The Computer Edition of Scrabble

The Computer Edition of Scrabble is the licensed conversion of the word game, and it reached DOS in 1989. By then it had a long history behind it: the first computer Scrabble of this lineage appeared on the Apple II in 1982 and then turned up on nearly everything that sold, from the BBC Micro through the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum to the Amiga and Atari ST. The PC release is a late stop on a well-worn route rather than something new.

The game does nothing beyond the board, and that is deliberate. You get the grid, a rack of seven tiles and a pull-down menu where you can check tile values, ask for a hint or pass your turn. You type a word, place it, and the program checks it against its internal dictionary. A clock is optional, either lightning timing or a tournament pace, which was not a given in home conversions of board games.

Everything here rests on that dictionary, and the period shows. Versions for the machines of the day held somewhere between nine and twelve thousand words because nothing larger fitted in memory, and the Spectrum release went as far as Huffman compression to squeeze its list in. In practice that means the opponent does not know rare words, and, more annoyingly, that the game will sometimes refuse a perfectly legitimate one. Play within the limits of its vocabulary and the computer is a decent, honest sparring partner.

The flaws are plain. Control is clumsy, every move means typing and nudging a cursor, the presentation is merely functional, and the opponent takes its time thinking. Computer Gaming World of the day called it the weakest of the board conversions it reviewed, and that was not unfair.

On oldgame.cz it runs straight in the browser, with nothing to install.