Winning at Scrabble

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This blog has been active since: September 2008
Post: Winning at Scrabble / October 27th, 2008


Winning at Scrabble


Many people lose because they have the wrong idea about Scrabble. A word game it is NOT. If you want to win at Scrabble you’ll have to look at this popular board game in whole new way.

First - look at a Scrabble board. What do you see? Squares and colors. Double letter and word squares. Triple letter and word squares. Think about this: space is more important than words.

Next - consider the letters. You have high value letters and low value letters. If you use all seven letters and they are the lowest scoring letters, you can still score 15 points on a triple word square. (but you’ll get 50 points for a “Bingo” - using all 7 letters.

Two important tiles to pay special attention two are “S” and “Blank”. It’s still valuable and should be used with care. While it carries no value, you can use it to make very high scoring words.

Your goal then should be to play as many bonus squares as you can. Better to settle for a smaller word and grab the bonus square than play a large word while leaving the bonus square for someone else.

Know when to swap your letters. If you simply can’t do anything with your rack (the term for all the letters you’ve drawn), then you need to trade them in. Waiting won’t make things any better. Never trade your “s” tiles or your blank tiles.
Keep an eye out for prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes go on the the beginning of the word - un + known = unknown. Suffexes are tacked on to the end. “s” hobbit + s = hobbits

Better yet is the ings and ers - ring + ings = ringings and ring + ers = ringers.
Watch what you leave behind. While it’s great to score big on a turn, sometimes you need to look ahead to the next play before jumping in. If the word you want to make is going to leave you with a huge mess to clean up, you may want to settle for a lessor word so you have more to work with in the next round.

Also, sometimes you need to get rid of some letters. At times like this, don’t worry about a high score for once. Just make room to resupply. It’s sometimes just easier to
take a small hit and move on.
Next time we’ll take a look at some more ways two win at Scrabble. Meanwhile…
Wanna Play?
Andy