Scrabble Strategies for the Unethical Player

Scrabble is a game which requires intelligence, skill and a healthy vocabulary to win - but what if you're missing one or more of these necessary attributes? There are tried and tested ways to improve your scrabble game such as memorizing the two letter scrabble words to use in parallel plays, and increasing your vocabulary by memorizing the hard-to-use scrabble letters such as the Q, Z, X, and J words. In this tongue-in-cheek article we're going to explore some less ethical ways of winning at scrabble.

There are two philosophical schools of thought when it comes to winning a scrabble game that are subtly different - either win more points than your opponent, or prevent your opponent from earning as much points as you. Traditional skill improvement, parallel plays, and word memorization cater to this first ideal. The more devious methods cater to preventing your opponent from earning points by all means necessary.

In a devious game of scrabble, your intention should be to frustrate your opponent as much as possible by blocking their use of the board. Whenever possible you should restrict their access to the triple-word score, double-word score, and triple-letter tiles by creating small words that can't be extended by adding another letter (such as an S, or another letter to make one of the two-letter scrabble words). When you keep restricting the board as much as possible, your opponent will become more and more frustrated and begin to make mistakes. To preserve peace in your personal relationships I would not recommend this tactic when playing with your significant other!

For online play, you can use a Scrabble word finder to create the longest and highest-scoring words possible with the tiles you have. For a truly devious game, throw caution to the wind and use the longest, most obscure words that the word finder gives you. When accused of cheating, plead innocence.

Finally, a great tactic that involves both cheating and frustrating your opponent is to simply make up words. There are so many words in the standard Scrabble dictionary that it is very unlikely that an opponent will be able to recognize all of them. The key is to know several legitimate Scrabble words and their definition so that if challenged you can be quick to defend yourself. Once you have used a few of these words and built a little bit of credibility by displaying that you know some obscure words and their meanings, you will be free to drop in some completely made-up letter combinations without being challenged.

Caution is to be advised when using these tactics - too much usage and you'll soon find yourself with nobody to play with. Have fun!

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

Scrabble Strategies for the Unethical Player

Scrabble is a game which requires intelligence, skill and a healthy vocabulary to win - but what if you're missing one or more of these necessary attributes? There are tried and tested ways to improve your scrabble game such as memorizing the two letter scrabble words to use in parallel plays, and increasing your vocabulary by memorizing the hard-to-use scrabble letters such as the Q, Z, X, and J words. In this tongue-in-cheek article we're going to explore some less ethical ways of winning at scrabble.

There are two philosophical schools of thought when it comes to winning a scrabble game that are subtly different - either win more points than your opponent, or prevent your opponent from earning as much points as you. Traditional skill improvement, parallel plays, and word memorization cater to this first ideal. The more devious methods cater to preventing your opponent from earning points by all means necessary.

In a devious game of scrabble, your intention should be to frustrate your opponent as much as possible by blocking their use of the board. Whenever possible you should restrict their access to the triple-word score, double-word score, and triple-letter tiles by creating small words that can't be extended by adding another letter (such as an S, or another letter to make one of the two-letter scrabble words). When you keep restricting the board as much as possible, your opponent will become more and more frustrated and begin to make mistakes. To preserve peace in your personal relationships I would not recommend this tactic when playing with your significant other!

For online play, you can use a Scrabble word finder to create the longest and highest-scoring words possible with the tiles you have. For a truly devious game, throw caution to the wind and use the longest, most obscure words that the word finder gives you. When accused of cheating, plead innocence.

Finally, a great tactic that involves both cheating and frustrating your opponent is to simply make up words. There are so many words in the standard Scrabble dictionary that it is very unlikely that an opponent will be able to recognize all of them. The key is to know several legitimate Scrabble words and their definition so that if challenged you can be quick to defend yourself. Once you have used a few of these words and built a little bit of credibility by displaying that you know some obscure words and their meanings, you will be free to drop in some completely made-up letter combinations without being challenged.

Caution is to be advised when using these tactics - too much usage and you'll soon find yourself with nobody to play with. Have fun!

Dave Shimoda is a Software engineer and Scrabble Enthusiast, who developed Scrabble Words Finder. As well as allowing you to find all the words available from your Scrabble tiles, it has a series of articles and resources to help beginner Scrabble players become experts.