Stefan Fatsis is the author of Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic and is a panelist on Hang Up and Listen . Follow him on Twitter. Any Scrabble player can tell you that the X is actually worth eight points. But as Butts was creating the game, in a fifth-floor walkup in Queens, he tinkered—with the layout of the board, with the total number of tiles, with their distribution, and with their respective point values. “It’s not hit or miss,” Butts said long afterward. “It’s carefully worked out.” Seventy-five years later, Butts’ carefully worked out point values are under attack. Late last month, a University of California–San Diego, cognitive science postdoc and casual player named Joshua Lewis conducted a computer analysis to recalibrate Scrabble’s letter values based on the game’s current lexicon. Lewis reposted his findings to Hacker News, and they were picked up by Digg and went viral. Around the same time, Sam Eifling, writing for Deadspin, asked a programmer friend to do the same . Both were inspired by the fact that while the language had changed dramatically from the time Butts performed his calculations, the game of Scrabble had not.

Advertisement It’s a fair observation. Since Scrabble was adopted in chess parlors in New York in the 1950s, competitive players have dissected its strategic quirks. One early realization was that short words have outsized value, so players scoured the preferred source (the now-defunct Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary) and compiled lists of two- and three-letter words. They also recognized that the most common letters showed up in a lot of words, so they recorded and memorized seven- and eight-letter words—ones that would earn the 50-point bonus for using all seven tiles at once—that contained A, E, I, N, R, S, and T, among other single-point letters. You didn’t need a computer to see that the Q, though worth the most points, was a pain in the rack but the Z not so much. Since the publication in 1978 of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, a compilation of several standard college dictionaries, the game’s word list has grown by tens of thousands of words.

From a playing vantage, the addition of QI (a Chinese life force) and ZA (short for pizza) in the last lexicon update, in 2006, were game-changers. Players feared the new words would cheapen Scrabble, boosting scoring and elevating the role of chance. It didn’t happen. The Q became less of a hindrance, a slightly fairer tile than before, and players adjusted strategy to account for the new gimmes. That need to adjust validates Lewis’ and Eifling’s suspicion that the values assigned to letters aren’t in perfect harmony with the frequency of their use in English or in its narrower subset, the Scrabble word list. The two approached the problem differently. Eifling and software developer Kyle Rimkus totaled the number of letters in Scrabble-eligible words (1.58 million), isolated the frequency of each letter, and then calculated how overvalued or undervalued each letter was compared to its existing point value. Lewis’ approach was more complicated.

He weighted letters not only by appearance in the Scrabble lexicon but also by the frequency with which they appear in words of different lengths (with emphasis on two-, three-, seven-, and eight-letter words) and by their ability to “transition” into and out of other letters. The findings don’t differ much. In both analyses, the values of about half the letters change by one or two points. One or the other found that B, C, F, H, K, M, P, X, Y, and Z are overvalued, which makes some intuitive sense. For instance, the X (eight points) and the Z (10) can be easy money, especially since they occur in a number of short words; bumping them down to six points apiece is a logical move. Similarly, the H was set by Butts at four points, but it now appears in nine two-letter words and combines beautifully with other letters, while the M appears in 12 two-letter words. Living-room players detest the C, but they haven’t studied seven- and eight-letter “bingos,” in which C’s abound.

The clunky U and V, by contrast, are undervalued—ratcheting them up to two points and five points respectively seems reasonable. Advertisement While the media pounced on the story (I joined in ), the Scrabble community has been largely unmoved. Why? Several reasons. One, the game’s owners, Hasbro in North America and Mattel overseas, aren’t changing anything. Two, such proposed rejiggerings aren’t new. Three, players understand that variances, in letter values and tile distribution (too many I’s, the Q without a U), are part of the game and strategize accordingly. Four, there are other, arguably more sophisticated ways to assess tiles values. Five, and most important, adjusting any core variables would create a completely different game requiring different strategies. “It's basically saying, Let’s change the game to make a new game,” Jason Katz-Brown, a software engineer who co-wrote Scrabble’s best computer player, Quackle , told me. Let’s examine the potential effects of the “new” values. In both Lewis’ and Deadspin’s calculations, 10 tiles decrease in value, four increase, and 12 don’t change.

More tiles fall in a band of two to five points, bringing the utility of each closer together. The consensus of my math-brained Scrabble colleagues is that this would be like a dose of lithium for the game, flattening scoring and eliminating swings that keep games interesting. Big but still-reasonable values for some tiles, especially the X and Z, are good because they improve the odds of comebacks, make tile positioning a compelling strategic consideration, and give players with lesser word knowledge a slightly better chance against those who are booked up. “Except for the Q, Josh [Lewis] basically squashes the volatility,” said Eric Chaikin, co-director of the Scrabble documentary Word Wars . “His values take the fun out.” Quackle co-writer John O’Laughlin, a software engineer at Google, said the existing inequities also confer advantages on better players, who understand the “equity value” of each tile—that is, its “worth” in points compared with the average tile. That gives them an edge in balancing scoring versus saving letters for future turns, and in knowing which letters play well with others.

“If we tried to equalize the letters, this part of the game wouldn't be eliminated, but it would definitely be muted,” O’Laughlin said. “Simply playing the highest score available every turn would be a much more fruitful strategy than it currently is.” In response to Lewis’ findings , John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association and a mathematics doctoral student at the University of Toronto, wrote that Scrabble has always had an “intentional” imbalance between the face value and the equity value of the letters. Whenever the game’s lexicon changes—a fifth edition of the Scrabble dictionary is due in 2014—players adapt. “The tile values were chosen to make an interesting game, not to accurately represent the statistical properties of a particular lexicon,” he wrote. Advertisement In fact, for Alfred Butts, the face value of the letters was secondary to their distribution.

That’s because Butts’ original research was for a word-formation game called Lexiko, which didn’t involve a board and didn’t assign points to individual letters.* In the early 1930s, on spreadsheets containing 26 rows, one for each letter, Butts tallied tens of thousands of letters from the pages of the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and the Saturday Evening Post. Then he compared the frequency with which the letters occurred, both on their own and as part of words of particular lengths. From those tabulations, he determined how many of each letter should be included in his game. Criss-Cross Words, Alfred Butts' prototype for Scrabble Courtesy National Scrabble® Association. Butts manufactured and sold a few hundred sets of Lexiko from his Queens walkup, but Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers, among others, rejected it. In 1938, Butts decided to add a board. That’s when he assigned values to letters roughly corresponding with their frequency. Butts’ files, which I read while researching my book Word Freak , contain pages of spreadsheets and notes about letter frequency and tile distribution.

But there’s little about how he settled on the point values for his new game, which he named Criss-Cross Words. He did experiment, though. I found one iteration in which the Z was worth nine points; the K and V six; and the B, F, and W five. And there’s the plywood evidence of my six-point X. My conclusion: Butts coupled intuition with direct observation of the game in action—he tested it on his wife and their friends—to arrive at values that he felt balanced equity and volatility. (Not that he would have used those words.) So, for instance, while Butts might have suspected the X was logically worth six points, he understood that eight would make the game more exciting. Similarly, while Butts included a lexicographically reasonable seven S’s in Lexiko, he knew the letter was so valuable for pluralizing words that he should reduce the number in his board game, which he did, to four. (As with Lexiko, Butts made and sold Criss-Cross Words from his apartment with no success. In 1948, he sold its rights to a small businessman, James Brunot of Newtown, Conn., who renamed, redesigned, and manufactured the game.

Five years later, Scrabble became a national sensation. Butts received royalties until 1976. He died in 1993.) Scrabble inventor Alfred Butts Courtesy National Scrabble® Association. Advertisement Lewis and Eifling performed a statistical exercise that can help lay players reconsider particular letters based on the overall lexicon. “Get rid of your J and your Q as quickly as possible, because they’re just damn hard to play and will clog your rack,” Eifling concluded, correctly. A deeper dive would involve valuing each letter based on how it is actually used in Scrabble, because words of certain lengths or lexicographic properties might be more or less useful when playing the game. Lewis’ program didn’t consider, for instance, longer combinations of letters, or the importance of four- and five-letter words. “The game isn’t about drawing words at random from the dictionary,” Chew wrote. “It’s about actually finding places to play them on the board.” Chew’s and O’Laughlin’s approach to reconsidering the face values of the tiles involves adjusting their equity values. Equity value in Scrabble is similar to advanced baseball stats that compare players to an “average” replacement.

Scrabble theorists have been calculating this stat—let’s call it VORT, or Value Over Replacement Tile—since the 1980s. “The Barry Bonds of the Scrabble set,” O’Laughlin said, is the blank, with a VORT of about 25 points. That means a blank plus six random tiles will likely net 25 more points than seven random tiles. At the other end, the Q has the lowest VORT, about -7 points. To perform a revaluation using VORT, Chew and O’Laughlin would shift the equity value of positive tiles downward and negative tiles upward, have Quackle play thousands of games against itself using those new values, and keep adjusting the values and making Quackle play until the equity of each tile approaches zero. At that point, the tiles could be given corresponding face values, which would be based on how Scrabble is played by the world’s best player. Chew and O’Laughlin said they aren’t interested in conducting that analysis because it would be time-consuming and wouldn’t add to the understanding of the game.

But they have begun trading emails with Lewis, who told me he’s eager to work with the Scrabble quants to learn more and find ways to study the statistical properties of the tiles further. Which shows how, in contrast to the way this story is being framed in the media—Scrabble Controversy!—it’s really just a bunch of curious living-room players and super-smart computer guys swapping ideas about game theory and analysis. Lewis isn’t demanding that the game’s manufacturers change anything, just performing an interesting statistical and intellectual exercise. Still, he does believe, as he wrote in a new post on Wednesday , that tweaking Scrabble’s tile values would “keep the intentional luck in the game and remove the unintentional luck that has crept in over time as the use of English has changed.” He’s perplexed as to why competitive Scrabble players wouldn’t favor mediating some of the luck, because that might make the results of games and tournaments more accurate. I can answer that. Because Scrabble players understand that the game’s inequities are on the margins, and that figuring them out is a crucial part of learning to play well.

And we respect, and are in fact awed by, how Alfred Butts, without the benefit of computer programs and language databases, came damn close to nailing both letter distribution and letter valuation, and in the process created a game that exquisitely, often maddeningly, balances skill and luck. Making the X worth six points won’t improve on that. Correction, Jan. 19, 2013: This article originally misspelled the name of Alfred Butts’ first word game, Lexiko. Scrabble Rules - How to Play Scrabble - Official SCRABBLE Rules Scrabble Rules Links to Scrabble rules and Scrabble official game instructions. Two to four players play in any game of Scrabble. The object of Scrabble is to score more points than one's opponent. A player collects points by placing words on the game board. Each letter has a different point value, so the strategy becomes to play words with high scoring letter combinations. The Scrabble Board A Scrabble game board is made of up cells in a square grid. The Scrabble board is 15 cells wide by 15 cells high. The Scrabble tiles fit within these cells one to a cell.

Scrabble Tiles Scrabble is played with exactly 100 tiles. 98 of these tiles contain letters on them, while there are 2 blank tiles. These blank tiles add a wildcard aspect to Scrabble. The blanks substitute for any letter in the alphabet. Once played, a blank tile remains for the remainder of the game the letter for which it was substituted when first played. Various letters have different point values, depending on the rarity of the letter and the difficulty in playing it. Blank tiles have no point value. Tile Values Here are the point values for each letter in Scrabble. 0 Points - Blank tile. 1 Point - A, E, I, L, N, O, R, S, T and U. 2 Points - D and G. 3 Points - B, C, M and P. 4 Points - F, H, V, W and Y. 5 Points - K. 8 Points - J and X. 10 Points - Q and Z. Extra Point Values Some squares on the Scrabble board represent multipliers. If a tile is placed on this square, then the tile's value is multiplied by a factor or either 2x or 3x.

Certain tiles multiply the point value of an entire word and not simply the tile on that space. Double Letter Scores - Light blue cells are found isolated on the board. When a tile is placed on this space, that tile's point value is multiplied by two. Triple Letter Score - This is a dark blue cell on the Scrabble. The tile placed on this square has its points multiplied by three. Double Word Score - Light red cells are found running diagonally towards the four corners of the board. When a player plays a word on one of these squares, the point value of the entire word is multiplied by two. Triple Word Score - This is a dark red square on the Scrabble board. These are found on the four sides of the board equidistant from the four corners of the board. When a word is played using this square, then the points for the word are multiplied by three. One Single Use - Note that extra point squares are only usable once. If one player plays a word using this cells, then the next time that space is used to make a word, the point value is not multiplied. Starting the Game Without looking into the tile bag, each of the Scrabble players takes one tile out of the tile bag.

Whichever player has the letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first. A blank tile is considered better than an "A". These tiles are placed into the bag once more. Starting the game, each player begins their turn by drawing seven tiles apiece from the bag. The player can do one of three things on a turn. The player can place a word, exchange tiles or pass. Most of the time, the player will take the option of playing a word. Exchanging tiles allows a player to replace anywhere between one and all of the tiles on the player's rack. If this option is taken, the player cannot do anything else that hand. Therefore, a tile exchange cannot be performed on a turn when the player places a word on the board. A player may pass at any time. If all player's pass twice in a row, then the game ends. The First Word Score A player begins the game by placing a word on the star square at the center of the board. This star acts as a double word score. The star cell does not act as a double word score for subsequent players playing off the center square. Play continues in a clockwise direction around the Scrabble board.

Replacing Scrabble Tiles When a player places tiles on the Scrabble board, that player draws new tiles from the tile bag, adding until that player's number of tiles equals seven. The player must not look at the tiles when choosing new ones. Tile selection is usually done by holding the bag above the eye line, then reaching into the bag to add tiles one by one. The Fifty Point Bonus When a player is able to place all seven tiles from the tile rack on the board at the same time, that player receives a 50 point bonus. In end game scenarios, when the players hold less than the standard seven tiles, a player does not get the 50 point bonus for using all the tiles on the rack. The End of a Scrabble Game When all of the tiles have been taken from the bag and one player has used all of the tiles on their rack, then the game ends. Tallying Scrabble Scores Once the game has ended, each player counts the points on the tiles left remaining in their rack. Each player has that number deducted from their final score. The player who ended the game and who therefore has no more tiles remaining is given an added bonus.

Add the total of all points of all remaining players with tiles left on their racks. This number is added to the final score of the player who is "out" of tiles. The Scrabble player with the highest score after all final scores are tallied wins. Accepted Scrabble Words Players may place any word which can be found in a standard English language dictionary. Official Scrabble dictionaries also can be found in bookstores and online. Types of words which cannot be used are abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes. Words that require a hyphen or an apostrophe cannot be played. Words that are spelled with a capital letter cannot be used. Generally speaking in an English-language game of Scrabble, foreign words cannot be placed on the Scrabble board. If those words appear in a standard English dictionary, then the word is allowable. This is because the word is spoken often enough by native English-speakers that it has become a part of the English language. See also: Are Scrabble tile values in need of an overhaul? | Dictionary.com Blog Home » Science and Technology » Symbols and Punctuation » Are Scrabble tile values in need of an overhaul? Are Scrabble tile values in need of an overhaul?

February 6, 2013 by: Jane Solomon 222 Comments Invented by out-of-work architect Alfred Butts during the Great Depression, Scrabble is a staple of word lovers’ lives. The popularity of this beloved game took off in the mid-1950s and has been an essential part of the canon of classic board games ever since. To determine Scrabble’s tile values, Alfred Butts carefully analyzed letter frequency in various periodicals, including the front page of the New York Times. Butts’ original design aimed to create a game that would balance skill with luck, which he believed to be an important aspect of the games he loved. But does Butts’ original design stand up to rigorous computational analysis today? Two researchers recently developed programs to process and analyze far more data and variables than could have been considered by Butts 75 years ago. Director of Research at Google, Peter Norvig came up with a model for letter-frequency counts based on the Google Books English-language corpora. (See Norvig’s research.

) More directly related to Scrabble, Joshua Lewis (a post-doc at the University of California, San Diego’s Cognitive Science Department) proposed new tile values considering three variables: the frequency of letters in English, the frequency of letters by word length (the most valuable word lengths in Scrabble being two-, three-, seven-, and eight-letter words), and the ease with which one can play a letter (the blank tile and S are far easier to play than Q). Using a program he created called Valett that accounts for these concerns, Lewis proposes 14 tile-value changes. These include X changing from eight to five points, Z changing from 10 to six points, and J changing from eight to six points. (See Lewis’ full findings .) This sort of research is nothing new; John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Player’s Association, says he gets at least one proposal for altering tile values every year.

In a blog post in response to the rethinking of Scrabble tile values, Chew calls Lewis’ system a “catastrophic outrage” explaining that “[y]ou’d end up with a game that was…closer to just rolling a die to determine the winner.” Lewis maintains that “Valett is an attempt to keep the intentional luck in the game,” such as the blank tiles, “and remove the unintentional luck that has crept in over time as the use of English has changed.” Scrabble’s manufacturers will not let their original tile values crumble under the pressure of this new research. Stefan Fatsis, competitive Scrabble player and author of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, told NPR in a recent interview that he supports the decision to not change the tile values, stating that these changes would “flatten out the values,” reducing “the element of luck” and making the game “more boring.” What do you think? Should Scrabble tiles retain their original value? Or are the tile values in need of an overhaul in order to reflect the changes in English since Alfred Butts first calculated letter frequency in the 1930s?

How to Manage a Rack in Scrabble: 14 Steps (with Pictures) Creating Words 1 Rearrange your tiles on your rack. Much of rack management in Scrabble is based on the ability to create anagrams, that is, to rearrange the order of the letters on your rack into meaningful words. You may find it helpful to move the tiles around on your rack until you see a word that you recognize. As you play the game more often, you'll develop the ability to rearrange the letters in your head. When rearranging tiles, it helps to place the tiles where they often appear in words. For example, letters like F and J are more likely to appear at the beginnings of words, so place them on the left side of your rack. But letters like S and Y are more likely to appear at the end of words, so place them on the right side of your rack. 2 Watch for common prefixes and suffixes. Many words are formed by adding either a prefix to the beginning of the root word or a suffix to the end of the root word to change its meaning, tense, or part of speech.

By recognizing these prefixes and suffixes when their letters appear on your rack, you can begin to make meaningful words out of the string of letters in front of you. [1] Common prefixes: Common prefixes include DIS-, RE-, UN-, IN-, OUT-, OVER-, and ANTI-. Common suffixes: Common suffixes include -S, -ES, -ED, -ING, -LY, -IER, -IEST, and other superlatives. 3 Look for other common letter combinations. Identifying common letter combinations like CH, ST, SH, QU, LY, TH, etc. can also help you find words using the tiles on your rack. If you can't make a word that uses these combinations right away, you may want to hold onto the letters until the opportunity to play them arises. 4 Familiarize yourself with common compound words. As you start to recognize common letter combinations used in words, you'll eventually start to recognize entire words on your rack. The next step is to start putting small words together into compound words, either with two words found on your rack or with a word on your rack and a word already on the board.

For example, if you can find both LOW and DOWN in the letters your rack (with a separate W for each word), you can make the compound word LOWDOWN. Or, if the word HEAD is on the board, you can turn it into GODHEAD or BULKHEAD if you have the appropriate tiles on your rack and there are enough free spaces ahead of the H. Related to this skill is the ability to recognize words within words. With some practice and the right letter tiles, you can expand PRAISE into APPRAISER or LIST into ENLISTEE, possibly even using both triple-word spaces at once. 5 Strike a balance. Learn to balance the score of the letters you play against the quality of tiles remaining on your rack and prospective words that can be made using the letters you play. As you start becoming more familiar with the words you can make in Scrabble, you need to start evaluating how well you can continue to make good plays while preventing your opponents from making major plays on your words. Some Scrabble players prefer to emphasize improving the selection of tiles on their racks through strategic play, while other players rely more on the layout of letters on the board.

Whichever style of play you prefer, it helps to keep track of how many of each letter have been played and how many are left. If 11 of the 12 E tiles have been played and you have the last one, you may want to hang onto it to give yourself better options. This is especially applicable when holding the S or the blank, which can allow you a big score or a bingo on future turns. Method Getting High Scores 1 Know when and how many tiles to exchange. Knowing when and how many tiles to exchange can help to maximize your score. If you can't make a word out of the tiles you have, you can exchange any or all of them for new tiles, at the cost of your turn. [2] When exchanging tiles in the early game, you'll want to exchange as many tiles as you can to try to get an S or a blank. In the middle of the game, you'll want to hold onto to a medium or high-scoring tile to have a better chance of making a high-scoring word. Near the end of the game, you'll want to discard high-scoring tiles unless you see places on the board you can play them with the right additional letters.

2 Learn which letters are more likely to appear in bonus words. The distribution and point value of Scrabble tiles are based on the relative frequency of each letter's appearance in English language words. Thus, the more common the letter, the more likely it will appear in a 7-letter word or can be played in a word that will earn double or triple word score value. [3] Hold on to the more common vowels and consonants for later and play the less common ones early on. The most common vowels, in order, are E, A, I, O, and U. The most common consonants, in order, are S, R, T, N, L, D, G, C, B, M, P, H, F, Y, V, W, K, X, J, Z, and Q. Be aware that the above lists are influenced by what other letters you have on your rack. For instance, if you have an C on your rack, you'll want to hold onto an H rather than a G, since CH is a good letter combination while CG is not. Note that not all expert Scrabble players agree on the letter rankings shown above.

Also keep in mind that letters that haven't been played will influence which tiles you should hold on to and which you should play. You'll want to keep track of the number of U tiles and hold on to yours if you see the Q tile hasn't been played (and also memorize Q words that don't use the U, such as QI and QAT). 3 Hang onto your blanks. The blank is universally considered to be the strongest tile in Scrabble because of its ability to score and form a bingo. (If you have both blanks, you have an 80 percent chance of making a bingo word.) 4 Keep a good mix of vowels and consonants. Strive to have a mix of vowels and consonants at all times, but your rack should favor consonants over vowels. Try to have 4 consonants to 3 vowels or 5 consonants to 2 vowels. This makeup will make it easier for you to form words that will score bonuses on the board or allow you to play all of your tiles at once. [4] If your rack has 6 vowels and only 1 consonant, you should look to play at least 3 of those vowels on your next turn.

You can improve your ability to keep a good mix of vowels and consonants by memorizing vowel-rich 4-letter words such as AEON, AIDE, and AREA and 5-letter words such as AERIE, AUDIO, and QUEUE. 5 Play high-scoring tiles as soon as you can. It's generally best to play letters such as J, Q, X, and Z as soon as you can play them to your best advantage. [5] You may want to hold them a few turns in hope of being able to play them on a premium letter space or in a word that counts for double or triple points, but this opportunity will decline as more tiles are placed on the board. Near the end, it may be better to play the letter off than risk getting caught with it. Also, the low scoring tiles are more likely to be found in longer words than in shorter ones. Lean towards playing off high point tiles like the B, F, W, and Y quickly to open up more possibilities for making words with 1- and 2-point letter tiles. Also, note that late in the game, the Q (especially without the U) can be as difficult to play since very few short words contain the Q.

You can remember which tiles are the 1- and 2-point letters with the word DEREGULATIONS, which contains all the letters with those point values. 6 Play away the duplicate letters on your rack. Common double-letter combinations such as EE, FF, MM, PP, and TT are more likely to appear in words than are AA, CC, HH, II, UU, and VV. If you have two or more of these less common repeated letters, play the duplicates as soon as you can. [6] 7 Learn the most common 7-letter words in Scrabble. It is possible, though rare, to draw seven tiles at once that form a word. The most likely such word, based on the frequency of its letters in Scrabble, is ANEROID, meaning "without liquid," as in an aneroid barometer. Some other words that you can form by playing seven tiles at once include ETESIAN, ISATINE, INOSITE, ATONIES, and ERASION. In most cases, you'll only be able to play a 7-letter word if you're the first player to play in the first round.

Some of these 7-letter words take an -S plural, however, so you may be able to play them on an open S if there are seven open spaces above or to the left of the S played on an existing word. 8 Look for letter combinations that can be built into bingos. Some letter combinations not only make recognizable short words, but you can find them in longer words. You can find the letters in REST and TRAIN in bingos such as URANITE, SOOTIER, and STOURIE. The strongest 6-letter combination is the word TISANE, which can form a seven letter word with any letter other than the Q or Y. Look for letter combinations within your rack and in places on the board where you can use all of the letters on your rack to form an 8-, 9-, or even 10-letter word. 9 Create words from individual letters instead of trying to force certain words. It may be difficult to figure out bingo words, or even meaningful words, from the letters on your rack. Sometimes, the best approach is to brainstorm words that include a few of the tiles on your rack and then see how many of the other letters are present, either on the rack or the board.

You may need to close your eyes or look away from the board for a moment to do this. Community Q&A If this question (or a similar one) is answered twice in this section, please click here to let us know. Tips To play Scrabble well, you should develop a large working vocabulary. Some Scrabble players memorize word lists, but these players are usually those who play the game competitively in tournaments. For casual Scrabble players, it's usually better to develop a good vocabulary through more general study and with the purpose of applying it to other activities, such as writing, and for playing in other word games, such as crossword puzzles, Boggle, Jumble, Scattergories, and You've Been Sentenced. You can also play Scrabble solitaire. Most of the advice given above will also apply to the Scrabble: Mega Edition version produced by Winning Moves, as well as the original game now produced by Hasbro.

The Winning Moves version differs from the original game in that it has a larger game board (21 x 21 as opposed to the 15 x 15 board of the original game) and double the number of tiles (200 as opposed to 100), but the same letter distribution as the original. Some of the advice in the steps given above can also be applied to similar word games, such as the Facebook application Lexulous or James Ernest Games' Unspeakable Words. Lexulous differs from Scrabble in that players have 8-tile racks instead of 7-tile racks. Unspeakable Words differs from Scrabble in that there is no game board, players use cards instead of tiles, players cannot build on others' words, and letters score based on the number of angles in the letter. Scrabble Rules | Official Word Game Rules | Board Games Scoring You should have a game board, 100 letter tiles, a letter bag, and four racks. Before the game begins, all players should agree upon the dictionary that they will use, in case of a challenge.

All words labeled as a part of speech (including those listed of foreign origin, and as archaic, obsolete, colloquial, slang, etc.) are permitted with the exception of the following: words always capitalized, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes standing alone, words requiring a hyphen or an apostrophe. Place all letters in the pouch, or facedown beside the board, and mix them up. Draw for first play. The player with the letter closest to "A" plays first. A blank tile beats any letter. Return the letters to the pool and remix. All players draw seven new letters and place them on their racks. #1 The first player combines two or more of his or her letters to form a word and places it on the board to read either across or down with one letter on the center square. Diagonal words are not allowed. #2 Complete your turn by counting and announcing your score for that turn. Then draw as many new letters as you played; always keep seven letters on your rack, as long as there are enough tiles left in the bag. #3 Play passes to the left. The second player, and then each in turn, adds one or more letters to those already played to form new words.

All letters played on a turn must be placed in one row across or down the board, to form at least one complete word. If, at the same time, they touch others letters in adjacent rows, those must also form complete words, crossword fashion, with all such letters. The player gets full credit for all words formed or modified on his or her turn. #4 New words may be formed by: Adding one or more letters to a word or letters already on the board. Placing a word at right angles to a word already on the board. The new word must use one of the letters already on the board or must add a letter to it. (See Turns 2, 3 and 4 below.) Placing a complete word parallel to a word already played so that adjacent letters also form complete words. (See Turn 5 in the Scoring Examples section below.) #5 No tile may be shifted or replaced after it has been played and scored. #6 Blanks: The two blank tiles may be used as any letters. When playing a blank, you must state which letter it represents. It remains that letter for the rest of the game. #7 You may use a turn to exchange all, some, or none of the letters.

To do this, place your discarded letter(s) facedown. Draw the same number of letters from the pool, then mix your discarded letter(s) into the pool. This ends your turn. #8 Any play may be challenged before the next player starts a turn. If the play challenged is unacceptable, the challenged player takes back his or her tiles and loses that turn. If the play challenged is acceptable, the challenger loses his or her next turn. Consult the dictionary for challenges only. All words made in one play are challenged simultaneously. If any word is unacceptable, then the entire play is unacceptable. Only one turn is lost on any challenge. #9 The game ends when all letters have been drawn and one player uses his or her last letter; or when all possible plays have been made. #1 Use a score pad or piece of paper to keep a tally of each player's score, entering it after each turn. The score value of each letter is indicated by a number at the bottom of the tile. The score value of a blank is zero. #2 The score for each turn is the sum of the letter values in each word(s) formed or modified on that turn, plus the additional points obtained from placing letters on Premium Squares.

#3 Premium Letter Squares: A light blue square doubles the score of a letter placed on it; a dark blue square triples the letter score. #4 Premium Word Squares: The score for an entire word is doubled when one of its letters is placed on a pink square: it is tripled when one of its letters is placed on a red square. Include premiums for double or triple letter values, if any, before doubling or tripling the word score. If a word is formed that covers two premium word squares, the score is doubled and then re-doubled (4 times the letter count), or tripled and then re-tripled (9 times the letter count). NOTE: the center square is a pink square, which doubles the score for the first word. #5 Letter and word premiums count only on the turn in which they are played. On later turns, letters already played on premium squares count at face value. #6 When a blank tile is played on a pink or red square, the value of the word is doubled or tripled, even though the blank itself has no score value. #7 When two or more words are formed in the same play, each is scored.

The common letter is counted (with full premium value, if any) for each word. (See Turns 3, 4 and 5 in the Scoring Examples section.) #8 BINGO! If you play seven tiles on a turn, it's a Bingo. You score a premium of 50 points after totaling your score for the turn. #9 Unplayed Letters: When the game ends, each player's score is reduced by the sum of his or her unplayed letters. In addition, if a player has used all of his or her letters, the sum of the other players' unplayed letters is added to that player's score. #10 The player with the highest final score wins the game. In case of a tie, the player with the highest score before adding or deducting unplayed letters wins. Scoring Examples In the following, the words added on five successive turns are shown in bold type. The scores shown are the correct scores if the letter R is placed on the center square.

In Turn 1, count HORN: in Turn 2, FARM; in Turn 3, PASTE and FARMS; in Turn 4, MOB, NOT and BE; in Turn 5, BIT, PI and AT. Got Questions? 10 Words That Will Win You Any Game of Scrabble | Mental Floss 10 Words That Will Win You Any Game of Scrabble Hasbro Like us on Facebook Whether you consider winning at Scrabble a case of extreme luck or supreme spelling ability, here are 10 words that—if conditions are right—will help you trump any opponent. 1. Oxyphenbutazone Definition: An anti-inflammatory medication used to treat arthritis and bursitis. Conditions: The theoretically highest-possible scoring word under American Scrabble play—as calculated by Dan Stock of Ohio—has never actually been played … and probably never will (unless you’re really, really lucky). That’s because it has to be played across three triple word score squares and build on eight already-played (and perfectly positioned) tiles. Points: 1,778 2. Quizzify Definition: To quiz or question.

Conditions: Not only will you need to draw the game’s only Q and Z tiles (there’s only one of each), but a blank tile, too (in place of the second Z). Play this verb as your first word across two triple word squares with the Z on a double letter score square and you’ve got the game’s most valuable eight-letter bingo. Points: 419 3. Oxazepam Definition: An anti-anxiety drug. Conditions: All that stress will melt away if you can build on one existing letter , play across two triple word score squares, place one of the most valuable tiles (i.e. X or Z) on a double letter score square and net a 50-point bingo. Points: 392 4. Quetzals Definition: The national bird of Guatemala as well as one of its monetary units. Conditions: Placement is everything to score this whopper of a word: Building on one letter, use all seven letters on your rack for a 50-point bingo, with Q and S on triple word score square and Z on a double letter score space. Points: 374 5. Quixotry Definition: A romantic or quixotic idea or action.

Conditions: In 2007, Michael Cresta used an already-played R and all seven of his tiles across two triple word score squares to earn the most points ever on a single turn, which aided in a second record for the full-time carpenter: the highest-ever individual game score (830 points). Points: 365 6. Gherkins Definition: A small pickle, made from an immature cucumber. Conditions: In 1985, Robert Kahn paid tribute to the pickle at the National Scrabble Championship in Boston—using an E and R already on the board—to set a record for a non-bingo word score. Points: 180 7. Quartzy Definition: Resembling quartz. Conditions: “Quartzy” held the record for highest-ever single turn score until “Quixotry” nearly doubled its total in 2007. Play it across a triple word score square with Z as a double letter score, with a 50-point bingo for using all seven letters on your rack. Points: 164 8. Muzjiks Definition: A Russian peasant.

Conditions: On its own (with no bonuses or extra points), “muzjiks” is worth an impressive 29 points. But exhaust all of your tiles on your first turn to spell it, and you’ll earn more than four times that—which is what player Jesse Inman did at the National Scrabble Championship in Orlando in 2008 to earn the record for highest opening score. Points: 126 9. Syzygy Definition: An alignment of three celestial bodies. Conditions: Forget trying to pronounce it (though, for the record, it’s “SIZ-i-jee”). Instead, just remember how to spell it—and that it’s worth 21 points au naturel . You’ll need one blank tile to make up for the lack of Ys (there are only two in the game). For a higher total, land the Z on a double letter score square and the final Y on a triple word score square. Points: 93 10. Za Definition: Slang term for pizza. Conditions: Big words are great and all, but two-letter words can also score big . And be especially annoying to your opponent.

Build on two As—one directly below, the other directly to the right of a triple letter square—to spell this two-letter delectable across and down. Points: 62 Scrabble App Review What parents need to know Educational value Kids can learn vocabulary words and spelling as they strategically place their tiles to form words with the highest points. And they'll need to use math to maximize their scores. The Scrabble app is an adaptation of the board game and can be even more enjoyable with its smart, intuitive design and features. A teacher feature can be turned on to recommend the word that would have gotten you the most points after each turn. Kids have the option of playing with friends using Facebook Connect or challenging random opponents. Scrabble improves upon the traditional board game for learning vocab and spelling. Ease of play Electronic Arts left no stone unturned in decking this game out with conveniences. Instantly recall tiles when a word doesn't work out. Rearrange the rack by shaking the phone. The "best word" tool keeps four freebies on hand for when you get stuck. Wonder if you could have done better? Tap Teacher to see what the CPU would have played. The only flaw is that random Facebook matchups take too long to set up.

Violence Not applicable Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this classic game is a great way for kids to build their vocabularies. There's a pass-and-play option for safely playing with friends, or kids can invite friends to play over Facebook with chat. There's also a Facebook random matchup, but before parents OK that option, they'll want to remind kids not to give out personal info. The iPad-only HD version of the app includes additional features such as "Party Play Mode," where you can play with up to four friends, using your iPhone or iPod Touch as a tile rack. User reviews Review this title! What's it about? The Scrabble app is a replica of the board game that's designed for both the avid player and the novice. Players receive a set of seven tiles and place tiles on the board to make words, trying to maximize on the premium squares to beat their opponents. Kids have the option of playing with friends over Facebook or having random matchups. The chat feature allows kids to communicate with other players, so there's an additional social element to the game. Is it any good? QUALITY Scrabble stands out as a truly exceptional games for kids. It's loaded with tools that make coming up with words a fun learning experience.

The game makes excellent use of the iPhone's pinch-and-expand finger controls to zoom in and out of the board. Kids can even play and chat with up to three Facebook friends at once. Families can talk about... Play Scrabble with your kids. Add some variety by playing the traditional board game sometimes, and the app other times. Encourage kids to note the words the teacher feature proposes. Do they know the word? If they don't know the word, encourage them to research the meaning. App details 14 Fun Scrabble Facts | Mental Floss 14 Fun Scrabble Facts Hasbro Like us on Facebook To celebrate the release of the fifth edition of Merriam-Webster’s The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary, out today, here are a few fun facts about the game and the competitions it has inspired. 1. SCRABBLE was invented by an architect. In 1933, New York City architect Alfred Mosher Butts created an early version of the game we know as Scrabble. To determine how many tiles there should be and how many points each letter should be worth, he calculated letter frequency on the front page of the New York Times.

So, for example, “Q is a letter that occurs least often in English text, so it should be a letter that there is only one tile of, and that tile should be worth 10 points,” says John Chew, co-president of the North American SCRABBLE Players Association (NASPA). 2. It wasn't always called SCRABBLE. Getty Images Butts named his game Lexico, then changed the name to Criss-Cross Words. His friend and eventual business partner James Brunot came up with the name SCRABBLE in the late 1930s. 3. Initially, no game manufacturers would buy SCRABBLE. Hasbro So Butts made the games himself in his garage with Brunot's help, says Chris Cree, co-president of NASPA. “Around 1957, the president of Macy’s saw a game or became familiar with one and placed a huge order that Brunot and Butts couldn’t really fill,” Cree says. “Butts had to sell it to Brunot, who had to sell it to Selchow and Righter, who were the manufactures of the game when I started playing.

And they held it until they sold it to Coleco Industries, which sold it to Hasbro.” 4. Despite its long history, SCRABBLE hasn’t changed much. Getty Images “The previous squares are exactly what they were when I first started off—the same 100 tiles and the same distribution,” Cree says. “That’s something pretty neat about the game. It hasn’t changed one iota and it’s still popular.” Still, there are crazy variations that people play, including one called Clabbers. “That’s the anagram of Scrabble,” Cree says. “You can play words in any order you want to and play the letters in any order you want to as long as the letters can make an anagram of a word.” 5. But the game might not stay the same for much longer. “There was some controversy last year over whether or not—given how much the nature of the game has changed based on the expansion of its playing lexicon in the 60 years that the game has existed—we should still be playing with the same tile values as they get increasingly out of whack compared to the original statistics on which they were based,” Chew says.

“To be specific, there was a major change in the strategy in the game when the word qat was introduced, I think in the 1980s, and more recently, when the word qi was introduced. Playing the game before you had either of these words as options, if you got the Q, you were pretty much stuck with it until you got a U. And even then, you weren’t sure you could score a lot with it. So we would think that whoever got the Q on average was going to get ten or fewer points in their game. Now the Q is a much less negative tile to hold on to, so there are some people who think it should be worth 8 points instead of 10 points.” 6. You can use the word Bingo while playing. Getty Images When players use all seven of their SCRABBLE tiles to make a word, it’s called a bingo. Yell it out to confuse your opponent! 7. NASPA uses different tiles for competition. Charles Goldstein/NASPA “If you reach your hand in a bag of wooden set of tiles, you can kind of feel what doesn’t have anything on it and know it’s a blank,” Cree says.

“We play with smooth tiles to make sure no one can Braille anything.” 8. There are different word lists for different levels of competition. Getty Images If you’re playing at the school level, the competitive level, or the international level, NASPA has different lists. “Those are all sort of inclusively nested so that you just have to learn more words as you get on and on to a higher level,” Chew says. “The nature of the vocabulary changes—if you’re playing at a school level, you’re not allowed to play words that could possibly cause offense, even if used in the most polite situations. If you’re playing at an adult-level, you’re supposed to be able to play any word a well-read college educated person should have seen in print in some way. And then if you want to compete at an international level, you have to memorize things like misprints in Shakespearian manuscripts and Syrian texts, names of various obscure animals and plants from around the world and words in Indian and things like that.” 9. The game is played competitively in other languages—which can make things complicated. Getty Images Chew says he thinks the game is best played in English, though, for a number of reasons.

“Some of the aspects of the board and the rules in terms in the spacing of the bonus tiles and the way you build words is best utilized in English,” he says. “For instance, in French, it’s a little bit too easy to make words because most French words they can stick an E or an S at the end of so, every time you make a word, your opponent just sticks more letters and gets more points. It’s kind of frustrating that way; everyone scores more points overall.” German SCRABBLE players have the opposite problem, Chew says; it’s hard to turn an existing German word into a longer German word, which creates a looser word grid—and led to a debate about whether they should use the standard seven tiles or up it to eight. “There was a substantial body of players who felt that there are relatively few words that are interesting in German that are less than eight letters long,” he says. “There’s no point to playing with just seven letters.” Eventually the dispute was resolved, and today, Germans play with seven letters, just like the rest of the world does. There are also tiles specific to certain countries. “In Spanish, there’s a single tile that has two Ls on it,” Chew says.

“Or Catalan, which has two Ls with a dot in between it, or Dutch, which has an I and a J on it that look a little bit odd to our eyes.” Professional linguists have determined the values of those tiles. 10. NASPA’s Rule Book is 50 Pages Long. Getty Images “Basically every rule that you look at is a result of someone coming up with a weird interpretation or weird situation,” Chew says. If two games are happening at one table, they try to use different colored tiles so they don’t get mixed up (although that sometimes still happens). Each player has 25 minutes total to play his game, and opponents shouldn’t address each other. And there’s computer adjudication of words, too. 11. There have been a few scandals. Charles Goldstein/NASPA Before players start a game, they lay out the 100 tiles—in four groups of 5x5 squares—to make sure all the letters are there. One player, says Cree, allegedly saw the blanks and made sure to pick them out and hide them under his leg. “Various times during the game he would introduce them from underneath his leg to his rack,” he says.

“He was suspected first year of doing so, and it was reported he drew both blanks in 29 out of 31 games. The next year, people were looking for him and he was caught.” There’s also something Chew referred to as the “strip search incident," which occurred during a world championship. "In the world championship, we get a huge cultural divide between the way the people play SCRABBLE in different countries,” he says. “The rules are slightly different around the world, and definitely the etiquette is different around the world." In this particular incident, a Thai player was facing off against a British player. It was near the end of the game "to the point where there were few enough tiles in the bag that they were keeping track of all the tiles they didn’t play, all the tiles that were sitting in front of them on their rack, and tried to figure out what tiles were still in play and work out all the possibilities and maximize their score regardless of what tiles were in the bag," Chew says. "And they realized that there was a tile that was missing from the game.” The players assured the officials that they had counted the tiles as they were supposed to, but that this tile was gone.

“It’s not unheard of for this to happen,” Chew says. “Sometimes people turn the board too energetically or brush up against it and a tile falls off. In this case, whether or not the missing tile was in the bag, or was active in the game, affected the win/loss of the game. It was played in the tournament, so there was a lot riding on it. So the emotions were quite heated because the two players didn’t know each other, and the Thai player didn’t really speak English and couldn’t express himself in English to his opponent. It was a situation where if the tile was not discovered or brought back into play, the Thai player would win and if not, the English player would win.” So someone asked the Thai player to turn out his pockets, which made him very angry; he wanted his opponent to turn out his pockets, too—which the Brit didn’t feel like he should have to do, because there was no advantage for him to hold on to the tile. “Then this escalated to well, maybe it’s not in their pockets, maybe it’s down their pants,” Chew says. “Maybe they should be strip searched. Maybe they should be taken to the bathroom and undergo a thorough examination at that point.

At which point, the British press got a hold of it and I don’t think they ever reported who ended up winning the tournament, but for several days all the tabloids wanted to talk about the missing G.” The missing tile was later found in the coat pocket of a player who had played in the game before. “What happened was, instead of making four 5x5 squares for the players to verify that there are a 100 tiles, these guys made one 9x11 square,” Cree says. “Which when you just sit down and look at what you think is a square and it’s actually a bit of a rectangle, 9x11, 10x10, you just glance at it, it looks fine.” 12. The most valuable tiles depend on your level of play. Getty Images “When you’re at a lower level, you probably want to hang on to higher value tiles because you don’t know enough about board strategy to get double or triple value for the high value tiles," Chew says. "At the lowest level, if you get a blank, all you’re going to score with it is 0.

But if you get even to the bottom rung of competitive play, then the blank becomes by far the most important tile to hang on to. It lets you occasionally make the 50 point bonus for playing all of your tiles. In theory, if you’re paying at your best, or if you’re a computer program, then that blank is worth about 25 points to the average future value of your score.” S is also a good tile to save, Chew says, and a good combination to keep on your rack is “ER or ERS or as many letters in the word RETINAS as you can hold on to.” 13. There are tons of new words getting added to the dictionary this year. Charles Goldstein/NASPA They include geocache, chillax, beatbox, frenemy, hashtag, joypad, mojito, selfie, soju, texter, vodcast, vlog, and yuzu, among others.

But the ones that will make the most difference are the two letter words, Cree says, the addition of which "allows words to fit on the board that otherwise wouldn’t have." The two-letter words being added are gi, po, te, and da, which is actually making a comeback—it was in the first edition of the Scrabble dictionary, but Chew had it removed for the second edition. “I’m a little bit relieved and nervous about da coming back into the dictionary,” he says. “I got [death threats] for about 10 years after it was removed. I’ve learned that if there’s one thing Scrabble players can really get united on—despite the fact that they disagree about everything else—it’s that they don’t want anyone messing with their words. Add new ones if you want, but don’t take away the old ones. Ever since then, I’ve made sure we don’t delete words except in extremely unusual situations, and we definitely don’t mess with the two letter words.” 14. It’s possible to score 1782 points on a single word.

iStock That word is OXYPHENBUTAZONE, and to get the points, player Benjamin Woo played it across the top of the board, hitting three Triple Word Score squares while making seven crosswords downward. More from mental_floss...

Question: What is the only Scrabble tile with a value not shared by any others?
Answer: K