Anagrams - Rules and Variations

Rules and Variations

There has never been a standardized set of rules, and players now often play by house rules, but most are variants of the rules given here.

To begin, all the tiles are placed face down in the middle of the table. Taking turns around the table, each player turns over one tile, placing it in clear view of all players.

Another variation is to have each player have a "bank" of tiles in front of themselves, which affords players a clearer view of the "pool" of face-up letter tiles in the middle of the table.

The minimum acceptable word length can be adjusted to a player's skill level (for example, in a game with adults and children playing together, the children may be permitted to form four-letter words, while the adults are restricted to words of at least five or six letters). Tournament Scrabble players often play with a minimum word length of six or seven.

Players make words in one of two ways:

Words From the Pool: Whenever any player can form a word of acceptable length from tiles in the pool, the player calls out the word and uses those tiles to spell it out in front of himself or herself. Typically, a player's words are oriented facing the center of the table (i.e. appearing upside-down to the player, and right side up to the others).

Steals: Whenever a player can create a new word using a word that has already been formed, plus one or more tiles from the pool, the player calls out the word. If the word is acceptable, the existing word is "stolen" and the player making the "steal" spells out the new word in front of himself or herself. Players may steal (or, more technically, modify) their own words subject to whatever set of rules is being used.

New words cannot be mere plurals of existing words; rules typically require that the new word change the root of the old, thus allowing APPEAR to become PARAPET (APPEAR+T), but not APPEARED (+ED) or REAPPEAR (+ER). An even stricter application of this rule requires that the letters of the existing word must undergo at least some rearrangement. For example, under this rule MONEY could not be stolen with KS to make MONKEYS, since the letters of MONEY are not rearranged. However, MONEY could be stolen with CO to make ECONOMY. As the skill level of the players increases, it is not uncommon to see creative steals such as GUACAMOLE + F = CAMOUFLAGE.

If two players call out words simultaneously, the longer word prevails. If two players call out the SAME word simultaneously, those two players each turn a new tile face up, and the player whose letter is closest to "A" wins the word (the "tie-breaker" tiles are flipped back over and remixed with the other face-down tiles).

Some versions only allow players to make or steal words on their turn (this slows down play).

The National Scrabble Association has published a set of rules for competitive Anagrams play in tournament setting.