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What is the highest possible score a player can make in a turn by placing a single tile? Assume language is English, using standard North American rules.

noedne
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user3294068
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  • You might be interested in reading interested in reading some of the comments on this post: https://recordsetter.com/world-record/highest-point-value-given-single-letter-placement-scrabble/1016 – Matt Mar 21 '19 at 18:24
  • Can we assume that the tiles already on the board are exactly as we want them? – user46002 Mar 21 '19 at 18:30

2 Answers2

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According to this Quora question, the best you can do using the North American Scrabble dictionary is CRYPTO(Z)OOLOGY and QUART(Z), giving a total of 171 points. The setup should look something like this:

enter image description here

...However, that's not the best you can do. We're looking at the highest possible score.

The rules of Scrabble do not prevent players from playing invalid words. There are rules for challenging someone you think has played an invalid word, and if the challenge is correct, the play will be reversed. But if players decide not to challenge, the word remains.

So, with particularly cooperative (or particularly stupid) players, the best you can do...

enter image description here

...is 303 points.

Deusovi
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  • I think that the 171 is what the questioner is looking for - " Assume language is English, using standard Norh[sic]-American rules." – Brandon_J Mar 21 '19 at 19:16
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    @Brandon_J Probably, but the latter option is not against the rules of the game, no matter what language you're playing in. If nothing else, it's worth including as an option. – Deusovi Mar 21 '19 at 19:20
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    That's true. Heck of a game that would be lol. – Brandon_J Mar 21 '19 at 19:21
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    +1 for the second point! It's impressive how little you gain compared to the non-cheating version. I didn't know about this challenge rule. What happens if a player wrongly challenges another? – Arnaud Mortier Mar 21 '19 at 19:21
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    @ArnaudMortier The wrongful challenger loses their next turn. (This makes bluffing a valid strategy in Scrabble - it's occasionally used even in tournament play!) – Deusovi Mar 21 '19 at 19:24
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    (Rubio changes PSE username to QJXKFFHZHVVWWYY) – Rubio Mar 21 '19 at 19:55
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    why are the E's necessary in the 2nd example? Diagonal words don't count right? – Aequitas Mar 22 '19 at 01:05
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    @Aequitas Because otherwise, the board would have 3 disconnected pieces prior to the move (which is not possible). – John Doe Mar 22 '19 at 01:34
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    (If anyone is wondering, "oology" is the studying of bird eggs, nests and breeding behaviour.) – BruceWayne Mar 22 '19 at 02:09
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    English Scrabble has only $2$ Cs, but the first example uses $4$. – noedne Mar 22 '19 at 08:21
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    But they could be blanks. – noedne Mar 22 '19 at 08:28
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    @noedne: For that matter, ACCIDENT, IDEA, ATTIC and COMMANDO are just filler words unrelated to the score for that play. You could make do with shorter, simpler words. You don't need eight letter words connected to each other, you just need them to get from the initial space to QUART, and from QUART (or any other word on the board) to any letter in CRYPTO and any letter in OOLOGY. Not going to go to the trouble of finding blank-free equivalents, but those are not the hard part of the problem here. :-) – ShadowRanger Mar 22 '19 at 14:58
  • @ShadowRanger Yes, of course, so the rest could just be excluded. – noedne Mar 22 '19 at 17:29
  • What's zyqxuwy? It's a type of fish. – vsz Mar 23 '19 at 07:57
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In N-Tile Scrabble Records (Word Ways, May 1983, p.80), Kyle Corbin gives the following, for 231 points. All words can be found in Webster's Third.

   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
 1 # . . + . . . # . . . + . . Q 1
 2 . = . . . * . . . * . . . = U 2
 3 . . = . . . + . + . . . = . I 3
 4 + . . = . . . + . . . = . . C 4
 5 . . . . = . . . . . = . . . K 5
 6 . * . . . * . . . * . . . * S 6
 7 . . + . . . + . + . . . + . I 7
 8 # . . + . . . S N O W B A L L 8
 9 . . + . . . + . + . . . + . V 9
10 . * . . . * . . . * . . . * E 10
11 . . . . = . . . . . = . . . R 11
12 + . . = . . . + . . . = . . I 12
13 . . = . . . + . + . . . = . N 13
14 . = . . . * . . . * . . E R G 14
15 H Y D R O X Y B E N Z E N E # 15
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

An S tile is placed into the # in the bottom right corner where there is a 3× word bonus.

(HYDROXYBENZENE)S/(QUICKSILVERING)S for 231 points.

doppelgreener
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Rosie F
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    That's pretty cool, but wouldn't work for tournament scrabble according to http://scrabble.merriam.com/ – James Mar 22 '19 at 12:21
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    @James: As noted on the other answer, it will work if nobody challenges it. One problem historically with the OSPD3 was that it didn't include words that are longer than eight letters and are not formed by adding common prefix or suffix to a words of eight letters or less. As noted in the introduction, one would have to look in another dictionary to check the validity of a word like "petroleum", since "eum" is not a common suffix. Does the aformentioned dictionary claim to exhaustively list all valid words of all lengths up to 15, regardless of stem length? – supercat Mar 22 '19 at 15:59
  • Hi @supercat: As far as I can tell, the dictionary I linked to exhaustively lists all "valid" words, where "valid" means "legal in tournament Scrabble". I also notice that there are some 15-letter words in that dictionary, including "cryptozoologist" and "cryptozoologies". – James Mar 22 '19 at 17:10
  • @James: Unless things have changed, any played word that is not challenged is valid, and this is actually a significant aspect of strategy. Even if one would expect one's opponent to believe a word is probably invalid, one might expect the opponent to refrain from challenging in cases where the downside risk would be too great. – supercat Mar 22 '19 at 17:34
  • @supercat: I totally agree with your last comment. I thought when you used the word "valid" in the last sentence of your first comment above, you meant "valid if challenged". After all, you discussed using a dictionary to "... check the validity of a word ...". Why would you use a dictionary if any combination of letters were valid. – James Mar 22 '19 at 17:38
  • @James: Gotcha. After writing my first comment here, I'd then noticed other answers mentioning the possibility of getting bigger scores by playing arbitrary letter combinations that aren't challenged, so I got confused as to which meaning of "valid" applied in this context. The OSPD3 contains some words longer than 8 letters, but I was wondering if the linked side had any description of the criteria it used to identify what combinations of prefixes and suffixes are acceptable. – supercat Mar 22 '19 at 17:44
  • The comments here make it clear that the biggest score containing only words that would survive a challenge has not yet been determined. That means that all the discussion is about the "biggest so far discovered". If there were a definitive list of words then it would be possible to get a computer to go through all possible sequences of play and find the highest score. However, as the discussion makes clear, there is no complete list of words to put into the computer, and this would make running the program rather difficult! – David Robinson Mar 22 '19 at 19:39
  • In the game where nobody challenges it would be much easier to program the computer, or even work it out without a computer, so the question is answerable - and the answer given above may even be correct. – David Robinson Mar 22 '19 at 19:39