Can a Blank represent a blank?

by Jake
(Minneapolis)

If a blank can represent anything, can it represent nothing? If I have placed it next to an "A" as a last move, have I simply (by my election) created the word: "A"? And, then I'm out?

If the word: "Duck" is on the board, may I add: "Blank" - BLIND? The Blank serving as a space or hyphen?

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Hi there Jake - an interesting question. In short, the answer is no. The blank has to be declared as a letter of the alphabet. See the wording of the relevant rule I've highlighted in the image at the top of this post.

Occasionally, I've seen games that have ended with a player having just a blank on their rack - a very frustrating outcome for the player involved. The reason is that they couldn't use all their letters, so they decided to use all but the blank to minimize the damage of subtracting the value of their remaining tiles at the end of the game (a blank scores zero, so doesn't reduce your score at the end).

The idea of a blank being used for a hyphen or other punctuation mark has been bandied about a few times in Scrabble circles before. It might make for an interesting variation of Scrabble, but the rules are very clear on the 'official' function of the blank tile.

Thanks for asking, Jake, and I hope I haven't cost you a win ;-)

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