Scrabble is a beloved family game that has been passed down from generation to generation. It had humble beginnings and quickly turned into an award-winning board game that people all around the world were quickly enamored by.
Whether you started with a physical copy, are using one passed down from your parents or even grandparents, or moved your word skills into the digital versions, it is a timeless game concept that people love. If you want to get even better and learn how to boost your score, read on.
Up Your Personal Vocabulary
A simple skill to learn if you really want to get better scores in Scrabble is to improve upon your vocabulary. A lot of people who succeed in this game have a penchant for words, and that means using resources to your advantage. Some sites can help you figure out Scrabble-friendly words and help you learn what tiles you can use at your disposal, or you could read a dictionary and a thesaurus to do it the old fashioned way. Whatever you pick, you need to become a wordsmith to maximize your chances of winning.
Make Use of Odd Letters
The game of Scrabble involves capitalizing on what you have available. The biggest resource you have are the letters at your disposal, so you need to make use of the high scoring letters first and often. The trickiest letters to play also happen to be the least common letters in the alphabet, ones like Z, K, X, Q, and even H can score you big points, but they are not easy to play. If you use these words quickly, you can avoid penalty points and make a splash on the board.
Focus on Smaller Words First
Bigger words might end up getting you a big score all at once, but it takes a lot of time trying to figure out how to lay out a big point-getter. Instead, you should focus on a minimalist strategy of using two-letter or three-letter words to get tiles out of your hand fast. This helps you replenish your letters and gives you more flexibility to move around the board and find new tiles to score on without getting locked into a big word that gives other players time to capitalize.
Get Familiar With Prefixes and Suffixes
Prefixes and suffixes should be your best friend. They can turn many low-scoring words into bigger point earners. Turn “get” into “getting” or “frost” into “defrost” to help you make use of every word on the board. When you know more prefixes and suffixes, it makes your ability to capitalize on more words a lot easier. Again, the best part about it is that there are plenty of those two, three, or four-letter words that can be easily converted into a better score with prefix or suffix.
Take Advantage of the Premium Squares
The premium squares/tiles are where it’s at, so you have to use them to your advantage. The double or triple word or letter score can be paired well when you include those hard to use letters. This is also a good way to block other players from getting them as well to improve their score. Sometimes it can be best to wait until you can throw down enough letters to make a hard word, but it could be in your best interest to take them out quickly, so players need to focus on using other strategies to win.
Know How to Make Word Hooks
A word hook is a kind of like a prefix or suffix in Scrabble, except it lets you turn one word into a completely new word. Imagine putting A and L in front of “most” to turn it into “almost.” You can add more scores by finding these words and offloading your letters onto them to make a smaller word into a higher-scoring one. This can even be done with those difficult to play letters as well, but obviously, it is not as easy. Before you play words, try to picture which ways you can expand to hit those premium tiles, think about how you can block other players’ word trails, and think two steps ahead to plan big combos.
Scrabble is an incredibly intricate game for how simple the concept is. It is about way more than just throwing down letters on the board and getting scores, there are cool tricks and strategies you can use to be a better player, and these tips will help you do just that.
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