Creator: Jon Dawes
Exhibition: Jabblescram
Published: July 2020
Format: Rules pdf
Content Advisories: None
Description of the Work
Replacement rules for the Scrabble board game.
Use the letter tiles to build a road on the game board and spell words along the way. Score points for your words and try to get more than your opponents.
Artist’s Statement
My plan for this game jam was just to make a set of rules that would fit on a double-sided rules sheet that could be slipped into the original game (in this case, Scrabble) and used with all the original components instead of the existing rules. The word “scrabble” has a similar sound to “gravel”, which made me think of a game where the players each create a road with letter tiles.
The idea is to play almost like a solo game, growing a road and collecting points, but the players can set up their roads to intersect and complicate the scoring system. One of the fun things is that a player can play tiles that don’t make up any words, sacrificing immediate point scoring to set up for a later turn. Also, the number of tiles you get to play on your turn is based on the number on the first tile you play, so there is some strategy in that.
Without Whom…
I want to thank Pauline White and Chris and Kay Slater for playtesting. A huge shout-out goes to Pauline White for turning my text file of rules into a cool looking PDF and for putting up with all the changes I kept requesting.