Here‘s How You Can Easily Win at Scrabble

From football, soccer, boxing, and such, there are so many sports that people can get competitive. As an audience, it’s always so exciting to watch, cheer, and wait on who will win the game. As players, it can be both fun and intense when you are in the game. You will have to think of strategies to win. Before the game, you train persistently to be the best you can be on the day. But it’s not only contact sports that can be exciting; it’s not only the popular sports you watch in stadiums. Playing board games with your friends like scrabble word can also be an exhilarating feeling and get you competitive.

 

Scrabble

Scrabble is one of the people’s most favourite word games! Its history is one that not many know about, and it’s quite a lovely story as it was born out of a man’s desire to cheer people up. Decades ago, when the Great Depression hit 1929, the crisis dampened everyone’s hearts. This continued over the years, which is why an out-of-work architect thought of lifting millions of people’s spirits through inventing a word game they would enjoy. It was trademarked in 1948 and journeyed with various companies and manufacturers until Hasbro, Inc purchased it. It gained so much popularity that, today, studies show that three out of every five American homes own a Scrabble board.

 

Do you know how popular Scrabble is? After decades from its creation, it has withstood time and adapted to the advancement of technology with various applications of this game. People can play with their friends online and even meet and play with new people worldwide. Some universities even have a Scrabble class students can enrol as their PE class. In cafes where board games are displayed, and customers are allowed to borrow them, there will always be a Scrabble board. It’s been a great family or friends bonding game throughout the years.

 

Competitive Scrabble

Every game, as long as it’s scored or there will be a winner, in the end, can be a competitive sport. Be it among your family and friends; everyone will try their hardest to be the winner in Scrabble. There’s even a National Scrabble Championship hosted by the National Scrabble Players Association (NASPA) at a major U.S city. Over 500 competitive and highly-skilled scrabble-playing adults travel to compete in this tournament, where it usually lasts for five days and 31 rounds to play. With so much popularity the game has gained, there are even weekly competitions where thousands of players compete. These scrabble competitions are held in sanctioned clubs in various countries such as in the U.S. and Canada.

 

Furthermore, it’s not only in competitions and tournaments that scrabble can be competitive in, but it can also be with your friends and family on a Saturday night.

 

How To Easily Win

Scrabble is a game combining both skill and luck. This game encompasses the best aspects of board gamery, strategy, and language. Although it’s a test of wit on how you can work around the tiles you’ve randomly drawn out, it’s incredibly challenging when the letters aren’t in your favour. You may want to practice playing scrabble and learn different words you can play with the combination of letters you have. You can use Wordgiraffe.com to instantly get words you can create from the tiles you have. This website can help you avoid running out of words to play.

 

Moreover, to score well, whether you have good letters or not, you’ll need to learn some of these tips and tricks that can come in handy. By following these, you’ll get to amp up your game and double your average score per turn:

 

Aim for the “hot spots.”

What are “hot spots”? Hot spots are those with bonus scores that can double or triple a word’s or tile’s points. It’s an automatic multiplier when you lay your tiles on hot spots, but using hotspots is not as simple as you think it is unless you want it to go to waste. The word you use the hot spots on should be as well-thought-out as possible. You don’t want the hot spots to only give you points as low as only 10 to 15. Strategize and use the longest word you can think of while using higher-merit tiles. You can get up to 100-points if you’re lucky and you’re witty. However, if you have bad tiles and there’s nowhere else to have a higher score, you can use the hot spots so your opponents will lose their opportunity for a multiplier.

 

Get hooked.

One of the sneakiest and cleverest moves in Scrabble is getting hooked. A hook is when you add a single letter to an already-played word on the board while also laying out a new word with this letter. An example of this would be adding an ‘s’ to a horizontally placed word, for example, mile, and turning it into ‘smile’ while you lay the word ‘suffix’ vertically. By getting hooked on the word ‘mile’, you get points for two words: smile and suffix.

 

Prepare two- to three-letter words.

Learn as much two- to three-letter words as you can, especially for letters with high points like x, j, z, q, etc. If it’s hooked and you land it on a hot spot, it gets doubled for the two words you have and multiplied by the hot spot. It can get you up to 50 points in just one turn!

 

Arrange your tiles in your rack strategically.

You may think the arrangement in your rack doesn’t matter at all unless you’ve already thought of a word to play next. One technique to help you come up with words is putting the suffixes such as -ed, -er, -ing, on the right side of your rack, and prefixes like pre-, re-, in-, un-, etc., on the left side. It can guide you to think of a longer word with a prefix or suffix in it.

 

Save some for later.

One of the main reasons people run out of words to play is that they’re left with painfully bad tiles. You’ll never know what tiles you get, so it’s essential to leave at least one to two vowels or consonant unless you can play all your seven tiles in one turn. This way, you’ll avoid having to pass because there is no word you can play or a suitable word your letter can connect to.