each player tells a short 'story' linking the words in his or her list

What a great idea!

I've also heard of people playing other versions of Scrabble, in which they made up words and had to concoct a feasible definition for their new creations - every word had to be one NOT found in the dictionary. I'm sure there are other variants - I might even have read them here somewhere. I'm sure some people play dirty-word Scrabble too, for example - I wonder if anyone ever plays proper-name Scrabble?

It might be fun to allow more than seven letters, too. Some country does, I think - Anu mentioned it in the AWAD a week or so ago, didn't he?