Anyway, I've thought up quite a few other versions of Scrabble in the meantime, and here's one that suits Welsh down to the ground .... here it is after a few turns ... see if you can work out what's going on. By the way, I'm sure you'll want to edmygu my Welsh Scrabble set ....
Saunders Lewis Gruff Rhys
Y (2) YN (2)
NA ( 3) AR (2)
NAG ( 4) FY (3)
AF (4) NA (2)
EN (4) YNA (6)
YM (7) WEN (6)
FFWL (14) FEL (7)
AREN (4) FRWD (7)
DA (2) AR (2)
NEU (3) IG (3)
Scores so far 47 40
Obviously, the idea here is to score as little as possible ! So Gruff is winning with 40 points. Welsh is packed with tiny tiny words..ideal ! You often see whole sentences that only have 2- or 3-letter words in them.
Playing for the lowest score you can needs a few extra rules though. You've got to make sure that players don't pretend that they can't "go" to avoid putting down a high-scoring word .... so if they do claim that they can't do anything, the other player can inspect their tiles and see if a word can be made.... and if a word can be made, they have to play it plus a suitable penalty.
Also, I've been doing it with 8 tiles not the usual 7 .... I figured that it would give you a better chance to not have to miss a go ... see Rule 1.
You can see the 8 tiles for the next move .. what would you do ?
Paradoxically, I reckon this variant of the game should zip through pretty quickly, as you won't have to spend ages trying to think up huge words.
Anyway, more Scrabble variants are in the pipeline ... but now, a fine tune ... dwi'm gwbod y teitl .... ha ! the youtube transferring peiriant is sulking ... I'll put it on later ... if you want to look at it for yourself, here's the link ... I hope .... ( later .. it's working now .. the music is a bit lower down ....
youtu.be/NSaT_S-f7go
...here's how the game looked after a lot more moves ..... Gruff is winning with a mere 138, and Saunders is losing heavily with a massive 177. Mind you, the exciting and decisive part will come a bit further on when each side could be forced to play its high-value letters like NG ,FF, C and J ( ouch !) ac ati.