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
Scrabble (game show) off their case" for "detective"). Viewers could win a "Scrabble" T-shirt by submitting a word and clue and having them selected for use in the show's opening title sequence. The first round of every game was the Crossword round, in which two contestants competed to guess words as they were laid out on a computer-generated Scrabble board. Originally, two new contestants played each Crossword, with the winner advancing to the Scrabble Sprint to face the reigning champion (see below). On September 29, 1986, as part of a broader format change, episodes were re-structured to include two Crosswords. The first Crossword