Scrabble - Tips & Strategies

To make the game a little more challenging we sometimes like to pick a theme. Example: Theme of “Baseball” words like plate, pitcher, and bat. We also add that proper names are ok becasue it adds more words. Mike Piazza is a great triple word score.

I still tend to lose against people with PHDs and vocabulary freaks, but here’s how I tend to do fairly well.

1. Avoid short words unless you have absolutely nothing else to play. Alternatively if you have any difficult letters it’s usually fine.

2. Don’t build towards multipliers. Let your opponents build towards them, and then you can take them after. Even if I have combos that will let me get to a multiplier in two turns, I usually get it stolen from me.

3. Don’t over think it. Usually if I don’t find a better word within a minute, I’m probably not going to find it unless I think about it for hours. For the sake of time and efficiency, only give yourself about a minute per word.

4. Play with word combos during other players turns. Kind of obvious, but don’t take a break here.

5. Praise people for their amazing words (even if they arent). This keeps the atmosphere light and makes it easier for you to concentrate instead of being competitive.

All kind of obvious stuff, but that’s how I like to play. Maybe it will help someone, who knows.

This variant of Scrabble requires the tiles (and only the tiles) from at least two copies of the game. Mix up the tiles and place them face down at the centre of the table. Each player then draws five tiles from the pool as their starting hand. When everyone has drawn their tiles, play begins.

Each player tries to form words in standard Scrabble, crossword fashion using the tiles they have in front of them. Once any player has used all their tiles, they say “go” or “draw” and every player then draws a new tile to add to their personal puzzle. This puzzle can be rearranged and restructured as often as a player would like; the only real requirements are that all the words be real words of at least two letters (dictionary use is encouraged) and that all the words be connected as per standard crossword format.

Play concludes when any player says “draw” and the remaining number of tiles in the centre of the table is such that one or more players are unable to draw a new tile. At this point puzzle creation stops (players can no longer add to or change their layouts) and scoring begins. The point values on the Scrabble tiles in each player’s puzzle are counted (tiles used twice are counted twice), and the point values on any unused tiles a player may have are subtracted from the total. Player with the highest score wins.

Endgame variant
When playing with younger children or in a more casual/less competitive group, allowing all players a certain amount of time after the tile pool is exhausted to tweak their individual crosswords in order to use more tiles helps to level the playing field.

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Game length is generally no more than about fifteen to twenty minutes, and this variant is flexible with regards to the number of players. I have played with three to eight people using the tiles from two Scrabble games, and more players can easily be added by combining in tiles from a third game.

There are similarities between Speed Scrabble and the game Bananagrams, but I personally prefer the former as it maintains the point rewards for using less common letters in English.

I like to help people find places/ think of words and gently direct them away from the place I want to play next or to an area I hope I can build on. They think I am being helpful (which I am) but I usually have an ulterior motive…

We have a house rule that younger players can exchange their tiles without missing their turn. It helps level the playing field a little so that little ones can enjoy the game more and not be left feeling like they can never win. As the kids get older and learn to spell, expand their vocabularies, etc. we just start using the actual rule.

Gamer Bling played this variant with the Gamer Bling Official Companion during our honeymoon 15 years ago, during which we, um, played many two-player games.

Place all tiles in the center of the table, face down. Don’t use the board.

Each player starts with seven tiles and simultaneously flips them face up. Players try to arrange their seven tiles into a crossword.

Once a player has done so, that player says, “Take two,” and all players must draw two additional tiles and incorporate them into their crossword.

A player can also, “Swap” and return two tiles face down to the center and draw three.

The game ends when someone says, “Take two” and there are not enough tiles to go around.

It’s fast, it’s fun, it plays as many as you want, and it scratches the Bananagrams itch without an extra purchase.

An interesting house rules that I’ve seen and a great way to keep the blank tiles in play is the following:

When a blank tile is played, any player with the “actual” letter may, on their turn, switch the real tile with the blank tile and take it onto their tray.

This seems to make for more interesting words and some more interesting strategy as well.

One of the problems we run into is the top/left quadrant can be hard to play in as words usually get played down and right. We sometimes play that the first person can play anywhere on the board. Yes, it does mean that the first person can get a great start. To counteract this, you can play that the first word does not get any of the space bonuses. This way, their is an incentive to play up in the left quadrant, but on a triple word space.

Scrabble Chaos has Three Main Concepts:

Stealing

When replacing tiles you have the option to steal up to a total of two of them from the tray of an opponent(s). Steal them without looking at the revealing side of the opponents tray. The opponent then pulls tiles from the bag to replace those stolen.

Acting

If you play an animal you must speak animal sounds (example Dog: Ruff Bark Ruff) until your next turn.

If you play an emotion you must act as if you are feeling that emotion until next turn.

If you play a mythical creature or person you must speak and act as if you are that until next turn.

Character Break (Failure to act out until next turn) results in removal of the word from the board and loss of points. This may also cause a “floating” word. That’s fine. Keep playing.

Hacking

Place a blank tile anywhere on the board, on any turn, at any moment to disable the effects of a double/triple letter or word score that space affects. Tiles can still be placed above that tile. Blanks may not be placed below a tile that has already been played unless it is the same turn that tile has been played.

If a player challenges a word and they are wrong, the score of the word doubles. If they’re right it doubles negative.

If someone leaves the room for any reason at all everyone else may look at their tray and swap tiles of their own with that players as long as the number of tiles all players have remains the same and the swapping ends before the person returns to the room to say “AHA!”.

If the swappers are visually caught swapping the number of tiles they can have in their tray is reduced by 1 until end of game.

Proper nouns may be played with a two point penalty.

When Gamer Bling’s expansions were younger, Gamer Bling found an easy way to play Scrabble on an even playing field: adults draw fewer tiles.

With only 4-5 tiles to choose from, making long, high-scoring words is harder for the adults, and they have to settle for short, simple words… just the sort of words the kids can easily make with their 7 tiles.

Thus, from the kids’ perspective, they are making words as valuable as the adults’, and they remain engaged and excited.

Of course, now that Gamer Bling Expansion #1 and Gamer Bling Expansion #2 are older, the handicap has been removed. And when they each beat Gamer Bling and the Gamer Bling Official Companion in a 4-player game, any lingering parental assistance was permanently removed. Vengeance!