore does not present any challenge to Hasbro's or Matell's copyright on the idea of the game.

Why is the game not working? The game asks me to "Add Language", but I cannot find the file it requires. Why does Scrabble slow my computer to a crawl? Why is the computer allowed to cheat and play things that aren't words? But ED (education) and IFF (if and only if) aren't words! They're abbreviations! No way you can convince me that "CRWTH" is an English word! Why don't you additionally offer a reduced dictionary with common words? A lot of common words are missing from the German dictionary. Many of the German words aren't acceptable. The Spanish dictionary is just as bad.

Why is the game not working?

I cannot provide any assistance with any problems if I don't know what the problem is. I cannot make any predictions as to what happened. Here's what you should do: Describe the problem in detail (and in a language I understand, such as English, German, French, or Esperanto). Say what you have done just before the error occurred, what you intended to do, and what exactly happened instead. If any error messages appear, quote them literally. (It's not enough to say that it's in German or whatever.) If the error occurred during a game you played, choose "Save Game" from the menu to save the game, then quit and send me the file scrabble.ini, which contains the saved game, and explain in detail what you did just before the error occurred. (The reason some error messages may appear in German is because I have used a German version of Delphi to make the game, and whenever an error occurs that I haven't thought of, Delphi will automatically produce an error message of its own.)

The game asks me to "Add Language", but I cannot find the file it requires.

In the past, I made the mistake to offer the game on its own as a download, and the Language Packs as separate downloads. Impatient people just downloaded the game on its own and did not take notice of the text on my homepage that said, "You need at least one Language Pack to play". Unfortunately, most of the freeware game sites on the web that have mirrored my game have made the exact same mistake. Now on my homepage you will only find downloads of Scrabble with a Language Pack pre-installed. If you have already got the newest version of Scrabble (from wherever), you will only need to download one of the Language Packs. Unzip that Language Pack into the same directory as where you've installed Scrabble (do not create sub-directories). The Language Packs contain two files, for example English.lng and English.srb. The lng file contains the necessary information about the distribution of letters and their scores; the srb file contains the dictionary of words. Once you've unzipped these files into the Scrabble directory, run Scrabble, click "Add Language" and choose the lng file. Then the language should be installed. If you have an older version of Scrabble, I recommend you download the newest version. In particular, if you have version 2.2 or older, the new Language Packs won't work.

Why does Scrabble slow my computer to a crawl?

Because I am a lousy programmer. And I mean a really lousy programmer. Scrabble works fine with smaller dictionaries, but when I found the complete English dictionary (and later the French and Dutch ones), I realized that Scrabble really wastes a lot of memory. Until I find a way of optimizing the memory usage a bit, I'm afraid you'll only be able to run it on computers with a lot of memory, or with all other applications closed down. You do Windows' memory management a great favour if you don't switch between applications while Scrabble is running.

Why is the computer allowed to cheat and play things that aren't words?

I am very surprised that many people asked me this question. How can you possibly say that something isn't a word, just because you've never seen it? The English dictionary is the Official Scrabble Dictionary used for Scrabble tournaments in the USA. All of the words in it are acceptable words, though many of them are rare and may look somewhat strange. If you are curious about what certain words mean, you can look them up on Hasbro's Scrabble website (http://hasbroscrabble.com).

But ED (education) and IFF (if and only if) aren't words! They're abbreviations!

No, they're not. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), TV (television) and e.g. (exempli gratia) are abbreviations; ed and iff are examples of shortened versions of words or expressions. If you were to reject them as abbreviations, you would also have to reject "cinema" (short for "cinematography"), "glyph" (short for "hieroglyph"), or "typo" (short for "typographical error").

No way you can convince me that "CRWTH" is an English word!

Okay, but nor is kindergarten, garage, telephone, pyramid, ... Just how do you define "English word"? People don't want to have to keep saying "ancient Celtic stringed instrument that was bowed or plucked", so they call it a crwth.

Why don't you additionally offer a reduced dictionary with common words?

Would you like to volunteer to wade through the whole dictionary and filter out all the "rare words"? Oh, besides - what is a "rare word"? Even if there was a sensible definition for which words are suitable for beginners and which ones aren't, I don't have the time to reduce that large dictionary.

A lot of common words are missing from the German dictionary.

Yes, unfortunately this is true. I could not find a German wordlist on the Internet that was suitable for Scrabble (i.e., didn't contain any proper names or abbreviations). This is why I built my own dictionary by playing the game against the computer in my free time. The dictionary has grown since, but it's still only a tenth of the size of the English dictionary. Any contributions are welcome. If you are German, and you can reliably tell what words are acceptable, please feel free to add words as you play (like I do) and send me your updates every now and then. I will then combine your dictionary with mine.

Many of the German words aren't acceptable.

Unfortunately, German Scrabble doesn't have as clear a defition of what is acceptable as English Scrabble does: In English, you can exclude all words whose proper spelling requires capitalization to exclude proper names. In German, this isn't possible because all nouns are spelt with capital letters in German, not just proper names. German-speaking countries have agreed to change the German spelling rules in 1998. Many people don't agree to the new spellings, so there is no concensus on whether to use new or traditional spelling in Scrabble. I have simply added both; after all, the English dictionary also contains several spellings for some words (like learnt and learned). According to the new spelling rules, shortened imperatives can now be spelt without an apostrophe (such as "hör" rather than "hör'" or "höre"). I have included interjections (such as "ÄH", "NANU", "OJE") and letters (such as "BE, EL, ZET" and Greek letters) because their equivalents are also acceptable in English. What's for definite is that the Duden (the German equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary) should not be taken as a reference, because it is more of an equivalent to Oxford's concise dictionary. There is no German equivalent to the Oxford Complete English dictionary (which fills a complete bookshelf). Alas, a German equivalent to the Scrabble dictionary does not seem to exist, either.

The Spanish dictionary is just as bad.

I do not know any Spanish, so I cannot tell. I found this Spanish dictionary at a Spanish site. They used my game, so I used their dictionary. :-)

If you have any question about the game which is not answered in this FAQ, please feel free to send me mail.

© Timwi