Scrabble Showdown Flash". In this round, the team is given five over-sized "Scrabble Flash" cubes, each with a different letter. The first team has thirty seconds to make as many words as possible; each word must contain at least three letters, and each valid word is worth one point for each letter used; there is at least one valid five-letter word. Both teams play the same set of letters; the team that is to go second is isolated while the first team plays. The team with the higher score wins a prize and two "Bonus Scrabble Tiles." Before the round begins, a
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