---
title: Calvin's 957 in Scrabble
date: 2026-10-11T17:44:38+08:00
categories:
- llms
- funny
---

On 28 Feb 1990, Calvin and Hobbes played Scrabble.

![](https://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1990/ch900228.gif)

**Calvin**: Ha! I've got a great word and it's on a "double word score" box!\
**Hobbes**: "ZQFMGB" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel!\
**Calvin**: It is SO a word! It's worm found in new guinea! Everyone knows that!\
**Hobbes**: I'm looking it up.\
**Calvin**: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word YOU played with all the Xs and Js!\
**Hobbes**: What's your score for ZQFMGB?\
**Calvin**: 957.

Question is, how do you score 957 on a double-word score? It isn't even _even_!

But, it turns out, it's possible - even in a realistic game of Scrabble, with standard rules, a standard board, but lots of tiles, and an increasingly creative dictionary.

Claude recreated the game these two would have played, descending from a perfectly legitimate game into a mess of Calvinball, reproducing the "12-letter word YOU played with all the Xs and Js" and ending with _exactly_ 957 points for "ZQFMGB". Here it is!

<video controls autoplay muted playsinline preload="metadata" width="1080" height="1350" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;">
  <source src="https://media.s-anand.net/calvin-957.webm" type="video/webm">
  <a href="https://media.s-anand.net/calvin-957.webm">Video</a>
</video>

Source:

- [Interactive step-by-step replay](https://files.s-anand.net/blog/2026-01-11-calvin-957-in-scrabble/how-calvin-got-957.html) - with dialogues.
- [Claude Chat](https://claude.ai/share/d89b2cb5-4a56-48ee-9f9c-3c8316dc8be9) <!-- https://claude.ai/chat/5c7f058a-1139-46cf-95e4-b8eb3be88c2f -->
- [Code repo](https://github.com/sanand0/research/tree/aa203b711fa22830ae93650754cdf37910745b93/calvin-957)

While Claude did have a great sense of humor and style, it overdid the "honest" bit. There were **twenty-four** occurrances of "honest" in the output. Some snippets:

> Tracing column continuity rules for honest low-cost placements.\
> Continue building the honest opening\
> Search interlocking placements for honest words\
> Expanding usable grid space for extra honest word placements.\
> Show several candidate honest boards\
> Verify honest acts in story order\
> Sequencing honest plays within the block to avoid invalid crosses.\
> Costing honest heavy words to fill the block’s early rows.\
> Planning Act II’s bridge from the honest cluster into the block.\
> Deciding which rows can supply Act IV words honestly.