How to Beat Your Friends at Scrabble

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Tips and tricks from elite players to help you score more points

By Isaac Aronow

Isaac Aronow spoke to seven top Scrabble players for this article.

Scrabble, like many board games, is very different when played at its highest level compared with what people are used to around their kitchen tables and in their living rooms. Many of the game’s top players have spent countless hours studying dictionaries and anagrams to best their opponents.

Fortunately for us mortals, many of the basic elements of an elite Scrabble game can be learned quickly, even if they take a lifetime to master. There are a few small caveats, though: The rules of competitive games might be slightly different than what you’re used to.

Players are not required to know the definitions of words they play. While this is a common rule people use at home, it’s actually not in the rule book included in the game box.

Tournament games are typically between two players to emphasize skill. With more players at the table, the probability of drawing a given tile becomes lower.

Competitive games nearly always use a clock. Typically, 25 minutes of total time is afforded to each player.

Don’t worry though, many of the skills and tips used in competitive games still translate well to the more casual games players might be used to. With a little bit of practice, you can become the sovereign of your Scrabble group.

This was the number one tip from nearly every player I spoke to for this article. John Chew, chief executive of the North American Scrabble Players Association, commonly known as NASPA, said that anyone looking to up their skill level should learn short words using high value letters. From the NASPA word list, he says everyone should know QI and ZA, followed by AX, EX, XI, OX and XU. Playing one of these words with the high scoring letter on a bonus square can easily net you over 25 points, a lot of value for a single tile.

That list contains a total of 107 two-letter words, which most people should be able to memorize with a day or two of light practice. The next step is to learn the common three letter words, as well as so-called “vowel dumps” — words that contain a lot of vowels. “The only design flaw in the game is that there’s one too many I’s in the bag,” Mr. Chew said.

“Put as many letters into place as you can to find those longer words,” said Will Anderson, the 2017 North American Championship winner. “Even just knowing that nouns generally pluralize with -S, verbs conjugate with -ING and that occupations usually end in -ER or -ERS is such an advantage.”

Identifying places on the board to extend or hook onto a word can help you pick up points quickly, or set up for a big move later. Alternatively, identifying and blocking places where an opponent can make those moves can help you keep your lead. Playing defensively is important if you’re ahead — your competitor can’t hook onto a word if you don’t give them the opportunity to. Knowing that a word you’re playing can’t be extended can put your opponent into a tailspin.

“Scrabble is foremost a spatial strategy game,” said Mina Le, an ear, nose and throat surgeon who is ranked 110th among Scrabble players in the United States, adding that, in games between strong players, the person in the lead will be trying to play defensively and prevent their opponent from scoring, while the person trailing will be trying to open the board up and create scoring opportunities for themselves.

Knowing where you can hook onto your opponent’s plays by adding a letter and what words play well in parallel to other words are integral skills that come with experience. Nearly all competitive players also track the tiles remaining in the bag, and can make plays based on that information, such as playing words with many vowels if they know that there are a lot of them remaining in the bag. (Some online platforms track the remaining tiles automatically, and during in-person play it’s typically done on a paper score sheet.)

Setting yourself up for future turns is a major part of Scrabble. Keeping easy-to-use tiles in conjunction with a higher scoring one, like F or V, is common. “Think about each play as a combination of not just the word you’re playing, but also the letters that you don’t play,” Mr. Anderson said.

Finding yourself with too many vowels or consonants before you pick new tiles out of the bag can lead to difficult situations in the immediate future, let alone far down the road. Good players have tools to get themselves out of these situations, but the best ones don’t leave themselves out to dry in the first place.

A bingo, or a move that uses all seven of the letters in a player’s rack, is automatically worth an extra 50 points. It can be hard to spot these without some research and practice, as well as a bit of luck. Learning just the most common ones is helpful. “Even though they’re rare in real life, they’re legal and very useful in Scrabble,” Dr. Le said of words like “aneroid” and “alienor.” She added that strong Scrabble players will generally have two bingos a game on average, but that it’s highly dependent on what tiles are drawn.

Isaac Aronow is an editor on the Games team. More about Isaac Aronow

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