"_M" is the only one that's bad as far as I can tell.
"AS" bottom-up is probably fine? I don't know the rules. The words it could turn into by adding "racist" or "rapist" would be valid words, "sac" and "sap".
Not currently. The implication is that the person is in the middle of their turn, and needs to choose between the two letters, but that means that SA was already played in a previous turn, and while I'm unsure if SA is a proper two letter word in any language, I am sure SA isn't a proper two letter word in English because my family had the list of two and three letter words in the official Scrabble dictionary, and SA isn't on the list. Sh, si, so, and st, are.
That's my favorite challenge bait tactic. If you challenge an opponent's word and you're wrong, you lose your turn, so if you want to be an asshole, play a word that exists as an obscure but valid word, but is much more well known as a proper name. Mike (alternate spelling of mic), Jenny (female donkey), Japan (a type of varnish), etc. They challenge, it's in the dictionary, you get to give the opponent a smug grin, and they probably won't want to play Scrabble with you anymore but you just got a major advantage.
If they get used to your tricks, just bullshit them with names that they "know better than to challenge now". It's entirely legal to intentionally play fake words, they're just vulnerable to being challenged.
Of course if you're playing against someone who's actually competitive at Scrabble they've probably dedicated time to studying challenge bait and would see right through you, it's a legit part of the game at a high level so they'd be prepared.
Yes, however neither of those words are complete on the board yet. That's fine if one of them were in the process of being played, but they're not. Rapist/racist is in the middle of being played, meaning that the previous turn ended with just "sa" on the board, which is not a valid word.
I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm saying it is impossible for the board to ever look like this during a real game of Scrabble, even if someone is in the middle of their turn.
Assuming rapist/racist is the current turn, then the player who placed sa on the previous turn played an invalid word. It’s possible if the other players didn’t challenge. Sap and sac are both valid words.
You are only allowed to play one direction per turn in Scrabble. It must read left-right or top-down.
"ra" and "ist" are part of the word in process, just being done out of order for creative flair, as you noted. "Sa" on the other hand, is its own thing and isn't a word. Doesn't mean it couldn't be there though as it would have to be challenged to be removed.
"Sa", as previously noted, is not an accepted Scrabble word. Abbreviations are not acceptable in Scrabble. Foreign words aren't accepted in Scrabble so "Ist" and, "Sa" would be out there as well as it appears we're playing English Scrabble. "Ra" is also not accepted in Scrabble as proper names (like, "Thor" for another example.) are not accepted.
More importantly, words need to connect to an existing word so, "ra", and, "ist" by themselves wouldn't be accepted on those grounds, hence the determination that the person played them on their turn and is actively tying to figure out which letter they should use for the middle bit to finish the single word on a single line they can play on their turn.
This line of conversation was discussing it as though it was an actual game. Maybe I misunderstood the point you were trying to make in regards to "ra", and, "ist", in which case my b. To my knowledge there's no rule stopping one from laying letters down however they want in one line so long as it forms a word at the end of them doing so. One could put down "t", then "s", then, "i", or alternate "r", then "t", etc. as they're laying down their word.
Not sure what in my comment made you think I wasn't discussing rules and actual gameplay but if you could elaborate on that for my own future reference, I'd appreciate it.
words can be made without playing the game, maybe it's just someone playing around with the letters trying to make valid words without actually playing the game, and so they were forming two words at once
Can't do two directions at once, and this line of conversation is clearly about the play in the context of a real game, just to head off any, "its a cartoon" talk.