COMPUTER BASED SCRABBLE GAME
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1 Background of the Project
Scrabble is an old classic board game, with game rules that are not very complicated. Compared to other classic board games, such as Chess, there are more factors to take into consideration when making a move in Scrabble. Apart from anagramming and generating words, there are other crucial decisions to make. A player would probably find several legal moves in one round, and then would have to decide which one to place. Choosing the move that generates the highest score is not always the ideal way to go. It could be that making such a move would create a situation in the next round where nothing could be done, or let the opponent score highly.
Making the choice of which move to use include many factors, and there are several different techniques and strategies one can follow to make the decision easier. Hitting the bonus squares can generate an extremely high score, hence one strategy is to try to always hit the bonus squares and prevent the opponent from doing the same. Another way of being successful is to prioritize using letters with high score, since they would not only generate a high total score to the player, but could also create difficult situations in the future if not used as soon as possible.
Scrabble game is a simple game played by four, three, two even one
person. Scrabble game is also played with tiles and encountered on a
special and well-designed board. The game can be played with a board
disserted with a cross-like path. In between any of the two arms of the
cross path is a center square calved out as a square box, which has a
symbol of star.
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At the down side of this board, there is a device called a Rack where the tiles are been placed before they are picked. This rack can be any colour depending on the developer or the user, titles and the rack can have the same colour. This rack is occupied by seven tiles at a starting and can be change or shuffle when the need arises. Each player has a starting point (middle) where he/she will place the tiles when picked. This spot is of different colour as the box (others) and is called the starting point. Other features of the board include smaller square boxes that make up the steps on the path which each tile steps on as it enters the path to produce a word. There are double and tripple word squares on the board. In the double word lines or square if two tiles that will generate a meaning are placed there, the player will score a high mark likewise the tripple word square. There are tiles, which are used to call for placement, which determine how the score is been ranked on the score device. Some makes use of the standard set number, while some make use of only seven (7) depending on the players.
When the game is being played, the objective of each player is to navigate his tile on the path to achieve a meaningful word. And any player whose tiles finished first wins the games or any player that scores the highest point wins the game i.e. top score or best player. But in other hand, the player whose tiles remain after number-of- players have finish, come last and become the worst looser. Each player must abide by the
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rules and regulation of the game that will be specified in subsequent
chapters.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Because scrabble game is played manually, young people do not have much interest in it. But making it computer based will make young people to enjoy it.
1.3 Objective of the Project
The objective of this study is stated as following:
To make scrabble game join the most other games in computer “world”
To handle cheating in scrabble game and to standardize the game.
To simulate scrabble game using computer.
1.4 Project justification
This project is justified because making scrabble computer based enhances learning.
1.5 Scope of the Project
The scope of this project is to design a computer based scrabble game.
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1.6 Project Report Organization
This project is organized into six chapters. Chapter one is the
Introduction, chapter two is the Literature Review, chapter three is the
Methodology and System Analysis, chapter four is the System Design,
chapter five is the System Implementation and Testing and chapter six is
the Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation.
1.7 Definition of terms
Anchor square: Vacant board square adjacent to a placed tile.
Bag: Tiles that have not been drawn by players.
BOR: Balance on rack player.
BS: Bonus square player.
Cross check set: Set of possible letters on an anchor square with regardto adjacent word going vertical from named square.
DAWG: Directed acyclic word graph.
HSW: High score word player.
Vowel ratio: Ratio describing how many of the total number of tiles are
vowels.
Game: game is any activity which is executed only for pleasure andwithout conscious purpose
Programming: The act of instructing a computer to do your bidding
Center star Square: This is a start square n the board that doubles the
word.
Database: Organized store computerized data.
Entertainments: This is a condition that is considered favourable
Exchange: The act of taken and replacing.
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Hints: Piece of practical formation.
Human: This is a type of game choose in scrabble
I spy:This is a game played by order children.
Kits: Instruments used in playing scrabble game.
Play Now Button: A command button that make the game to start.
Premium Square: This is a start up square, which double the words.
Quit Button: A button used to terminate the operation of the game.
Rack: A device that holds the tiles in a scrabble game.
Score: To win or obtain a point in a competitive activity.
Scrabble Game: A game played on a board covered in square in whichplayer wins point by combining letter.
Scrabble Dictionary: A device in the scrabble game where words are
listed
Shuffle: Often to give an appearance of activity when nothing usefulis being done.
Solitaire: One persons game e.g. word game.
Submit: This makes the letter to be permanent on the board and alsoscore the player.
Tiles: A piece of plastic used in playing game.
Triple word score: This triples the number of word on it.
Triple letter score: This triples the number of letter placed on it.
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CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. The new game, which he called "Criss-Crosswords," added the 15×15 gameboard and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day.
In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game (including the distribution of letters) unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the "premium" squares of the board and simplified the rules; he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble", a real word which means "to scratch frantically". In 1949, Brunot and his family made sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, a section of Newtown. They made 2,400 sets that year, but lost money. According to legend, Scrabble's big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy's, played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game. He placed a large order and within a year, "everyone had to have one.
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In 1952, unable to meet demand himself, Brunot sold manufacturing rights to Long Island-based Selchow and Righter, one of the manufacturers who, like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company, had previously rejected the game. In its second year as a Selchow and Righter-built product, nearly four million sets were sold.
Selchow and Righter bought the trademark to the game in 1972. JWSpears began selling the game in Australia and the UK on January 19, 1955. The company is now a subsidiary of Mattel. In 1986, Selchow and Righter was sold to Coleco, who soon after went bankrupt. The company's assets, including Scrabble and Parcheesi, were purchased by Hasbro.
In 1984, Scrabble was turned into a daytime game show on NBC. Scrabble ran from July 1984 to March 1990, with a second run from January to June 1993. The show was hosted by Chuck Woolery. The tagline of the show in promo broadcasts was, "Every man dies; not every man truly Scrabbles." In 2011, a new TV variation of Scrabble, called Scrabble Showdown, aired on The Hub cable channel, which is a joint venture of Discovery Communications, Inc. and Hasbro. Scrabble was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2004
2.1.1 Dictionary representation
Words from a dictionary can be stored by representing the letters as edges in a trie. A path represents a word. Each path can have sub-paths that
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represent shorter word variations by letting the nodes mark the end of a word.
Appel and Jacobsen showed that the size of the dictionary representation can be reduced with a Directed Acyclic Word Graph, referred to as a DAWG, Jacobsen, (1988). The DAWG can be constructed by first creating a trie and minimizing it by finding cases where two or more words can share a common letter (node).
A new edge is then created from the previous node in one of the words to the other words node. Finally, the unnecessary edge and node are removed.
A trie has a lot of redundancy, because identical edges and nodes are stored, while the DAWG allows elimination of duplications.
A dictionary consisting of more than 100 000 words occupies 0.5 MB with a trie, but is reduced to only 175 kB with a DAWG
.