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Parallel words joined at a single letter forming a second word.

I cannot seem to find a clear answer to this scrabble question.

Say player one plays, "scrabble" as their first word. Is it valid for player two to then play, "hello," parallel to "scrabble" but starting with the "h" in "hello" next to the "e" in "scrabble" to make the second word, "he." Here is an example:

       HELLO
SCRABBLE
Tim
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1 Answers1

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The official rules state:

New words may be formed by:

  • Adding one or more letters to a word or letters already on the board.

  • Placing a word at right angles to a word already on the board. The new word must use one of the letters already on the board or must add a letter to it.

  • Placing a complete word parallel to a word already played so that adjacent letters also form complete words.

And in the scoring examples, the last example shows a similar case to yours - the word BIT is played underneath PASTE as such:

  P A S T E
B I T

with the player scoring for the words BIT, PI and AT which are formed from the running parallel words. So yes, your example is valid - it is a single word, played parallel to an existing word, such that all adjacent tiles result in forming valid English words.

ConMan
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    The only requirement is that all letters you place must be in the same row or column with no spaces between them, and all strings of adjacent letters must form valid words. Doing words parallel to existing words often scores much better than perpendicular words (since each letter is counted twice), which is the reason why all serious Scrabble players should learn and memorize the complete list of valid 2-letter words. – Darrel Hoffman Oct 22 '20 at 15:28
  • Isn't that "PASTE / BIT" example from the box lid (a long time ago)? :) – Mark Stewart Oct 22 '20 at 16:37
  • It probably is, because I don't think they changed the rules much when they put them online. – ConMan Oct 22 '20 at 21:53