This word game presents a number of unique challenges to its players. Memorizing the entire Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary would be great, but it's also unrealistic. Start with these basics first.
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: n/a
Here's How:
- Consider balance as you look at the letters on your rack. It might be smart to form a word eliminating double letters in your rack even if it's not the highest-scoring move you have available.
- See what's on the board before making a move. If few E's have been played, you might chose to create 'were' instead of 'ware,' reducing the chance you’ll draw a double tile.
- Plan ahead to be able to create long words, possibly even using all the tiles on your rack in one turn (and thus earning bonus points).
- Don't concentrate so much on one word that you blind yourself to other options.
- Don't fear the Q! This tile (as well as the somewhat less-frightening X, Z and J) offers some high-scoring potential.
- Even if you don't have a U to go along with it, there are 16 legal words you can spell with the Q (such as qanat, an underground system of tunnels in the Middle East, and qindar, a monetary unit of Albania).
- If you get stuck with a lot of vowels, think about iodine -- and the dozens of other vowel-rich words available. (Cookie, anyone?)
- If you have a lot of consonants, there are legal words without vowels -- myrrh, rhythm and tsktsk, for example.
- Avoid giving other players easy access to bonus point squares.
Tips:
- Practice. You can buy Scrabble books, and there are a lot of useful practice tools available on the Internet.
- If you study, concentrate on unusual words. Two-letter words are useful in a lot of situations. Q words, X words, J words, Z words and words with lots of vowels also are good to know, as are longer words.
What You Need:
- Scrabble Board Game
- Opponent(s)
