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 made in 1989 did not affect game play. The major changes in 1999 were as follows: In the notation system common in tournament play, columns are labeled with the letters "A-O" and rows with the numbers "1-15". (On "Scrabble" boards manufactured by Mattel as well as on the Internet Scrabble Club, rows are lettered while columns are numbered instead.) A play is usually identified in the format "xy WORD score" or "WORD xy score", where "x" denotes the column or row on which the play's main word extends, "y" denotes the second coordinate of the main word's first letter, and