I don't claim to be THE Scrabble® authority, but I've learned a lot about how to play this game over the last three years and I want to pass that knowledge on to others. If you want something more in-depth, with lots of examples, written by REAL Experts, get a copy of Everything Scrabble® by Joe Edley and John D. Williams at your local bookstore.
For the sake of simplicity, we've outlined and linked the Strategy section below. Feel free to jump to the area that you feel comfortable with, if you like. To get the most out of the page, however, you may just want to limit yourself to the "Page Down" button on your keyboard and read through it all.
There are 97 2-Letter Words (2LW) and 977 3-Letter Words (3LW) in the OSPD. Of these, about half will be familiar to most people. Taking the time to learn the other 500 or so words will easily add at least 50 points to most players' average score. Complete lists of the 2's & 3's, with definitions, are available at Rick Wong's Club #21 Web site.
An ugly rack doesn't get any prettier by just staring at it. Put your hands on your tiles, change their order and their look, and you may be amazed at what you can find. OOEWRIL and UUUALNS both look horrid until you try looking at -IER and UN-.
The biggest mistake most players make is wasting the two best tiles in the bag.
You should never play the S just because you can. Estimates of the value of an S range from 8 to 20 points, and I tend towards the higher value. What that means in real terms is that before you even consider playing an S, you should make sure the play is worth at least 10 points more than your 2nd best play. Throw away an S and you might as well be handing your opponent an extra turn.
The blanks, being able to substitute for any letter, are by far the most valuable tiles in Scrabble. In fact, you shouldn't look at the blanks as being anything less than bingo tiles. About the only time you play a blank for less than 50 points is when you're stuck with the Q, all the U's are out, and you need the points too much to exchange.
I tell new players that 75% of the bingos they'll find in their first year of competition will include at least three of the letters in ?ERS. With 12 E's and 6 R's, there's some leeway, but an S or blank should be treated like gold.
The scariest letter for most players is the Q. It's a lot less scary when you know there are 21 words in the OSPD that use the Q without a U. They are: QAT(S), QAID(S), QOPH(S), FAQIR(S), SHEQEL, SHEQELIM, TRANQ(S), QANAT(S), QINDAR(S), QINTAR(S), QWERTY(S) and QINDARKA. (NOTE: A study of 5,000 games on MarleDoOM found QAT and QAID to be two of the most commonly played words in Scrabble.) Other useful Q words that might be easier to hook than the QU- combination: SUQ(S), MAQUI(S), UMIAQ(S), BUQSHA(S), and QIVIUT(S).
After the 2's and 3's, the most valuable lists to learn are the vowel dumps and short J, Q, X, Z lists. The reasoning is simple. It's hard to bingo with high-value tiles and even harder with 5 or 6 vowels in your rack. These lists allow you to salvage decent points from seemingly unusable racks, which is why both are included on our Word Lists Page.
We've all had games we think we should have won handily, but barely escaped or lost because even though we had everything and laid down more bingos, the other player just wouldn't seem to go away! Most often it's a case of a player who knows how to use the Hot Spots and nails them for enough points to keep you from achieving the blowout you so rightly deserve!
A two-way TWS, TLS, or DWS will add points to your side of the score sheet in a hurry. A DLS-TWS or TLS-DWS combo with a power tile will often outscore a bingo. I could go into a long diatribe, but the point is simple: Look at the colored squares on every play, ESPECIALLY when you have a high- or mid-value tile in your rack!
I like to tell newcomers that in order to win, you need to average over 20 points a play. If you make an 8-point play, you need a 32-point play to get even. Fish a couple more times and you need a bingo just to catch up. That's just putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on yourself. Until you're a strong enough player to know when it's strategic to fish (almost never), avoid it as much as possible.
The NSA Official Roster lists 126 clubs in the US, 12 in Canada, and 1 in the Virgin Islands. That doesn't include hundreds more "unofficial" clubs. Odds are there's one near you. If there's not, it's easy to start one by picking a day and time to meet one or two of your friends at a local library, bookstore, or dining establishment. With a small ad in a local classified, you'll soon end up with a full roster.
One reason to play in a club is that it's great practice for playing in a tourney. Getting used to the procedures of tournament rules, challenges, clock management, etc. will make playing for real a lot less frightening.
The entire Tournament Rules booklet is 16 pages and takes less than a half-hour to read through. Doesn't seem like a big investment, but at almost every tourney there's at least one disruption caused by a new player who doesn't know how to proceed and a veteran whose nerves are on edge. Please, save yourself the embarassment and read the rules before you tourney.
The one thing you don't want to do is try to find loopholes to circumvent the rules. More than a few players have tried to "quick draw" to avoid challenges, call excessive holds to use up an opponent's clock, and a few other tricks. Those players quickly get known to Directors who will usually do what they have to in order to assure fair play.
Many players get very nervous about playing with a clock and a time limit. Remembering a few family members who often took so long to make a play that I could've made a lasagne from scratch, including the sauce, I can't believe I ever played without one.
To break it down a little, you're rarely going to make more than 20 plays a game, so with 25 minutes you really have more than a minute for every word you play. Since your opponent also has to make plays, that's an average of over two minutes to find a play. With few exceptions, that's enough for most people to play near their own level of efficiency.
If you can afford it, the best way to get used to a clock is to buy one and use it. Analog chess clocks range from $70 - $200. The digital SamTimer, designed specifically for Scrabble, runs $145. For those with lower budgets, MarleDOoM games have timers built in.
The OSPD lists over 54,000 7- and 8-letter words. With that many to choose from, almost any letter combination can be hiding a bingo. No matter how bad your rack looks, it's worth taking 30 seconds to look. You may not find one, or recognize it if you do find it, but you'll always berate yourself for missing one you didn't look for. (BLATENT AD: A complete list of 7- and 8-letter words is included in "Bigdoggy's Big Book of Word Lists." Details on the Word Lists Page. )
The easiest way to find bingos is simply to break the hunt down into parts. Running through all the possibilities for 7 letters would take far too long to be effective, but looking at 4 letters plus a 3-letter suffix only takes a few seconds. A rack like LATESIR is easy to deal with when you look at the prefix RE- or the suffixes -IER, -ERS, and -IST to find RETAILS, SALTIER, SLATIER, TAILERS, and REALIST. Just a few of the other common prefixes and suffixes include ANTI-, DE-, CON-, PRE-, PRO-, UN-, -EST, -ING, -TION, -LIKE, -FUL and more you can see on the Word Lists Page.
Knowing what letters you can hook to existing words can help you in many ways. Not only can it give you a place to play on a hopelessly crowded board, but the hooks themselves will often get challenged. Words like SKEP, MINKE, YOWING, and CROCKET just aren't in most people's vocabularies. We're still trying to find good hooks lists to put on our page, but in the meantime an occaisional glance through the dictionary looking for hooks will almost always reveal a few gems. (ANOTHER BLATENT AD: I've already completed and started selling "Bigdoggy's Big Book of Hooks and Stems." Details on the Word Lists Page, although I won't be making the lists available on the web until some time in the future. )
When you can't bingo, the next best thing is to leave yourself a chance to bingo on the next play. To do that means keeping letters in your rack that give you bingo chances. As a two-part general rule, that means keeping the letters that appear in the word RETAINS without keeping any doubles. (The only letter that doubles in bingos often enough to consider keeping is the E.) The other part of the general rule is trying to keep an even number of vowels and consonants to avoid getting overloaded. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, relating to the openings on the board and the letters that have been played, but the general rule works well until you get deep into tracking and strategy.
Defense in Scrabble is both easy and difficult to play. It's easy in that a lot of the basics come naturally to most players and difficult in that, except for the end of the game, you can't be sure of what letters your opponent has, which creates the danger of a brilliant block turning into a hole you can't dig out of.
To make things easier, we're just going to list a few of the basic defensive strategies:
While strong defense can offset a difference in vocabulary and safeguard a lead, there are times when opening up scoring lines is definitely an advantage. When you're behind or have a blank, you need places to play. The easiest way to get them is to create openings your opponent can't block, such as playing a word with both front and back hooks or playing close enough to the triple lines that any block holds the risk of creating a higher-scoring response. Remember, you're not going to make up a 90-point deficit by making 18-point plays. By increasing the number of places to score big, you have a better chance of either erasing a deficit or blowing away somebody who's catching up.
My style is to play agressively, creating lots of openings and racing for points. While it seems a risky strategy, it's been successful for me because so many other players think defense first. To play agressive means I have to concentrate more on anagramming (to find words) and hooks (to be able to play them), but it also means I don't have to be as knowledgable about obscure words in order to make big plays. For me, the question is more of when to close the board, such as when facing a player with much greater word knowledge. Still, I don't recommend it as a strategy for everyone.
I get a lot of arguments from players who say I shouldn't encourage phoneys. Those same players invariably end up getting words thrown off the board. My argument is that every player plays phoneys, the trick is doing it so you don't get caught. Warning: If you don't like phoneys, skip past the rest of this section!
A phoney that looks good or close to a good word can often get by without a glance. I've snuck by with UNGATED several times because so many players know UNFENCED is good. I've also gotten away with KALIPHA because my opponent didn't know that the only version of CALIPH that takes an A hook is KHALIF(A). Words ending in -LIKE, -LESS, and -FUL are also great candidates for phoneys because there are so many strange ones. (LIPLIKE and NOSELIKE are good, FACELIKE is phoney.)
After your opponent has lost a challenge, he or she may be reluctant to challenge again. If you've got something that looks good, it might be worth taking a shot. Not long ago I slipped 3 phoneys past a fellow with a 1600 rating who had made the mistake of challenging two good words.
One Expert told me he only phoneys with 5 and 6-letter words because so few people study them. He considers it a way of scoring points while cleaning up his rack. I've seen him, in competition with other Experts, attempt and get away with PANNY, INLAW, ROUGY, HULVAH and a few more.
When you're losing big, you have little to lose by attempting a phoney. Many times your opponent will let the play go to avoid losing a turn. As long as the play doesn't put you in the lead, they have to be real sure before they take the risk. That's how I got away with the ugliest phoney I ever played - DRUVES. (Not a word I would ever suggest anybody else ever try.)
Sometimes a phoney is just a ruse to intimidate an opponent. If you've got a rack like EXAT?RS and no place to play RETAXES, playing a phoney automatically puts your opponent on the defensive because they know you have great tiles and they don't want to give away the bingo. It's very easy to force an opponent to mess up their own strategy in an attempt to hold off a bingo you'll eventually play anyway. The flip side is that sometimes they'll let the phoney go for fear you'll score more later. That kind of thinking has allowed me to play words like INDEXOR and THEORIZER.
The best thing about having a reputation as a player who goes for phoneys, and a factor the naysayers generally overlook, is that it's easier to draw challenges on your good words if your opponent thinks you're trying to sneak in a bad one.
The higher you climb up the Scrabble ladder, the fewer people you'll see who don't track tiles. The truth is that no matter how good your vocabulary, if you're not aware of the letters that are still in the bag, you're the one at a disadvantage. If you know the bag is vowel-heavy or that 8 E's are gone halfway through the game, you can adjust your game accordingly. If you have the last U with the Q still out, you can choose to hold it instead of playing it off. At the end of the game, knowing what your opponent has as a final rack can be crucial to winning a close game.
Tracking takes practice and is often frustrating at first, but once you get used to it, your ability to play strategy will put a lot more wins and winnings in your pocket. Start out tracking just the power tiles, then add the vowels to your repetoire, and build up to tracking the whole bag. Eventually it'll come naturally.
One of the biggest blocks a lot of players face is looking past the first bingo they find. It's possible the first bingo you find really is the best play, but quite often there will be another play that's worth more or isn't as dangerous strategically. Once you know you have one bingo, note it and look for more. You just might turn that 70-point play into a 100-point killer. Of course, you won't know for sure until you look.
Several Experts are proponents of turnover as one of the keys to winning. The idea is that the more tiles you can draw in a game, the better your chances of getting the power tiles. Here's how it works: Let's say that you are able to use 55 of the 100 tiles in a game. That means your opponent only gets 45. That's 10 more chances for you to draw the good tiles, a 10% advantage that often translates directly into points.
I love to sucker my opponents into wasting good letters. I'll open up a 4-letter TWS that needs an S-hook to get to, and watch my opponent toss an S into a 30-point play. Meanwhile I've got an O-hook waiting for me at the other end of the board, ready to make a killing. They're so worried I might be setting myself up that they miss the obvious.
Another mistake a lot of players make is deciding on a word or spot before their opponent plays. This happens most often with high-value tiles as players try to rid themselves of a Q or J, but those aren't the only times. Very simply. it never hurts to look for a good play early, but reassess the board after your opponent plays just to make sure. Remember, playing fast is almost always a sign you're missing good plays!
The easiest way to know whether you have a bingo in your rack is to use memory devices. In Scrabble, these memory devices already exist in the form of stems lists and Anamonics. Stems are generally 6LW that can be turned into a number of bingos with the addition of the right letters. To know which letters work with which stems, there are Anamonics.
Anamonics are phrases which use only the letters that can be anagrammed into the stem to make a bingo. In the example in the header, DORMIE + B = BROMIDE, DORMIE + S = MISDOER, and DORMIE + L = MOLDIER. Many of the stems lists will contain words you're not familiar with, but it's not as daunting a task to learn them when you have the Anamonic to assure you the word exists. (BLATENT AD: The "Bigdoggy's Big Book of Hooks and Stems." is ready for distribution with over 100 stems, most with Anamonics. Details on the Word Lists Page.)
So many times a player in a tournament will start off hot, then have a couple bad games and end up way back in the middle of the pack. At the same time, other players will start out struggling only to make a late surge and wind up taking home money. The big difference, in a lot of cases, is more attitude than playing ability.
Don't make the mistake of letting a bad loss or two ruin your mood for the rest of the tourney. And don't think a streak of luck makes you a Scrabble wizard. It just don't work that way. Instead, realize that over the course of a tournament there are going to be games you can't lose and games you can't win. Accept them both, and know that the next game could turn around and put you right back where you were.
A great example from my first Intermediate tourney: I lost by 196 to the lowest rated player in the division, then turned around the next game and won by 204 vs. the #2 rated player. Allowing myself to bounce back, I finished 2nd and took home $200.
Great example #2! I forgot my own advice and went from 2nd to 24th in one day in a tournament because I let a case of Chronic Vowel Overdraw in the morning push me into throwing away two games later in the day. In the same tourney Dave was playing up, set aside his early jitters after a weak start, and ended up with some money for a Class Prize and a 198-point boost in his rating!
Nothing makes me smile like a tourney opponent who says something along the lines of, "Oh no, I have to play you!" It's almost as if they've given me the game before it starts. Very simply, the first step to winning a game is believing you can. So what if your opponent is rated 500 points higher and undefeated? Put it in your mind that their streak has to end sometime and you just might find yourself being the one to throw down 3 or 4 bingos.
Before you scoff, several of the scoring records at the San Jose, CA Scrabble club have been held by players with ratings under 1000, often scored against 1700-1800 rated players. Any player can win any game, sometimes it just takes a little more luck.