If you like playing Scrabble, it means that you have great taste in word games. And if you’re playing the game well, it’s massive proof that you possess good language skills. About 150 million Scrabble sets were sold worldwide, and the word game is available in over 30 languages.
But just as in many other areas, you can also improve your game in Scrabble. There’s no such thing as the perfect player, but you can try to become one by following our strategies:
Look for the so-called ‘hooks’
Hooks in Scrabble refer to those single letters that a player can add for making new words out of others. For instance, ‘hair’ can become ‘chair’, ‘earn’ can become ‘years’, and so on.
Learn ‘Q-without-U’ words
The letter ‘q’ is the highest scoring tile in Scrabble along with ‘z’, and it most often comes before ‘u’. The Scrabble Dictionary has 17 instances of “q-without-u” words: qat, mbaqanga, qanat, qwerty, sheqel, qaid, qi, qoph, faqir, qindar, qintar, and more.
Aim for ‘hot spots’
Plan your game carefully and aim for jumping-off points where you can hit the ‘hot spots’. The official strategy page of Scrabble admits that a triple word score can break or make a game. If you combine that triple word score with a high-value letter, you’ll get a great boost.
Use only the blank tiles to BINGO
You can use the blank tiles as building blocks for a BINGO (a word that uses all seven tiles). You can play your entire rack at once, and you’ll earn a sweet bonus of 50 points.
Reduce the Rack
This one is more like an end-game strategy. If you are the owner of an empty rack, you can add your opponents’s remaining tiles to your score. You have to keep track of your opponent’s rack. Note the number of tiles left in the bag. Calculate what letters they could represent based on the flow of the current game. You can even use tools such as Word Unscrambler to find words from the Scrabble dictionary.
Feel free to tell us in a comment about your own favourite strategies while playing Scrabble!
