All words used in the game were between five and nine letters in length. For each word, Woolery gave a clue that often involved a pun or play on words (e.g., "Some people want him to get off their case" for "detective"). Viewers could win a Scrabble T-shirt by submitting a word and clue and having them selected for use in the show's opening title sequence.
Crossword Round
The first round of every game was the Crossword round, in which two contestants competed to guess words as they were laid out on a computer-generated Scrabble board. Each matchup in Crossword was always male vs. female and was played until one contestant won by solving three words.
Originally, the Crossword round was played to determine who would face the show’s returning champion, if there was one, in the Scrabble Sprint. In cases where there was no returning champion, two Crosswords were played and the winners faced each other in the Sprint to determine the new champion.
Beginning on September 29, 1986, as part of a broader format change, the show began featuring two Crossword rounds per episode. The winners would square off in the Sprint to determine the winner. The change was made as part of a special tournament that was taking place at the time. Once the show returned to regular play in December 1986, the first Crossword of the day began featuring the returning champion.
A horizontal or vertical row of squares was outlined to indicate the number of letters, with one already filled in and referred to as the letter the contestants were "building on". The first word of each game was oriented horizontally and built on a letter placed in the center square of the board. Each subsequent word built on one of the letters in the previous word and was laid out perpendicular to it (i.e., the first word was played horizontally, the second vertically, and so on). If a game went on so long that the board became too crowded to hold any more words, it was cleared and the next was played horizontally from a letter in the center square.
Initially, the winner of a backstage coin toss got to start each game. When the second Crossword was introduced and the champion was inserted into the first game, his/her opponent started. If a champion retired after five days, a backstage coin toss in the first Crossword determined who began the first game. The second game used a coin toss to determine who began.
The contestant with initial control of a word could either try to guess it immediately or draw two numbered tiles from a rack. Each tile represented a letter, which was revealed on a screen when the contestant inserted it into a slot at his/her desk. Once a contestant had drawn, he/she could only guess after playing at least one of the two letters.
The number of tiles available for any given word was always two more than the number of letters it contained. These tiles represented all of the remaining letters in the word, plus three "stopper" letters that did not belong in it. When a contestant played a letter that belonged in the word, it appeared in its proper place. Hitting a stopper or giving an incorrect guess forfeited control of the word to the opponent, and the opponent could either guess or draw enough tiles to put a total of two letters in play.
Once all but one letter had been filled in, the contestant in control had to guess. A miss gave the opponent a chance to solve the word; if he/she also missed, the last letter was filled in and neither player scored the word.
For each word after the first, the trailing contestant had initial control. If the score was tied, control went to the contestant who had not solved the previous word.
If all three stoppers were revealed during a word, the contestant that had not played the last one was given a chance to guess. If he/she declined to do so, a rapid-fire game called "Speedword" was played. The remaining letters would be automatically placed, one at a time, until someone rang in with a correct guess; however, a miss locked that contestant out of the rest of the word. If both contestants missed, or if neither one rang in after every letter but one had been placed, the word was revealed and removed from play. If a contestant gave an incorrect guess after his/her opponent played the third stopper, the opponent was allowed to play Speedword alone.
Speedword was also played if a match went to a fifth word without a winner. Later, once the format changed, Speedword would be played if time ran short during a match. During the original show format, each match was played to its conclusion. A match could begin at any time and resume on the next episode. Originally, when this happened a fresh board would always be used when the match resumed. This later changed to having the same board in place for an entire match regardless of whether or not it straddled.
Pot
In the first week of the show, a cumulative money pot was used in the Crossword round. Each letter placed in a normal square was worth $25, with blue squares adding $50 and pink squares $100. The winner of the round collected all the money in the pot. After that week, the Crossword winner received a flat $500.
Bonus squares
Beginning in October 1984, contestants could win a cash bonus by placing a letter in a colored square and immediately solving the word. Blue squares awarded $500, while pink squares awarded $1,000. Beginning in 1985, the bonus rule was added to Speedword, provided a contestant guessed the word right after a letter was placed into a bonus square. Also, if a word was being built on a letter in a bonus square, the contestant who started the word could win the bonus with an immediate solve. If a contestant either placed a letter in a bonus square and gave an incorrect guess, or could not solve the word after placing the next-to-last letter in a bonus square, the opponent could win the bonus with a correct guess. Both contestants kept any bonus money they won, regardless of who won the Crossword round. The maximum a player could win in the crossword round was $3,500.
For the 1993 version, money won from bonus squares was added to the Bonus Sprint jackpot instead of being awarded directly to the contestant.
The Crossword rules and payout structure were changed for approximately three months in 1985. Once the contestant in control believed they could solve a word, they hit their buzzer and then had to fill in all the missing letters in order, one at a time. A mistake turned control over to the opponent and left all correctly given letters on the board; the opponent could then either try to complete the solution, otherwise draw/play tiles if no letters had been filled in, or the word would be removed from play.
The accumulating pot from the earliest episodes returned, but money was added to it only while a contestant was giving letters after buzzing in. Regular, blue, and pink squares respectively added $50, $100, and $200 (later $500), and the first contestant to solve three words won the entire pot.
While it likely had little to nothing to do with the eventual dropping of the spelling format after three months, one match played during this time featured two contestants who made repeated errors while trying to spell the word “mosquitos”. A clip of the incident has made the rounds on various blooper specials over the years.
Scrabble Sprint
The Scrabble Sprint round was the second part of the game and determined the show's champion. In this round, the goal was to solve a set of words of increasing length as quickly as possible. There were two different formats.
From the premiere until September 26, 1986, the Crossword rounds were played to determine who faced the reigning champion in the Sprint Round. If there was no champion, two Crossword rounds were played and the winners of those rounds faced off to determine a new champion.
In the first format, both the champion and the Crossword winner played separate sets of words against the clock. The Crossword winner played first and chose one of two envelopes, leaving the other for the champion. A row of blanks was shown, and Woolery read a clue. Once the contestant stated that he/she was ready, the clock began to count up from zero and two letters were displayed, which the contestant called one at a time to place in the word. Additional letters were then displayed one at a time, but as in Crossword, the last letter was not given. Every displayed letter appeared in the word; no stoppers were used in the Sprint.
Before trying to guess the word, the contestant had to press a plunger in order to stop the clock. If the guess was correct, the remaining letters were filled in; if not, or if the contestant did not immediately offer a guess, a 10-second penalty was added to the clock and play continued with the same word. Once all but one of the letters were placed, the contestant had five seconds to guess. If he/she either missed the word or did not press the plunger, the word was removed and an alternate was played.
Once the Crossword winner correctly solved three words, the champion took his/her turn with the unused envelope. The clock counted toward zero, starting at the Crossword winner's final time, and any penalties were deducted from it. If the champion completed his/her words before time ran out, he/she won the Scrabble Sprint; if not, the opponent became the new champion. The prize for winning was originally three times the pot from the preceding Crossword round, but was changed to a flat $1,500 after the first week. A contestant received a $20,000 bonus for winning five consecutive Sprints, and a further $20,000 for winning 10; in the latter case, the contestant also retired as an undefeated champion.
March 1985 changes
In March 1985, both contestants began using the same set of words. The champion was placed in isolation while the Crossword winner played, then tried to beat the time set. In addition, after a contestant called one of the two displayed letters, the other one disappeared and two new letters were presented as long as there were at least three blanks left in the word. The contestant was shown only one letter when there were two blanks. This change remained in place for the remainder of the series run, and a fourth word was later added to the Sprint.
In addition to the contestants now using the same set of words, the Sprint bonus rules changed. Champions had their total winnings increased to $20,000 for five Sprint victories, or to $40,000 for 10, still retiring undefeated in the latter case.
On September 29, 1986, Scrabble began a 13-week-long contest titled The $100,000 All-American Scrabble Tournament. This tournament was conducted with a different format from usual Scrabble matches, and these changes were eventually made permanent.
A total of 188 contestants were selected via a nationwide search, with four competing on each episode in preliminary matches from Monday through Thursday over the first 12 weeks. Two Crossword rounds were played, each worth $500 and with the bonus square payouts in effect, and each was followed by a four-word Scrabble Sprint. The first Crossword winner set a time for the second one to beat, and the Sprint winner received $1,000 and advanced to a quarterfinal match played on Friday of that week. The winner of the Sprint round in that match received an additional $5,000 and advanced to the semifinals, held during the 13th and final week of the tournament.
Only three episodes were broadcast during the week of November 24–28, due to NBC's coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and a special block of Saturday morning cartoons airing on Thursday and Friday of that week, respectively. A quarterfinal match was held on the following Monday (December 1) to choose a semifinalist from those three preliminary winners; over the remainder of that week (December 2–5), three more preliminary matches and a quarterfinal were played in similar fashion.
Four wild-card semifinalists were chosen from the eliminated contestants, and they and the 12 quarterfinal winners competed in four semifinal matches on Monday through Thursday of the final week. The four winners advanced to a final match that Friday; the winner of the Sprint received a grand prize of $100,000, while the runner-up received $10,000.
With slight adjustments, this tournament structure became the new permanent Scrabble format on December 29, 1986. As noted above, each episode now featured four contestants and two Crossword games worth $500 each. The champion played in the first Crossword, whose winner set a Sprint time for the second winner to beat, and the Sprint winner received $1,000 and took or retained the championship. With this format change, each episode of Scrabble became a self-contained competition and straddling games were eliminated.
Bonus Sprint
With the adoption of the new format came a new final round, the Bonus Sprint, which gave the day's champion a chance to win a cash jackpot.
The champion played two words, one each of at least six and seven letters, under the standard Sprint rules and was given 10 seconds to solve them both. Doing so awarded the jackpot, which began at $5,000 and increased by $1,000 for every game it went unclaimed. If the champion gave an incorrect guess or failed to respond immediately after pressing the plunger, it counted as an automatic loss.
Champions remained on the show until they lost in either the Crossword or Sprint round or had played the Bonus Sprint five times.
1993 changes
When the series returned in 1993, the Bonus Sprint jackpot began at $1,000 and increased only if a contestant landed on a blue or pink square in the Crossword game and solved the word immediately, adding either $500 or $1,000 respectively. No cash bonuses were given directly to contestants in this version. If the Bonus Sprint was not won on that episode, the jackpot carried over to the next episode until it was won.
