Maven (Scrabble) on Scrabble. The problem with Alpha Beta is that some Scrabble endgames require 14 moves to play out, and it is not possible to search that deeply. This is not merely a theoretical possibility. When one player is "stuck" with a tile, then playing out all remaining tiles is impossible. In that situation the optimal strategy for both sides is usually to play one tile on each turn. Maven uses a different approach. The B* search algorithm is a selective-depth, progressive-widening algorithm that guarantees to find optimal solutions to two-player games when one can compute upper and lower bounds on
Scrabble making them slightly smaller than the squares on the board. Only the rosewood tiles of the deluxe edition varies the width up to for different letters. Travelling versions of the game often have smaller tiles (e.g. ); sometimes they are magnetic to keep them in place. The capital letter is printed in black at the centre of the tile face and the letter's point value printed in a smaller font at the bottom right corner. S is one of the most valuable tiles in English-language Scrabble because it can be appended to many words to pluralize them (or in the