1985

Holiday Puzzle, 1985

The majority of the tiles in my Scrabble(tm) set are on strike, leaving a handful of loyal vowels and a clutch of difficult consonants. Can you still play a decent game with this handicap? Using the entire pool of 15 letters, follow standard Scrabble rules in a one-player tournament. Score 50 points at the end if you exhaust the supply (playing 7 tiles at once earns no bonus). Remember:

Don't play more than 7 tiles at a time.
Only add letters along a single row or column during a turn.
All sequences of 2 or more letters must make "good" words at all times.
Special score squares only count the first time you play on them.
The first play must cover the center square, scoring double word.
Subsequent plays must adjoin previous ones.
No proper, specialized, foreign or exceedingly archaic forms are accepted.

The standard reference for this game is Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition, and each word must appear in it as an English language entry.

(When I designed this puzzle, I managed to reach 184 points; one of my contestant-friends got as high as 207!)

Triple Word Score								Triple Word Score
	Double Word Score						Double Word Score
		Triple Letter Score				Triple Letter Score
			Double Letter Score		Double Letter Score
				* * ***
			Double Letter Score		Double Letter Score
		Triple Letter Score				Triple Letter Score
	Double Word Score						Double Word Score
Triple Word Score								Triple Word Score

A1 E1 I1 O1 U1

W4 Z10 G2 X8 R1

D2 V4 M3 L1 Q10