Scrabble Basic Quick Tips

Whether you are new to the game or have been playing it for a while. I hope you will find the following tips useful. Feel free to check out the advance tips section if you are a season player.

Scoring Bonus Points

To maximise your score, you should try to utilise the bonus squares on the board. These are DLS (Double Letter Score), TLS (Triple Letter Score), DWS (Double Word Score), TWS (Triple Words Score) and the Bingo. Where possible, try to cover two bonus squares in a single turn. Once the bonus square is used up for a turn, it cannot be used again.

What is a Bingo?

When you make a word using all seven letters on your rack, you have a bingo. Besides getting points for the word played, scoring a bingo also adds an additional 50 points to you. Thus, playing bingos is a key to winning regularly in Scrabble. Experience Tournament players is capable of playing at least two bingos in an average game, and they are always working on their tiles to create more bingo opportunities.

Scoring The Q

The Q is the most difficult letter to play. If you cannot play the Q consider changing it, especially towards end of the game when the board can be tight and before there are less than 7 tiles in the bag.

When drawing a U some players put it aside in case they then draw the Q at a later stage. This is a bad idea because you only have a 50-50 chance of drawing the Q anyway. It will help if you remember a few of the Q without U words instead (see our word list).

Exchanging Tiles

Some player never exchanges letters/tiles, arguing that it is a waste of a turn. However if you are continually scoring 10 points or lower because you have poor tiles then a change would probably be the best option. And if you are leading the game with 30 points or more, you can certainly afford it. Losing a turn may help keep you in the game than getting stuck with bad combination of tiles for a few turns.

There may be various reasons for a change:

• Your rack is not balanced and you cannot score well because you have too many vowels or consonants.


• You are in danger of getting stuck with the Q at the end of the game. The scores are close, the board is blocked and there are many useful letters left in the bag, which may, if you get them, win you the game.

Tile Tracking

Try to keep a mental track of which the most useful letters (eg. J, Q, X, Z, S and blank) have been played. It is possible to calculate what your opponent has on her rack towards the end of the game. You could then make your play taking this into account, perhaps blocking an opportunity for them or setting yourself up with a scoring place which you know they cannot block.

Winning From Behind

Don't get discouraged when you fall behind. Never ever give up! I have won many times where I was falling behind by 50-100 points at the beginning of the game. It's possible to recover large deficits if you remain cool, keep the board reasonably open and don't try to recover all of the points in just one move.

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