Scrabble (game show) wild card contestants competed in semifinal matches on Monday through Thursday. The four winners advanced to the final matches that Friday, with a grand prize of $100,000 for the winner. With slight adjusting, this tournament format became the new permanent "Scrabble" format on December 29, 1986. As noted above, each episode now featured four contestants and two Crossword games worth $500 each. The champion played in the first Crossword, whose winner set a Sprint time for the second winner to beat, and the Sprint winner received $1,000 and took or retained the championship. With this format change, "Scrabble" became a
Tile tracking using AI or Artificial Intelligence. While the practice of tile-tracking is considered an acceptable part of Scrabble and sanctioned by NSA and NASPA rules, there is much colloquial evidence to suggest that tile-tracking as both a legitimate technique and a strategic tool is not widely known outside of the Scrabble community. The similarities to the technique to 'card counting' is credited as contributing to some of the confusion among novice players. Zynga's Words with Friends online game includes tile-tracking as a paid feature, known as 'Peeks'. This received some criticism as being a form of "cheating" that the Zynga both