Scrabble Sprint makeup word rules

[Superballer]

Exactly when would a contestant have to do a makeup word, as the exact usage of the rule seemed to vary a bit from the episodes I've seen over the years?  I'd want to say it was invoked whenever they guessed a word wrong with only one letter remaining in it unrevealed, but I'm not sure if that was absolute. 

[SeaBreeze341]

Although I haven't watched Scrabble (as it relates to seeing the entire run) in quite a long time, I actually re-watched a couple of episodes and some clips not too long ago (about 2-3 months ago.  Since a contestant was up against another, they had to answer 3 or 4 in however long it took, with his or her opponent having the chance to do the same with the same correct words in less time (for the championship).  So with one letter, if the person miss it, it was discarded, but not with more than one.

That was based on what I recently watched and what I can recall without seeing much else in years.  I did target all the segments with all the different rules; there was a contestant who took a minute and a half because he twice buzzed in inadvertently.  The second time he was down to one letter for the word Rudeness but based on the clue, he thought it was something else.  Didn't help when he knew an answer he didn't hit the buzzer right away to stop the clock.

[pannoni1]

^

That was the infamous Sang with NUDENESS on his third word and also MUSIC on the make-up word instead of BASIC. This was in 1985 when both players played the same three words (prior to it expanding to four). 87 seconds remains the record in terms of the longest Sprint, and its even more impressive when it was only for three words instead of four. His opponent wasn't that much better, who had to play TWO makeup words, and guessed NUDENESS like his opponent, but avoided the 10 second penalty due to letting time expire after revealing the last letter available.

Another question is the length of the makeup words. Mostly they were five letter words, but IIRC from watching USA reruns there were some six and even a couple seven letter makeups. Any idea if that was the case?

[SeaBreeze341]

The episode and clip with Sang was probably one of the funniest if not funniest segment during the entire run, IMO.  When you’re probably done, you can’t handle it with more class than that (or maybe in this case a simple “Oh Well. It’s just a game” reaction).  Chuck was having fun at the total mishap, and while at Sang’s expense, fair enough it wasn’t over.  IIRC, this was a popular clip that was posted at Game Show Central a couple decades ago.


I have to check on whether they used 6 or 7 letter make-up words.  Might not get a chance until the weekend at the earliest, but I think I’ve seen 6 early on.  I can’t imagine too much in later seasons, but maybe they had to reserve those for the bonus sprint