World's biggest Scrabble Lagoon!
Back to index of Scrabble pages by Donald Sauter.
Please visit the Scrabble For Word Lovers introduction page.
A Scrabble lagoon is an empty region of the Scrabble board
completely surrounded by words that connect snugly in a loop.
Witness the world's largest ever Scrabble lagoon:
If the board were viewed as a pirate's map where each Scrabble square
represents 1 acre, this lagoon covers a whopping 72 acres!
When I say the tiles must "connect snugly," I mean more than just corner-to-corner. For instance, the two spaces in front of RIB do not form a lagoon; the water all drains out at the corner between the U and the R.
So a Scrabble lagoon requires making a play that involves two unconnected tiles already on the board. This is a big step up in difficulty from just playing through a single letter, making it a fairly uncommon play in Scrabble, and something to be at least a little proud of.
What you see here is Scrabble II as played in the years before the Scrabble For Word Lovers suite of games was completed and perfected. Back when this game was played, Scrabble II did not have the nice tile mix, stretch bonuses, or swap for the blank, even.
Even so, it compares very favorably to "regular" Scrabble played at the highest level. The 29 words on this board average 4.7 letters. This compares to 40 words averaging 3.7 letters for the top experts. If you visit the up-to-date Scrabble II For Word Lovers introduction page, you'll see the average number of words on the board is now about 19, and the average word length is about 6 letters!
For what it's worth, here's the board and some statistics presented in plain text. The board is shown twice. The second grid has all the tiles flipped across the diagonal. This makes words that were vertical on the original board horizontal on the flipped board. The net result is that you can read all the words played just by scanning left to right as you normally read, and simply ignoring anything going on vertically.
+ + + R +
A E
L C R
*I OATMEAl N* * K HURRY *
M O WOODIE IMBIBE A O
B S S ERRANT U
I E T LOOSED AR V
BED L A I I
RACKER EM T BOOZY
R C A M P I
H A PUNIER N E U BEE
U N E U HE AW NEGATER
ERRATA G I E lO I
R RIB A SOILAGE O E
YOU O T E N D CRUISE E
O BE ZINC I O Z N
VIZIER E NESTLE HEINIES
* Y E ENSIGNS * MANE L N I
A C G
G N
+ + + E S +
Season: 07
Game: 015
Date: January 28, 2009
Players: LYNN DON
Total turns: 21
Total tiles played: 105
Unplayed tile: Q
Power tiles: 9 Q Z Z _ S S S S S
Anomalies: 4B 18E no F no J no P no X
Percent expected vowels: 112%
Words on final board:
7: ENSIGNS HEINIES NEGATER OATMEAL SOILAGE
6: CRUISE ERRANT ERRATA IMBIBE LOOSED NESTLE PUNIER RACKER VIZIER WOODIE
5: BOOZY HURRY
4: MANE ZINC
3: BED BEE RIB YOU
2: AR AW BE EM HE LO
While we're on Scrabble lagoons, I might as well mention that in October 2014 we formed the world's second largest one. This lagoon measures 65 acres.
This is a Scrabble III game. I invite you to visit my
Scrabble III For BIG Word Lovers
intro page to see Scrabble opened up to the biggest words in your brain.
Here are some statistics on this game.
9: RELOADERS 8: DOUBTING FLAPPERS REPRICES FOREPLAY GROUTING REGULARS 7: HORIZON COLLARS BENCHES YEAREND IVORIES 6: BONDED PEEVES TRUNKS 2: EH DO DO ON Titles: 101 total; 97 played; unplayed tiles O U A C Power tiles: 11 Z _ _ _ _ S S S S S S Tile oddities: 4C 3I no M 12R 2T no W Percent expected vowels: 97% Words on board: 19 total; 19.2 normalized. Average word length: 6.21 letters.
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