If not, there's a fortune to be made. That game would be great in Kana. Plus, add a rule where drawing the word in Kanji nets extra points.

On a side note, is there a site that lists kana by frequency? You can't trust scanning of newsgroups or websites unless the program is smart enough to break kanji into it's kana then do the count. Otherwise, post position particles rank the highest.

I dare say this would be much more fun (possible) using romaji. 

Kana words would be REALLY short - and short words really screw up a scrabble game.  It creates a serious logjam.  I ran into this a lot playing scrabble with students when I worked at a conversation school.  They'd always use words with only 3-4 letters, which after a few turns made the board almost impossible to use.  For me, the challenge was not in beating them (obviously), but making sure the board stayed playable. 

Anyways, as an example of what might happen using kana, someone begins the game with　わかる:

わ　か　る

Then someone else puts the word かかる:
　　か
わ　か　る
　　る


The game basically grinds to a hault at that point.  The same problem exists in english by intersecting small words:

   D
L O G
   G

I think if you bought a few scrabble games, put all the pieces together, then eliminated any English consonants not used in Japanese - that might work pretty well.

Last edited by Ben_Nielson (2008 December 28, 2:07 am)

Ben_Nielson wrote:

I dare say this would be much more fun (possible) using romaji. 

Kana words would be REALLY short - and short words really screw up a scrabble game.  It creates a serious logjam.  I ran into this a lot playing scrabble with students when I worked at a conversation school.  They'd always use words with only 3-4 letters, which after a few turns made the board almost impossible to use.  For me, the challenge was not in beating them (obviously), but making sure the board stayed playable. 

Anyways, as an example of what might happen using kana, someone begins the game with　わかる:

わ　か　る

Then someone else puts the word かかる:
　　か
わ　か　る
　　る


The game basically grinds to a hault at that point.  The same problem exists in english by intersecting small words:

   D
L O G
   G

I think if you bought a few scrabble games, put all the pieces together, then eliminated any English consonants not used in Japanese - that might work pretty well.

somebody could put in a "tsu" making katsu and tsuru

Old topic, but I was googling Japanese Scrabble, so...

　　　　あ
　　　　や
　　か　つ
わ　か　る
　　る