Scrabble Strategy

Every play leaves you with tiles. A good leave is roughly three vowels to four consonants, contains no duplicates, and keeps at least one of S, R, T, N or E. Strong players will give up five points to protect a leave, because a bingo-capable rack next turn is worth far more than five points.

The worst leaves are all-vowel, all-consonant, or anything with two of the same awkward tile. If your candidate play leaves you with VVU, look for another.

The board has lines that lead to triple word squares. Every time you play toward one and stop short, you hand your opponent the finish. Ask what your play opens before you ask what it scores.

Closed boards favour the player who is ahead; open boards favour the player who is behind. Play to the score, not to the habit.

Exchanging costs a turn, which is roughly the value of an average play. Do it when your best available play is worth less than about fifteen points and your leave would still be bad afterwards. Keep the tiles that combine and dump the rest, including duplicates.

Exchanging in the last few turns is usually wrong, because there are not enough turns left to profit from a better rack.

Fifty points is roughly two average turns. Learn the stems that produce sevens — SATIRE, RETINA, SATINE, TISANE and their relatives — and keep them together when you can. Play off the tiles that do not fit the stem rather than breaking the stem for a mid-sized score.

Write down or tap in the tiles as they appear. Knowing the blanks are gone changes whether you should open the board; knowing the last S is still out changes whether you should leave a hook available. In the last two turns, tracking tells you exactly what your opponent holds, which turns the endgame into arithmetic.

When the bag is empty, count your opponent's rack from your tracking, then count both sequences to the end. Playing out first earns you double the value of their remaining tiles, which often beats a bigger single play. Small forced sequences beat hopeful ones.

WordCue searches a bundled open English word list of more than 350,000 entries. It is deliberately broad, so it contains words that a tournament lexicon such as TWL or SOWPODS may not accept. Treat unusual finds as candidates and check them against whichever dictionary your game uses before you challenge or play them.

Scores shown next to each word use the standard Scrabble tile values, with no board multipliers applied. Add your own double and triple letter or word squares on top — the score calculator does that part for you.

WordCue is an independent study tool. Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro in the United States and Canada and of Mattel elsewhere; WordCue is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by either company.