Scrabble - C++ Console Game

A Scrabble game I wrote back in 2001 as a uni assignment using Visual Studio 2002. Recently dusted it off, got it compiling under C++17 with Code::Blocks/MinGW, and fixed a few bugs that had been lurking since the original version.

What it does

• 2-4 player local Scrabble on a 15x15 board
• 100-tile bag with proper letter distribution
• Scoring with connected word detection
• Tile exchange, skip turns, 50-point bonus for using all 7 tiles
• Custom console library (concol) for coloured text and screen positioning

Building

Needs Windows (uses Windows Console API) and a C++17 compiler. Run from cmd.exe — Windows Terminal has console buffer issues with the classic API.

Code::Blocks: Open Scarble.cbp, hit F9.

Command line:

g++ -Wall -std=c++17 -c Main.cpp Scrabble.cpp Board.cpp Player.cpp Rack.cpp Tile.cpp TileBag.cpp square.cpp concol.cpp
g++ -o Scarble.exe *.o

Make sure letfil.bin is in the same directory as the executable.

What changed from the 2001 version

• Fixed an off-by-one in the bubble sort that skipped the last comparison pass
• Fixed buffer size for 7-letter words (C++17 size-safe extraction needs room for null terminator)
• Fixed scoring at board edges (row/col 0 and 14 were being skipped)
• Fixed boundary checks in tile touching detection
• Fixed tile recovery when invalid moves are entered (was losing tiles)
• Game now ends automatically when tile bag and all racks are empty
• Switched from rand()/srand() to <random>
• Replaced the old C arrays with std::array for the board
• General cleanup: std::optional for the tile bag grab, range-based loops where it made sense, made members private that should have been private
• Fixed all the compiler warnings (there were a lot)
• Resolved std::byte vs Windows byte namespace clash

License

MIT License (c) C.Brown 2001-2026