Too bad the letter values in Scrabble were fixed in 1948. Since then, all kinds of new words have been added to the dictionary, and the point values are all out of whack. For example, now that "QAT" is allowed, the Q is a veritable goldmine at 10 points.
Other letters are gaining popularity, too. Soon you'll be able to add "e" to the beginning of any word (email, e-server, e-business -- email is already unhyphenated and it's just a matter of time before the others are, too). Or "i" -- as in iPod, iTunes, i-this, i-that. When we land on the moon, we will probably be building mcars, mhouses, mvehicles, etc.
Anyway, the Scrabble people do keep a list of all the newly added words and the current vocabulary set, even though they don't publish new paper versions of the dictionary.
The iScrabble set comes with an electronic board which wirelessly downloads all the acceptable words from the Official Scrabble Game server, then sets all the letters to values appropriate to their usabilities. LCD displays on each tile display the point value (rounded to the nearest 0.1). All this is done before the game starts.
Don't worry about scoring, the board does that for you. Put your tiles down and press the [Score Me] button, and your score (along with your cumulative score) shows on the board's built in calculator.
Try an invalid word and... Uh-Oh!!! Antipolarized magnets located underneath the board turn on and fling the offending tiles into the air.
Further additions to this product are welcome.-- phundug, Feb 04 2004 iPod, iTunes, etc are proper nouns and not allowed in scrabble anyway. But bun for combining the tactile nature of the traditional game and the electronic scoring.-- oneoffdave, Feb 05 2004 iPod and iTunes will at some point become common words, if their trademark is not defended vigorously enough.-- phundug, Feb 05 2004 I think Apple learned a valuable lesson about trademark defense while it watched IBM gain market share in the PC buisness. I don't think you'll find them too quick to stomp down on the ipod.
[phundug] illegal or incorrectly spelled words should not be automatically tossed off the board without a challenge from another competitor. other than that small quibble... +-- ato_de, Feb 05 2004 Yeah, I was thinking that... So perhaps there's a "Challenge" button that, when pressed, tosses illegal tiles into the air.
And you should see what the "I resign" button does...-- phundug, Feb 05 2004 random, halfbakery