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 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