J-Scrabble Professional

1. Board game, used to place new words in accordance with scrabble rules. The tiles can be dragged with left mouse button or by single click over the board area.

2. The rack with your tiles. Drag your tiles over the board with left mouse button.

3. The rack for exchange. When you are not able to arrange a valuable word you can use your turn for exchanging some of tiles from your rack. Just dragged the tiles over the rack for exchange and press button Exchange.

4. The window showing information about scores, game time, move time and actual player turn sepparate for each human or computer player.

5. The button OK accepts word placed on the board and changes turn to the next player. Pass button passes the turn. Exchange button exchanges some of your tiles and changes turn.

6. Letter for blank selection. Blank can substitute any letter during the game. When arranging a word with blank you have to define what letter does it substitute for. The substitution is valid until the end of game.

7. Status window that shows errors and system messages that can appear during the game. In status window there are also word definition displayed.

8. Message window.

9. Button panel:

• Button New game starts new game. Game configuration, including list of players and time limits can be selected on "Options" tab.
• Button Shuffle rearranges the tiles on your rack. It can help you find a valuable word from your letters.
• Button Hint finds the most valuable word possible to play from your letters and places it on the board. Next press of this button causes next possible word to be placed on the board, and so on...
• Button Used plates displays window that can be used to mark tiles used in the game and therefore deduce what letters left in the bag.
• Button Save game stores state of current game to the file. Saved game can be loaded and continued later.
• Button Load game opens the file and restored saved game.
• Button Rating displays window with list of yours best buttles.
• Button Screenshot saves view of board to a file. The view is saved in PNG image format.
• Button About... displays basic information about the program.

Tab "Board Editor" allows freely manipulate a set of tiles on the board and racks. Tiles left in the bag are shown in upper right corner of the tab. These tiles can be dragged to and from the board or the rack. It is possible to play a game starting from defined compination plates on the board. In order to achieve this switch to "Editor" tab and put required tiles on the board, then switch to "Main" tab and continue your game. By pressing the button "All moves" you can show all possible moves available from your rack and taking account the current board configuration. The algorithm used for moves generation is very fast and generation of solution list almost always takes a fraction of second. However in case of two blanks on your rack it can take up to several seconds. Clicking on the list item causes selected word to be placed over the board. If word has definition included in the dictionary it is shown in the status window.

Tab "Options" offers a several option settings of the game, including selection of list of players, selection of skill level for computer player and selection of time limit for move and for game.

Tab "Dictionary" allows searching of given word in dictionary and checking its meaning. It is also possible to search words matching given pattern. You can define patterns using '?' (question mark) and '*' (asteriks) metacharacters. A question mark replaces any single character, an asteriks replaces a chain of characters. While searching a word it should be kept in mind that the dictionary doesn't contains a words longer than 15 characters and words that cannot be used in the Scrabble game.

Top 10 Rank stores in the file ten best results. The rank is updated after end of each game. Your point score is saved in the file and allows you to track your improvements in the game during next plays. Due to file access limitations the Top 10 Rank requires Java version 1.4 or higher.