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 Showdown set of 16 letter tiles are placed on the board. A randomizer then causes tiles to light up. Each team is allowed to stop the randomizer; a team starts the final round with the regulation value of the tiles that they stop the randomizer on; the number of tiles that the randomizer lights up is the number of "Bonus Scrabble Tiles" that the team had earned from the three previous rounds. This becomes their "head start" score before playing "Scrabble Lightning". The game is played on a regulation Scrabble board with only the double and triple-word score spaces (the double