I’ve NEVER Seen A Scrabble Board Like This

Every game of Scrabble has its own aesthetic. Some boards are tight and compressed in one area - others are wide-open, free-flowing shootouts that reach the outermost rows and columns. But I've never in my life seen a formation on the board like the one Ryan Wee and Orla Judge combined to play at the 2024 UK Championships - and I'm betting you haven't either!
Thank you to:
Ryan for reconstructing his side of the game
Bob Lucassen for coding wizardry
Sometime soon, I plan to resume streaming on my Twitch channel:
/ wanderer15
I will also soon resume my weekly show on the official Scrabble Twitch channel (Tuesdays 3-5 PM ET): / scrabble
Play Scrabble at playscrabble.com!

[@capitalex5422]

Orla Judge playing "gutted" and "gulp" feels like foreshadowing for that insane play of doing another 7 letter, 7 overlap bingo.

[@PelumiOTE2B]

I said GUTTED felt very appropriate 😂😂😂

[@wanderer15]

OMG, I didn't even notice this. Well spotted

[@alexanderbateman5581]

the first time that a scrabble board ACTUALLY looks like a crossword puzzle lmfao

[@DrWhoFanJ]

No, they always look like crossword puzzles.

[@alexanderbateman5581]

@@DrWhoFanJ I mean like one you would find in a newspaper that has big blocks of words like this.

[@DrWhoFanJ]

⁠@@alexanderbateman5581That’s not how crosswords work. They work more like regular Scrabble, with words going in rows and columns without immediate parallelling, where shapes like those that are the subject of this video would never appear.

[@alexanderbateman5581]

@@DrWhoFanJ ...have you ever looked at a newspaper crossword? Like the New York Times or something? They literally all look like this.

[@DrWhoFanJ]

@@alexanderbateman5581Yes, I do them every weekend. Newspaper crosswords never do long overlaps like this. It’s very rare for a word to even have *two* consecutive letters shared with others, let alone any more than that!

[@Marcotonio]

I think the second overlap is more obvious than the first simply because now the idea has already been brought to attention. Before that, it was just a normal game with no crazy overlaps, but once you get a 7/7, you might pay more attention to that group. "Haha, wouldn't it be funny if I drew tiles to make a third ov... wait a second!!!"

[@wanderer15]

Hadn't thought of that, but it's definitely true

[@themandan9456]

About to play 57 octillion scrabble games guys, I’ll keep you updated

[@wanderer15]

You might get lucky and get there after only 56 octillion

[@prestonhunter6012]

update?

[@asheep7797]

@@prestonhunter6012currently 2 games in

[@Firefly256]

HIARNETS will soon become an inside joke in the Scrabble community, I'm calling it

[@axcertypo]

it already has been for like 15 years lol

[@asheep7797]

soon = -15y; delay(soon); i forgot to semicolon

[@Ganpan14O]

Wait until it becomes used enough as a phrase that it becomes a word with a definition something like "A word in scrabble that has been misspelled but not noticed by the opponent until too late" and thus becomes a valid word

[@johnwilder4789]

@@Ganpan14O If this happened, it would be in good company with words like “mondegreen” and “eggcorn”!

[@drenz1523]

The Parker Hairnets

[@edriancontridas3.14]

The AnGeRED under NEURITE is already impressive, but my goodness here he briefly turned Scrabble into a crossword puzzle, absolutely insane of a play

[@bruceyuchuanyu]

I bursted out laughter when I saw (H)IARNETS, but the ED didn't fit onto my board

[@johnwilder4789]

Grammatically yeah. But Scrabble-wise? Bursted is good.

[@bruceyuchuanyu]

@@nightwishlover8913 that's the point of the joke

[@AndrewKay]

ChatGPT would have been able to play it outside of the board.

[@jedross2136]

With ‘hiarnets’ Nigel has become like the Goat Guy from my hometown.

[@007bistromath]

old: Scrabble is a game where you make a crossword puzzle bold: Scrabble is a game where you fill a spreadsheet

[@bacon.cheesecake]

The hiarnets callback was beautiful

[@brunojyrkiainen6686]

Others were playing scrabble but Ryan was playing Tetris

[@wanderer15]

7x5 stack = Scrabble Rebirth

[@vicious_rhubarb2247]

Will knows block that's my goat

[@godave8934]

@@wanderer15 NES Scrabble when? :P

[@BigStrap]

Those visual aides for the 5-bingo sequence were hilarious!

[@ules5799]

literally watching this with my jaw on the floor. Thank you for reporting on this and your wonderful commentary, you are absolutely an essential core part of the scrabble community

[@AmaranthRBY]

That's absolutely outstanding wow. 3 way overlaps are hard to even construct, having it come up organically in a real game truly feels like a once-in-many-decades event. Amazing, thanks for putting this game on my radar Will

[@reubenmoisey897]

Hey, former European Scrabble champion here! just wanted to say love your content. It's fantastic to see you bringing Scrabble to the forefront of social media, much like chess has been. Keep up the great work!

[@wanderer15]

Thanks Reuben, I appreciate it!

[@Luxine108]

I'm so so excited to see Ryan on your channel! He's such a lovely, eccentric guy. Thanks for reviewing the game!

[@Moldylocks]

The most beautiful would be a 7x7 tile with all overlapping bingos, but I'll take a 3x7 too, real slick stuff, impressive and beautifully spotted.

[@AlexDings]

There are valid 7x7 squares even, they just can't be created from successive parallel bingos

[@xwddydfy_3]

​@@AlexDingswhats the max n x n square that can be made in scrabble? also i wanna see the 7 x 7 square because it seems fascinating

[@lucas29476]

@@AlexDingswill using CSW make it easier?

[@galoomba5559]

@@xwddydfy_3 8x8 is possible: LATERALS AXONEMAL TOEPLATE ENPLANED RELANDED AMANDINE LATEENER SLEDDERS 9x9 probably doesn't exist, but that afaik hasn't been proven. Other languages with bigger lexicons have 9x9 or 10x10 though.

[@lucas29476]

@@galoomba5559 for completeness sake can you please show the order of building it?

[@Table53]

3:52 I was literally googling in another tab to try and find out the maximum possibly number of 7 tile bingo overlaps in scrabble.. I'm glad you predicted that question haha

[@sobisoba]

not every day i audibly shout over scrabble but holy shit

[@arrowoflightezpez]

FOR REAL!

[@wompastompa3692]

Spaz bro...

[@SomeGuy712x]

(0:39) LOL, that "HIARNETS" reference gave me a good laugh!

[@vitorrodriguez4278]

To anyone curious I also wrote an algorythm to try and find the most bingos you could stack on top of each other (I'm gonna be honest I just didn't trust Will (sorry Will if you read this, it's not you, it's me...)) and got to the same 2 ONLY ways you could possibly stack 5 bingos. There are 25 331 7-letter words in the english language; There are 89 457 ways you could stack 2 bingos on top of each other; There are 974 932 ways you could stack 3 bingos on top of each other (my computer won't forget this); There are 23 707 ways you could stack 4 bingos on top of each other (at this point I thought no way there's only 2 5stacks of bingos, turns out I was wrong); And there are only 2 ways you could stack 5 bingos on top of each other.

[@ronaldcredo2689]

Brilliant idea for giving us the theoretical 5x7 stacks of words! Kudos to Ryan Wee for this 3x7 blocks amazing feat!

[@kicking222]

1) This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. 2) Good lord, CSW has the dumbest non-words. 😂

[@wanderer15]

I have a video coming next week which is going to blow your mind re: #2

[@mettataurr]

I love how much passion and work you put into your videos. It’s really evident especially in a video like this. I know the meta is to have a Clickbait title… But I will say this one video really lived up to the Clickbait.

[@wanderer15]

Thank you! I try not to overdo it with the clickbait. One thing I really can't stomach is doing the "KZbin face." Anytime I include it in a video I'm doing it ironically.... :O

[@oscarbarnes708]

This game was so crazy that it was featured in yesterdays Times scrabble puzzle

[@slouch186]

astonishing. thank you for your continued amazing coverage of Scrabble!

[@petrie911]

Some day, when enough words are added to the lexicon, we'll be able to have the fabled bingo square.

[@irakyl]

As a bystander the Collins dictionary just seems more enjoyable for allowing more words to be played, and playing words is the fun part of scrabble. Will you're kinda the Wayne Gretzky of poker

[@wanderer15]

I do understand people who are put off by the archaic nature of some of those words, but once you embrace the "letter strings over actual words" mindset, the sky's the limit

[@artsenor254]

To be fair, if I had played a 7-letter overlap, the first thing I'd look after would be another one.

[@chanjunyuan4279]

This ryan guy is alright, absolutely destroyed him at scrabble online when I was bored at work , he managed to take a few games off me though so props to him.

[@alexwertheim870]

Great video as always, Will. Do Scrabble tournaments ever give brilliancy prizes for spectacular individual games, as some chess tournaments do? This game seems like it definitely would merit one if they do!

[@johnwilder4789]

Yeah many tournaments give prizes for “highest scoring play” of the tournament, which is pretty close to what you’re asking. In this case though, if this was a major tournament then 112 probably isn’t going to win the highest scoring play prize, as it just takes one person triple tripling to pass that.

[@wanderer15]

There are lots of prizes of this type, but I'm not sure there's a general brilliancy prize - typically it's either high scores as John described, or "best ____ word" depending on the holiday, season, etc. There probably should be brilliancy prizes!

[@OMGreeni]

that's it. i've been following for a while, but it took being a bit tipsy for me to scream LOUDLY, and TWICE, watching one of your videos. What a game, and what a way to cover it man !!

[@Unchained_Alice]

Now I'm wondering what the biggest fully filled rectangle of scrabble tiles is that could be made with valid plays. None of them have to be bingos though.

[@WipZedKay]

Wonder if you could have overlaps that formed words diagonally too...

[@vf00]

delightful stuff

[@janmartense]

If they aren't done in order, maybe you could stack more bingos. Like, maybe there are some possibilities that were ruled out because they wouldn't have been valid as two bingos, but maybe they'd be possible if you did the first and third row before filling the second row in. Maybe there's a way to get 6 or more like that

[@darkshoxx]

Were you searching only consecutive bingo overlaps from top to bottom, or were you allowing plays above as well? That might make a difference if the words going across are only valid when truncated one way rather than another.

[@darkshoxx]

For example in the top left 3x3 square at the end: PAT AMA CUR could be played by playing AMU and aligning TAR, and adding PAC, because AT, MA and UR are valid. But you can't play AMU and then PAC because CU is not valid. So the order matters

[@abee127]

He was looking at plays above. One of the animations towards the end with the more lenient dictionary showed bingos filling in the top then bottom

[@darkshoxx]

@@Jkfgjfgjfkjg My example disproves your statement

[@TheGuyCalledX]

​@@Jkfgjfgjfkjgit wouldn't, because order matters in terms of forming valid words, but it seems this has already been taken into account so it is indeed exhaustive

[@TheGuyCalledX]

@@Jkfgjfgjfkjg you still don't understand. The sequence matters. Imagine 3 words, let's call them A, B, C. They can form a triple overlap ABC, but BC forms a valid double overlap and AB doesn't. You can't start this string with A or you won't be able to play ABC-- you have to either start by playing B or C first and playing A only after you have already formed BC. If you search only top to bottom, you won't find ABC because AB isn't a valid overlap.

[@petzkuh]

Amazing video! One thing i want to ask: do your calculations at 5:09 take into account that certain letters are gone from the bag, being played on board already? e.g. AMARONE is somewhat less likely to be drawn, as PATAMAR already uses AAMR. of course, i don't expect this to significantly impact the overall probability (and it can cancel out in parts, like CURETTE possibly being _more_ likely to be drawn, with "only" ERTT being gone, vs 10 other "useless" tiles)

[@wanderer15]

They do, the denominator for my calculations was 100 choose 7 for PATAMAR, 93 choose 7 for AMARONE, etc.

[@ieatatsonic]

The MIT Mystery Hunt writers for next year are going to have a field day with this one

[@shakespeareanim]

that is absolutely crazy

[@ktbbb5]

I thought 'this reminds me so much of the word squares created by Bob Lucassen', until I saw that the ones in the video are also created by him!

[@SAYFVCKFOR100DOLLARS]

lmao ja how does he do it

[@wanderer15]

His code to generate these is shockingly simple/elegant!

[@kw5643]

What bingos other than amended could he have played there? Some analysis of the probability of the actual play would be interesting.

[@RedstonekPL]

ryan thought he joined a crossword tournament 🗣️

[@drome2]

I can stack 5 letter words but never stacked 7 letter bingos before.

[@Jkfgjfgjfkjg]

The single 5x7 stack that you found can be made by first playing PATAMAR and then the other words below it or by starting with AMARONE, then placing PATAMAR on top, and then the other words below.

[@niek-mx3de]

the hiarnets joke got me lol

[@danielreed5199]

The fact that the word was "Amended", nominative determinism.

[@DanNguyen-oc3xr]

Lol I'm gonna need definitions for all those obscure wordds resulting from those overlaps, because I've never heard of some of those words before.

[@danpriest7212]

@wanderer15 You may already know, but both Orla and Ryan are keen ZDS Scrabble players

[@arrowoflightezpez]

I’ve always gotten 6 overlaps.. still looking for one ^^

[@craiglarimer1173]

Amazing video. Keep them coming!

[@codetaku]

If you ever find yourself with "amarone" going first in a tournament game, do not despair! You don't need to pass your turn, you can just play it in the hopes that your opponent has patamar to play above you. The order of the first two words is irrelevant! :)

[@LunaticPilgrim]

Hey Will, what is the shortest a game can end in a stalemate (no legal moves by either player irrespective of how many times the tiles are recycled)? What is the fastest time a game has reached this state in tournament play?

[@geozop]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3uscp-IiNhlZ5Y

[@lucas29476]

Not in tournaments and not quite a stalemate, but consider VAV in the middle and v(A)v reply, the initial player holding KKSSSSA will win by passing. Check a Mack Meller short.

[@wanderer15]

The fastest board that reaches a semi-locked state is XU/UH in a 2x2 square. The board can still be opened with DUH or HUH, but if you don't have a hook to UH or a play like TA(XU)S which would probably not be a good play, you're locked.

[@ryanlind5239]

I paused the video at 1:30 since I was pretty sure I knew where this was going and tried to figure out what word would fit there, which was fun although I couldn't find one (figured there had to be an S in there somewhere!)

[@wanderer15]

A huge portion of the big 7x5 blocks have not only all 4 Ss, but also both blanks designated as S too!

[@omfgacceptmyname]

0:38 u got my ass lol

[@DanToruno1]

These are fun to watch.

[@Thealsomemro2]

Is there a longer sequence of 7 letter bingos that can be done by using overplays rather than underplays? What about a combination of using both overplays and underplays?

[@wanderer15]

The search for 7x5 stacks was done searching for both over- and under-plays.

[@danielmaggin5904]

Awesome video. What is the maximum number of consecutive bingos that could be played to start a game? Is it theoretically possible that every play could be a bingo in a game?

[@matthewsaulsbury3011]

Wow, that is amazing! 😀👍🏼

[@aseq2]

'oo', 'er', 'li' , 'ee', 'oon', 'ane' aren't words, no matter what any dictionary says.

[@MrBonbon64]

Ikr….. I don’t understand lmao

[@kundatrix]

If you google scrabble dictionary, you can see that those are valid words. Except 'er' because that's just 're' backwards

[@Yvelluap]

my dumbass thought he was gonna pull out a triangle or smth 😭😭😭

[@G3N3515DM]

sick

[@paulsmith9198]

It is amazing what can be done with make believe words.

[@krishradio1]

Fantastic Video. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@thegodofpez]

That’s a story he’ll be telling his grandchildren who will unfortunately never recognize how brilliant this is.

[@wanderer15]

I dunno, Scrabble runs in families...

[@nautilus269]

I remember a rated game with several consec bingos in the Aus Champs. But not sharing it in comments.

[@crosswordboss]

🧩That AMENDED play could be a sign of a future CRUCIVERBALIST!🧩

[@imperiallegionnaire8344]

Crossword looking Scrabble board

[@Iridescence93]

crazy but impressive.

[@liamday453]

playing 2 7 letter overlap bingos is insane

[@kurzackd]

lol @ how in like in *_ALMOST_** EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.* of these videos, there's always some obscure short word that references... *WEED.* :D And, of course, in 99% of cases it's almost certainly *COMPLETELY MADE UP* by the compiler of the dictionary... :P .

[@louisng114]

Video idea: Scrabble players DnD alignment chart.

[@mattjpuzzleguyj8846]

Question for you, Will. I loved the theoretical 7x5 stacks and how they were formed, but is there an algorithm that looks at stacking either on the top or bottom on each consecutive bingo? Because your examples look like they're just a series of stacks underneath each previous one, which is cool, but technically they could be placed above.

[@wanderer15]

Yes, the algorithm for this one did look and both top and bottom as possibilities. If you look at the example at 5:45, that stack was formed with words filling in both on top and on the bottom of the existing stack.

[@Alexc99xd]

is there any other stack that doesn't require it to be in sequential order? for example you have to do row 1+2 then row 4+5 then row 3 last so in this example you needed valid 2 letter words and 5 letter word rather than 2,3,4,5? also other combinations can remove the requirement of 3/4 letter words at the cost of needed more valid 2/3 letter words. Maybe then a 6 stack might be possible (probably not still)

[@wanderer15]

There probably would be many more stacks like this - the numbers in this video are all sequential stacks.

[@gredangeo]

The necessity of only one dictionary is a requirement at this point. Just to make the odds of this happening that much better. ;) How do pros that go back and forth between regions make sure to keep the dictionaries separate in their mind? English is English. Should be the same. I have a house rule that any valid word counts. (Our vocabulary is not extensive as pros, so we hope to recognize on our jumbled rack of letters, to use any word we happen to know.)

[@quintopia]

What's the largest area solid rectangular block possible from the beginning of the game if not every word is required to completely overlap as it's played? Same question but bingos aren't required?

[@wanderer15]

I believe there are some examples of 8x8 blocks!

[@brazen_helm]

Is that the largest completely filled rectangle in tournament scrabble ever? Or has there been a 4x6 or 5x5 overlap play at some point, for example?

[@wanderer15]

Good question...and it might be possible to figure this out. I'll try to get that answer.

[@iamtheblarneystonekissmyass]

Awesome

[@vixseboxse]

Is there a way to stack 5 bingos other than downwards only? You could obviously to the second one first, then the second, then 3,4,5. But are there any other ways?

[@wanderer15]

Many of the 800+ Collins dictionary examples are done with a combination of stacking on top and below!

[@willwalker5951]

They are playing the game where the box moves left to right abd you try to drop it on the other boxes.😂

[@nightwishlover8913]

You're making some of these words up - or somebody is!

[@psymar]

Are large overlaps that rare? I've had 5 on a bingo before, and I don't often play people who put their own bingoes on the board.

[@manaphylv100]

Has anyone ever played a 3x3x3, bingo or not, outside of deliberate setups like oxyphenbutazone?

[@wanderer15]

I do not believe that's ever happened - triples have a tendency to get used up long before plays of that nature can ever happen, but I couldn't say for absolute sure that it's never occurred...

[@TileRunner]

Is it still 5 if you allow overlaps as well as underlaps?

[@cuggyboysmith81]

616... the number of the Beast!

[@asheep7797]

*the REAL number of the Beast!

[@owenhoffman7858]

weird, i was playing around with stacking bingos last night.

[@AangBoi15]

I wonder if 6 overlaps exist.

[@PelumiOTE2B]

Incredible 🎉🎉

[@balas3314]

616 in UK

[@styxsksu]

Is there any set of stacked words that complete lock the game if they are the only plays?

[@wanderer15]

It's not a complete lock, but the closest thing Scrabble has to "opening theory" like chess is the XU/UH opening square. The board isn't totally dead thanks to DUH and HUH but unless you have a hook to UH it's pretty well trapped.

[@reign69heir]

HIARNETS spit-take!

[@but_ter_fly6190]

did you check for 6 or more parallel 7-letter words stacked with the collins dictionary? (since you said there were 800 combinations for 5 parallel words)

[@Jkfgjfgjfkjg]

If there was he probably would have let us know.

[@wanderer15]

Yes, 5 is the maximum!

[@ScrapFatherScrapSon]

Question is , is the board locked at that point? I think there is 1 s remaining so I guess not! But have you ever seen a game where no play is possible? For both players?

[@ronaldwayne7092]

It happens, usually near the end of the game. Something like one player is stuck with the Q and the other with a V.

[@AOOA926]

Still should have played (H)IARNE

[@cuggyboysmith81]

OMG!!!

[@PrincessOzaline]

if you ever got that 1 in octillion five bingo overlap it'd be inda hard to continue the game after? I guess you'd hvve to make room with patamars, but not much room to play with?

[@Iearnwithme]

Is there a way that he has just found a good way to cheat? It is crazy that he plays so perfect

[@exegen]

2:56

[@chrishooks6565]

Be good too me Wilbur.👍

[@Takyodor2]

HIARNETS