Scrabble Tips and Strategies

There is an exact science in scoring high in Scrabble. Although Scrabble plays with the value of luck, like most games do, it is 90% skill.

In this article, I will discuss a few Tips and Strategies you can employ to increase your Scrabble score. You cna use this in an actual Scrabble game, or an online Scrabble.

Scrabble Tip #1: If You Can, Always Play Parallel to Words

"Reusing" the letters that are already at the board gives you a few extra scores. Check the example below

IMPALA

TAIL

There is the word TAIL on the board, you can play the word, IMPALA on top of it. You get scores for IMPALA, IT, MA, PI and AL.

Scrabble Tip #2: Re-use a Word That Is There Already

If you can't play parallel, you can go across but be sure to create a two new words: by adding a letter to a word that is already at the board, and the word you are forming. For example, if there is the word CATCH on the board, and you have the letters for the word, YOGA, connect the Y tile to CATCH, forming CATCHY and YOGA.

Scrabble Tip #3: Always Keep the "S" and Blank Tiles for High Scores

These tiles are always valuable. The S pluralizes most nouns and singulars most verbs, while blanks, while it has no value itself, can stand for any letter in the alphabet. For me, I never play my S if the score I am going to get is below 20. As for the blanks, these are always for scoring above thirty, or, for the famous bingo.

Scrabble Tip #4: Dispose of J, X, Q and Z When You Get the Chance

Most of the time, people get stuck because they save the super high scoring letters for the triple premium squares. Don't wait for the magical moment. Chances are it will never arrive.

Scrabble Tip# 5: Balance Is the Key

Refrain from keeping two or more of the same letters if you don't have to. Also, try to keep a balance of vowels against the consonants. Three vowels, and four consonants to be exact.

Scrabble Tip #6: All Vowels? All Consonants? Don't Exchange Yet!

If you have all vowels, try to make words that uses your vowels and the consonants that are already on the board. There are many vowel-rich words, like "EERIE", "IODINE" or "EAU" (hey, that is ALL vowels). If you have a lot of consonants, check if you can form legal words with no vowels: "HM", "HMM", "MM", "RHYTHM", "THY" or "TSKTSK".

There are more tips in the articles I made:

10 Scrabble Tips

Score Bingo in Scrabble