Buy a Scrabble® dictionary (as of March 1, 2006, the
Official Tournament and Club Word List second edition,
commonly referred to as OWL2, and available only to
NSA members). The OSPD Fourth Edition, a
"politically
correct," expurgated volume sold in bookstores, is not
the source used for adjudicating
challenges, but can be
a helpful learning supplement, as
it contains brief
definitions which can’t be found in OWL2. Become
familiar with all the acceptable
two- and three-letter
words; these are the glue of the
game -- that is, they
hold together all the longer, higher-scoring words.
Don't play scared. Don't worry how good your opponent is,
or how good her tiles may be at the moment. Concentrate
on what you can do with your tiles,
play offensively first.
Accept the idea that Scrabble® is a math game just as much
as it is a word game. The strategic theory of the game is based
on statistical analysis, probabilities, and spatial relationships on
the board. Experienced players seek
to maximize the value of
small-numbered tiles by playing bingos
(using all 7 tiles on your
rack to earn the 50-point bonus), and large-numbered# tiles by
causing them to interact with the colored premium squares on
the board, or with other words on the board. (I.e.: one can score
just as much for placing a 4-letter
word in a place where it lies
parallel to 4 other letters or whole
words without hitting any
premium squares as you might for the same play
hitting a double-
or even triple-word-square but forming
only one or two words.)
# But don't get into the habit of
holding onto the highest-numbered
tiles until you make big plays with them. They suffocate your rack,
and you don't score enough with the in-between plays
while you wait. This is the commonest mistake made by
novice players: The worst letters in the pool are the Q, J, W,
in that order. If you have
them, they are the first tiles
you should be looking to use up, and the last
you should
consider holding.
Balance your rack. Look at the distribution of the letters in the
set at the start of the game and notice that with 56 consonants
and 42 vowels (plus 2 blanks = 100), there is a clear ratio of 4c
to 3v, which ideally should be what you strive to maintain in your
rack of 7 tiles. The more often you achieve this balance, the more
often you can hope to make bingos. Expert players average close
to 2 bingos per game!
Always look for ways to break up duplicates -- letters that appear
more than once in the same rack. Flexibility is a key to having,
finding, and being able to play bingos. Each time a tile is duplicated
in the rack, the number of possible letter orders that might be
acceptable words is cut in half.
The best tiles in the Scrabble® set are the blanks and S's; don't
waste them. An S should generally not be played in a non-bingo
unless it yields a score at least 8 points more than anything you
can play without it, and the blank
should net at least 20 more points.
Two reasonable exceptions to that rule are when you have more
than one S in your rack, and when you need to close off a
dangerous opening from your opponent. S's and blanks are
extra valuable because they add flexibility both to your rack,
and to your options for fitting words on the board (S *starts*
50% more words than any other letter, in addition to
all the
nouns and verbs it pluralizes) --
they usually allow bingos
to be played, but they can't do it without other useful letters...
* ... the best of those others are
the letters in "CANISTER."
If you can collect any five or six letters in this word, there are a
great many letters that can complete your rack to yield a 7- or
8-letter bingo. But don't forget
your vowel/consonant balance
while trying to collect these letters.
If you make a play that keeps
CNRST in your rack, chances are,
one of three things has
happened or will happen: 1) you already
had a bingo and failed
to play it, 2) you didn't have a bingo
because you just found it
necessary to play off two consonants, and 3) your next rack will
still have too many consonants. If you keep 5 of CANISTER,
they should include at least one
vowel, and keeping 6 of CANISTER
should include at least two of the vowels.
Avoid playing vowels next to dark blue and red squares; they let
your opponent
play a heavy consonant parallel and earn the
premium in two directions. Be eXtra alert to this while the X is
still unseen.
Building larger words is easier if you think in terms of common
prefixes like re-, pre-, post-, for-, fore-, co-, con-, sub-, over-, bi-,
di-, tri-, poly-, mono-, hypo-, hyper-, dis-, be-, de-, out-, mis- and
un- ; and suffixes such as -ed, -er, -or, -age, -ing, -al, -ly, -ally, -ic,
-oid, -tion, -able, -ible, -less, -ness, -man, -men, -ment, -est, -ier,
-ies, -iest, -ist, -ism, -ish, -ium, -ia, -ity, -ify, -ize, -ise, -ary, -ory,
-ology, -ate, -ite, -ine, -ive, -ase,
-ose, -ful, and -like. But don't
fixate on UN-; U is UsUally the worst
vowel you can hold, and don't
fixate on -ING either; a lot of words
contain those three letters but
don't end with them, and the G can
be a very awkward tile if you
don't have a word that ends with -ing,
more so if you have more
than one
G at a time.
Keep your mind open, and shuffle your tiles on your rack if you
are having
trouble finding words. When you find what you think
is a good play, sit on your hands until you find a better one. Don't
feel like you are in a race to finish the game -- there's no bonus for
unused time -- you have 25 minutes to make all your plays, and
the more of it you use without exceeding that limit, the less you'll
miss and the more strong plays you'll find.
And...
Join the National
Scrabble® Association
c/o Williams & Co.
P.O. Box 700
Greenport,
NY 11944
Phone: (631) 477-0033 Fax:
(631) 477-0294
For $20 a year, you'll get eight amazing
newsletters, a roster
of clubs across North America, and the tournament
rule book.
