Scrabble variants are formed. This variation is also used on "Scrabble Showdown". This game has the same size board and nearly the same scoring system as Scrabble. The major differences are the inclusion of twelve wild tiles marked with an asterisk that may represent one letter or any series of letters and special board squares that convert a regular letter tile into a wild tile (the tile in question is placed upside down on such a square). The nature of these changes shifts the emphasis of the game from playing short words to playing words of any length. For example, QUA*IST, could
Scrabble (game show) configuration as the premium squares on the original Scrabble board, awarded money as shown in the sections below. Whenever two new contestants played this round, a backstage coin toss determined who would start the first word. Following the 1986 episode re-structuring, if a champion was playing the first Crossword, it was started by the challenger. Each successive word was started by the trailing contestant, or by the one who did not start the previous word if the score was tied. In the first week of the show, a cumulative money pot was used in the Crossword round. Each letter placed