Игра с буквами: Анаграммы и варианты

Tile based word game

Anagrams (also published under names including Anagram, Snatch and Word Making and Taking) is a tile based word game that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words. The game pieces are a set of tiles with letters on one side. Tiles are shuffled face down then turned over one by one, players forming words by combining them with existing words, their own or others'. The game has never been standardized and there are many varieties of sets and rules. Anagrams is often played with tiles from another word game, such as Scrabble or Bananagrams.

Reputed to have originated as a Victorian word game, Anagrams has appeared in many versions since then. An early modern version is Charles Hammett's Word Making and Taking, released in 1877. The first version to include the word Anagrams in its name may have been The Game of Letters and Anagrams on Wooden Blocks, published by Parker Brothers around 1890. Another game called Anagrams was published in 1934 by Selchow and Righter, which published Scrabble in 1953. Spelling and Anagrams (a set incorporating two distinct games, Spelling and Anagrams) was also published in the 1930s. In 1975, Selchow published Scrabble Scoring Anagrams, which featured tiles with point values like those in Scrabble. Another version was published in the 1960s by the now defunct Transogram. The Embossing Company, formerly Halsam Products Company, also produced a yellow on black Eye Rest set. Leslie Scott (the creator of Jenga) published a variation called Swipe in the early 1980s, and since 1990, Scott's company, Oxford Games Ltd, has published Anagram. Tyco published Up For Grabs in 1995. Prodijeux has been marketing a variant, WordXchange, since 2000, and Portobello Games produced a version, Snatch It, in 2001. One Up! is a version that adds a "wild" tile that can be any letter, like a blank tile in Scrabble. Some players use several sets of tiles from games such as Scrabble or Upwords to play Anagrams, and a version of the game is popular among tournament Scrabble players. Writers John Ciardi, James Merrill, John Malcolm Brinnin, and Richard Wilbur reputedly played together regularly in Key West, Florida, sometimes also with novelist John Hersey.

The National Scrabble Association has published a set of rules for competitive Anagrams play in tournament setting. On a player's turn, after revealing a tile, they have a ten second window during which only they can call a word. If a player calls a word on their own turn they take an extra turn. After 100 turns, the order of play reverses. Minimum word length is six letters.

One variation is to have each player have a "bank" of tiles in front of themselves, which affords players a clearer view of the "pool" of face up letter tiles in the middle of the table.

A faster paced version—sometimes known as "Alaskan rules"—has each of the players (or several, if there are too many) simultaneously put a tile into the pool. This results in many more possibilities being available at a time.

Players may not create a word by creating a word that is already on the table or steal one resulting in such a word. Some versions of the game name the winner as the person who, after the round of turns has finished, first acquires eight words. If more than one player has done so, then the winner is the player is the one with the most tiles. There may be a tie. A very similar rule found in The Embossing Company set simply says the "first player to complete ten words, wins." Players are permitted to combine two or more existing words with zero or more letters from the pool to create a single new word. This is often difficult in practice.

A game of Anagrams is played in the Alfred Hitchcock 1941 thriller film Suspicion.