Scrabble-tips and tricks

One of the things that keeps me sane is playing Scrabble. It is enough of a mental exercise that I can't do it when I am tired or "out of it" and that means I have to think.

It is also a challenge, can I find that bingo?  that high point word? Can I filter enough letters to get the ones I need to make a certain word? Some day I will spell Quaalude, like I did in Bookworm. Got rid of all the letters that didn't help me make that word and voila, I spelled it.

Recently I asked friends to post their Scrabble tips on Facebook. It was a short conversation. So I thought that I would share some of the things that I have learned. Some are mine and some are from friends. I welcome them all. I would love it if this conversation sparked more tips and stories, tragic or funny.

First let me say that I still lose more games than  I win. Partly because I play people better than I am, it makes me try harder and learn new words. Those odd short words, three and four letters are really helpful and I don't know many of them.

Studying the list of Q without U words, helped a lot because I don't always have a U when I need one. Qi was very helpful and so was Qat. I use those all the time now.

Playing online (through Facebook) helps, because if I have a difficult set of letters I can skip the game and come back to it. Since I am usually playing 50+ games at a time, it is usually not an issue for my fellow players (hmmn that is a sexist word.) since they are often playing many games at once also.

Tips:

• First thing I do is look for a bingo (when you use all seven letters on your rack at once,) when I started playing I had no hope of finding one so I didn't look. Therefore I didn't find any. There were rare exceptions, like when the word came up already formed on my rack. Very rare. 
• Get rid of difficult letters. What do I mean? Letters that don't form two letter words (C and V) and letters that are rarely in longer words (Q, X, Z)   I dump C and V as soon as I can and I use the others in triple letter or triple word spots.
• Save letters that are easy to use.  Most of the rest of the letters, you will see what works with your vocabulary.
• Make -ing words. It is the way I make most of my bingos. I save the I, N, G and S for this purpose. That is three or four of the letters that make up a bingo.
• Vowels for bingo: I find that A is the easiest for this, O next, I sometimes works, U is difficult and E is very difficult. Mostly because in English we drop the E when making a -ing word.
• Second thing I do (if I don't have a Bingo) is look at the board to see which "spots" are open, and if I have any high point letters to put there (ie. using the X on a Triple letter spot, going in two directions so I get 2 x TL)
• Can't do either of these things, then dump the difficult letters and go on the the next game. 
• When opening the game, you must put the word across the star in the middle of the board. When you do, line up the consonants between the double word tiles, so you make it harder to use the two dw tiles with high point consonants. 
• Pay attention to making it easy for your fellow players to use the triple word spots, they can add up to as many points as a bingo.
• Look for one (or two) letters between the triple word spots. If you can make a bingo around it and hit the tw spots twice, it is easily over 100 points.
• Save your 's' tiles, there are only 4 in the whole game. They are useful for attaching your bingo to a word.  
• There are two blank tiles in the game, I save mine for bingos. If I am missing any of the letters for an -ing bingo the blank can go there, or be an 's' because they can be any letter. 
• If you have a rack of vowels, change some/most of them out. It can easily take you three turns to get a good rack. 
• Don't use your last vowel/consonant.
• Remember that 'e' is the most used letter in the (American) English language.

Good Luck!