Strategy & Tactics

The object of the game is to score more points than your opponent. The key skills are knowing which words are acceptable or unacceptable (according to the official tournament reference) and being able to find them from a jumbled set of letters. All serious tournament players study word lists extensively, and practice solving words from alphagrams or randomly jumbled letters.

It is doubtful that any player - even those among the top echelon - knows all 108,225 acceptable words for international play. But it is almost certain that the premier players know almost all, if not all, of the words they are likely to come across in their lifetime. For instance, there is no practical advantage in knowing a word like ZYZZYVAS, as this would require an extremely improbable rack containing both Ys, both blanks, and the only Z. By contrast, there is great value in learning and reliably finding the word THIOUREA, which uses a very common group of letters.

For a beginning club player, the most important list to memorise is acceptable two-letter words, because these allow one to play parallel to existing words, often scoring more points than merely extending or crossing a word. After mastering the two-letter words, a beginner can greatly benefit by studying the shorter words containing high scoring tiles e.g. QAT, ZEK, JEUX, as well as "hook" lists which show what letters can be added to the front and back of words and are therefore essential for forming multiple words in a turn. Another important tip for beginners is to value the S's and the blanks, which are by far the most useful for hooks and for bingos. Above a certain level of play, a good rule of thumb is that holding onto an S is worth 8-10 points, and a blank upwards of 25 points.

It can be great fun to play esoteric words, but being unusual does not necessarily score more points. For example FAERIE, depending on board placement, generally scores fewer points than FAIRY. Likewise it is silly to play CWM just to prove that you know a word with no vowels if MACAW scores more points and leaves you with a better rack.

Letters which are worth four or more points should be played on premium squares if possible, and letters such as X, H, and Y are powerful if they can score in both directions, for four or six times their face value. A vowel next to a double- or triple-letter score creates a hot spot where a valuable consonant can potentially be played for many points.

Rack management is the strategic element most overlooked by beginners. It is disadvantageous to keep duplicates of most letters or to have a large imbalance between vowels and consonants. Beginners will often lament "Why do I get all the I's?", not realising that they have caused their own suffering by not unloading duplicates.

For example, if you hold AADIIKR, the highest scoring word among your letters is DARK, but that leaves you with AII, which is no consonants with three vowels including a double I. If at all possible, you should play a word containing both an A and an I, which leaves an equal number of vowels and consonants. RADII scores fewer points than DARK, but leaves AK in your rack, for a much more promising future next turn. Experts who know all the four-letter words will also look to play KADI or RAKI to good effect, but you don't have to have a huge vocabulary to think about rack balance: even RAID and ARID deserve consideration instead of DARK.

Because of the 50-point bonus for using all seven tiles in one turn, known as a 'bingo', many players manage their racks specifically to get as many bingos as possible. Making seven and eight letter words is generally the fastest way to high scores. The letters A, E, I, N, R, S, and T are the most useful letters for this purpose, and so a good player will be reluctant to play off these letters without some benefit in return. Conversely, good players will strive to play off undesirable tiles, at times even if that play is not the highest scoring one available, and will use a turn to exchange tiles if necessary.

A good tactic for intermediate level players is to memorise "bingo stems," or groups of six letters that combine well with almost any seventh letter to form a bingo. The best bingo stem to have is SATINE, followed by SATIRE and RETINA. With SATINE on the rack, any seventh letter except for Q or Y (or, in North America, J) will create a seven letter word (SATINE + A = TAENIAS or ENTASIA; SATINE + B = BASINET or BANTIES; SATINE + C = CINEAST or ACETINS; etc.) Since many of these seven letter words are obscure, it is useful to memorise not only the stem, but all the possible bingos that may be created with it. In order to speed up this process both for memorisation and during play, some players utilise mnemonics, including a specific type known by the coined term "anamonics".

Experts at the highest level average over two bingos a game, and four bingos by a player in a single game is not at all uncommon.