What is the history of Criss Cross?

The history of Criss Cross derives from Scrabble, but with a lot of modifications like an indefinite number of cards, and in infinitely large play area instead of only a 15 by 15 grid, provided you make enough space and don't make too big of cards.

1. The idea that started it all

I once loved Scrabble from a long time ago, and the letter scores made me think of another idea: finding a letter's precise value and rarity and base it on 13 [back then, 13 was one of my favorite numbers, and still is today] where 13 meant that the item was one of a kind to all in the universe, or group. This lead to quite a long time of trying to figure out the precise values accurate to the tenths. Currently, it's only the letters that have a score value of 4 or more that may get changed, especially the five junk letters.

Once those letter rarities were figured out, I then started to figure out a way to make Criss Cross as much different as possible from Scrabble. Key things include:

The ability to use the "square effect".
The ability to use names of famous places and the related.
An indefinite number of players can play.
An infinitely large play area whereas you only have a 15x15 grid for Scrabble. Criss Cross can get into the millions, provided you have nearly 15 miles of space [assumes cards are 1 inch by 1 inch]....
A completely different scoring method where you first add the score values for each letter used in a word, then multiply that value by the number of letters you use. Also, there are all sorts of bonuses you can get and customizable rules if all players agree on them.
A completely different method of drawing where the dice plays the roll [oh, I mean, role].
The use of the precise values.
And overall, how the game works.

2. Process of development

The next stage in the process of development was how to establish all these features into one game. First, the cards presented an issue as I didn't know how to distribute them. I knew that E, A, S, and T are the four most common letters, in which their precise values are less than 1, they had to be the most common. Junk letters, like J, Q, V, X, and Z should be almost absent. I knew I had to deal with the precise values to ensure of a fair distribution of each letter. After some time on how to do this and after remaking the cards about 3 times, I found out the best way. The formula, shown below, describes this.

In this formula, BS stands for your base, and RI stands for rarity index, the precise value of the letter. E is the most common with .6 for it's rarity index and precise value. A good, long game would use a base of 20. To use this formula, you do know that fractions mean division, use 20 for the "BS" variable and .6 for the "RI" variable and you get an answer of 33 1/3. Because you can't have a fraction of a card [it wouldn't make any sense at all if you did], rounding it to the nearest whole number was the best solution. E would get 33 cards. Q, the rarest letter, has a rarity of 11.8. This means that, after doing the math, you only get 2 Q's. Increase the base value to 50, and you get only 4 Q's, but 83 E's! That distribution seemed perfectly optimal.

3. Developing the scoring method

To keep Criss Cross as much different from Scrabble as possible, but make it fair enough, I had to develop a scoring method far different and unique. Because making words of more letters is harder to accomplish, I had to make a better adjustment for this besides just adding the score values for each letter. I thought of multiplying the number of letters used to make that word. This not only made sense, but, because longer words require more cards, and that they are much harder to make from a small selection, multiplying your added score by the number of letters used seemed optimal, however, what about the special features like the Square Effect?

The Square Effect posed many unique problems and unique answers to go with those unique problems. Because of the Square Effect's nature of having one letter next to each other without any gaps in the grid, often, you'll create a line of words in which you'll almost always cause some words to appear that aren't real words. Take this example:

Incorrect version:

-----------------------------------------
|   C   |   U   |   B   |   E   |   S   |
|  3/3  | 1.8/2 | 4.3/4 | 0.6/1 | 0.9/1 |
-----------------------------------------
        |   N   |
        | 1.1/1 |
        ---------
        |   D   |
        | 2.1/2 |
---------------------------------
|   T   |   E   |   N   |   T   |
| 0.8/1 | 0.6/1 | 1.1/1 | 0.8/1 |
---------------------------------
        |   R   |   O   |
        |  1/1  |  1/1  |
        -----------------

Correct version:

-----------------------------------------
|   C   |   U   |   B   |   E   |   S   |
|  3/3  | 1.8/2 | 4.3/4 | 0.6/1 | 0.9/1 |
-----------------------------------------
        |   N   |
        | 1.1/1 |
        ---------       ---------
        |   D   |       |   A   |
        | 2.1/2 |       | 0.9/1 |
---------------------------------
|   T   |   E   |   N   |   T   |
| 0.8/1 | 0.6/1 | 1.1/1 | 0.8/1 |
---------------------------------
        |   R   |   O   |   T   |
        |  1/1  |  1/1  | 0.8/1 |
        -------------------------
                        |   I   |
                        |  1/1  |
                        ---------
                        |   C   |
                        |  3/3  |
                        ---------

The reason for the incorrect version of this same scenario is that you cannot have "RO" standing out as "ro" is not a word. Adding a "T" on the end makes it word, but "tt" is definitely not a word, so "attic" was made to satisfy all words so that you all possible arrangements horizontally and vertically [but not diagonally], made words. From the correct version, creating how the scoring method would work presented a challenge. I originally thought of using the precise values added together and multiplied that by the number of cards there were that are part of the Square Effect minus 3. Since there's six here, you'd multiply the precise values added by 3. What to do with this extra number wasn't known until about 2 hours later. I thought of then multiplying it to all scores from each word created [the words are "rot", "no", and "attic"]. However, the big minus on this is that if someone got a really big square effect, those who never get close to the biggest Square Effect are guarenteed to lose. In the original scoring method before the present one for this exact scenario above, you'd score 4 points for "no", 9 points for "rot", and 35 points for "attic" giving 48 points for these words. Then, add all the precise values [.6+1.1+.8+1+1+.8=5.3] and multiply it to the total word score of 48 to get 254.4 points. Finally, take that and multiply by the number of cards in the actual square minus 3, or 3 to give a grand total of 763.2 points. You'd need to make the word "attic" about 22 times in all to make that many points, but that player gets to play again and keep scoring, unless they get a penalty. If someone scored over 2000 points using this method, the score was practically unbeatable and only a lot of big penalties on that player would prevent winning. To solve this issue, I got rid of the "cards in SE dash 3" idea to make the game a lot more fair. To get 2000 points now would mean having a huge area in the square effect and a lot of junk letters used. However, I'm still thinking of modifying the Square Effect's scoring method to make an even closer game possible where it's more dependent on vocabulary strength than skills.

4. How to draw the cards

One key issue that relates to the development is that of drawing the cards. In Scabble, every one gets 7. You can't make much out of just 7, so, having 30 dice on hand [from Hit-a-bump^*], the idea of rolling the dice was good. My next stage in the process of development was to find a way to distribute the cards to each player. Because the more cards you have, the bigger and better words you can make. I first thought of having 3 rolls to get from 3 to 18 cards. Though, after playing about 3 games using the 3-roll method, I thought I could make the game last a bit shorter by changing it to 4 rolls. 4 rolls of the six-sided die was seemingly much more beneficial. Each player was to roll the die 4 times and add up the values to determine how many cards one gets.

In mid-game, through using your cards to make words, drawing one at a time was a bit rediculous, as it would make the game last much longer with almost no progress going, so, again, the roll of the die idea came in. Instead of drawing one every single time, draw whatever number showed up on the die. This concept also allowed for much better and bigger words to be made, whereas, with just one at a time, smaller words would be the most likely giving fewer points.

Then, I thought, what if someone manages to use up all their cards? Just as if they were starting a new game, they would roll the die 4 times. This came as an answer very quickly.

Next, I thought of the idea in which you can draw, even if you can make something just as an attempt to get a bigger score. This, however, had a big problem. Without limits, one can easily draw to get 50 cards in their hands and create Square Effects in the ten thousands of points. Due to this issue, the maximum limit was set to that of what you would get when you first start up: 24 cards. Though, if one can't do anything and drawing would risk going over the limit, their turn is postponed until they can do something. This only occurs when one has 19 or more cards and drawing would put the count over 24.

5. Special uses

To keep very different from Scrabble even more, the idea of using names and other special words that aren't just general terms came. Though, some could put down just about anything, I had to make up some limitations. These limitations soon came to be only names recognized on the national level or higher [the only thing higher than national is worldwide]. To prevent those from putting random stuff down, the idea of having to say exactly what the object in question is famous about.

6. Starting a new game

One key issue I realized after my 7th game was that of laying down the first word. If a word had only 3 letters, and another 3-letter word was laid down, many would be forced to draw in order to extend to it, often relating to the "no layable word" stalemate. This would end the current game because of the maximum card limit issue and the game would have to restart. To reduce the chances of this occuring, though it's still possible, the first word had to be at least 5 letters long.

Footnotes:
* Hit-a-bump is a targetting game that deals with dice in version 6. To learn more about Hit-a-bump, it's history, and it's 6 versions of play, go here.