What is "duplicate scrabble"

n. A form of the board game Scrabble where an announcer draws a set of letters, announces them to the players in the room who all draw the same seven letters, and all players play from the same position with the same letters.

Duplicate Scrabble is a variant of the board game Scrabble where all the players are faced with the same board and letters at the same time and must play the highest scoring word they can find. Although duplicate is rarely played at competition level in English, it is the most popular form of the game in French and is also played in other languages, such as Romanian and Dutch. The largest French Scrabble festivals can attract over 2000 people and some individual tournaments can count over 1000 participants per game. Although not popular for competitions in English, the computer game Scrabble 2005 contains a duplicate version allowing up to 16 players to play on the same board at once. It was also used on the UK TV game show TV Scrabble as one of the rounds.