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World-championship-caliber Scrabble☆☆SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the USA by Hasbro Inc., in Canada by Hasbro Canada Corporation, and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc.

Artificial IntelligencePublished 1 January 2002
Brian Sheppard
Citations124
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.84
SNIP3.30

TL;DR

MAVEN combines a selective move generator, simulations of likely game scenarios, and the B* algorithm to produce a world-championship-caliber Scrabble-playing program.

Abstract

Computer Scrabble programs have achieved a level of performance that exceeds that of the strongest human players. Maven was the first program to demonstrate this against human opposition. Scrabble is a game of imperfect information with a large branching factor. The techniques successfully applied in two-player games such as chess do not work here. Maven combines a selective move generator, simulations of likely game scenarios, and the B∗ algorithm to produce a world-championship-caliber Scrabble-playing program.

Keywords

Computer ScienceEconomics, Econometrics and FinanceSocial Sciences