Improving your Scrabble/Scrabulous score

Whatever the intellectual property issues surrounding Scrabulous, the Scrabble clone is a total craze right now among my friends on the blogosphere, especially on Facebook, where the knockoff is supposedly the most popular game app on the platform.

Invariably, I get hit with all kinds of “how did you get so good at this game?” when dealing with a new competitor who’s not accustomed to my regular “bingos”–plays in which you use all 7 tiles and land a 50 point bonus–and often 400+ score. The honest answer to this is that back in 2000 and 2001 I spent way too much time on the games.com site before AOL purchased it and reduced it to the latest place to play Bejeweled and Alchemy.

The original games.com site had several classic game titles including Battleship, Sorry, Upwords, Monopoly, and Boggle. Scrabble was another option. It was there that I started learning Scrabble strategy, mostly from people far better than me. A year later, I had a rating of 2000 and was a force to be reckoned with. I was out of practice, though, when I started playing Scrabulous on Facebook a few months ago. During my time off from the game (and from Boggle, where I learned the Scrabble dictionary from watching other users get credit for words like “mho” and “rotl”), the Scrabble dictionary had been revised to include more words, including “qi” and “za.” So I missed out on some big point opportunities in my early games, but playing people with more recent experience, I quickly reacquainted myself with strategy.

Each month on Facebook, I post my Bingos for the month and any notable events, such as new high scores or very competitive games. But I’ve been promising for ages to post a tipsheet to help scrabnewbies go up against scrabvets and not feel like they were plummeting feet first into a meat grinder. Before I begin, let me encourage you to check your archives, if you have them, and see what the scores of your past few games are. Put the following tips to the test, and see if those scores go up.

And so, here it is:

TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE IN SCRAB*L*

1. Powerful scores are built on tiny, tiny words. Learn by heart the 2-letter words; this will be an important key in step two. There are also lists of three-letter words — and you can just search on scrabble word lists and find everything from u-less q words to what to do with those racks where your only vowel is a y.

2. Play more than one word whenever possible. While it’s possible to get an awesome score if you can place a high-point tile on a dark-blue (triple-letter) square, it’s also possible to score in the single digits. You should try to leave each play with at least 10 points, and the higher, the better. One of the best ways to do that is by playing more than one word each play. There are two ways to do this:

a. You augment an existing word. Say the person before you plays “chunk.” You have, on your rack, sryrloa. Perhaps, in starting out, you might play “sorry” off the end of chunk — and make “chunks.” But another option may to shift the entire word over so that you play chunky and sorry.

b. You stack your words. For more punch, that 2-letter word list comes in handy. By aligning words together, you get points for every word you make. Say, for instance, you have the word “mead” spelled across, and you have tozrobl on your rack. You could build “orzo” on top of mead and also get the words om, re, za and od.

3. Save your ‘S’s. The entire reason there are only four s tiles in the game is that they are almost like the queen in chess. So many words take an s for a plural that it is the natural place to start combining a la the technique in tip 2a. Now, there are perfectly good reasons to play a noncombining s — such as using the s to lengthen a word to a pink or red word bonus square — and when those happen, go for it! But be judicious in how you use this all-important letter; once they’re gone, they’re gone!

4. Mix your tiles up. Online versions often have a “shuffle” button that allows you to rearrange tiles randomly, but if you’re using a rack, mix them up and watch what words emerge. Your goal is to start identifying potential bingos — those monster plays that carry the 50-point bonus.

5. Practice anagrams. Another way to get the hang of spotting bingos is to play other anagram puzzles. Scrab*l* is, at heart, an anagram game. Anagrams are words that you can rearrange into other words; with Scrab*l*, you’re rearranging letters into words. But those seven tiles may have innumerable possibilities. Some anagram-based games online (some are competitive):

• Anagrammatic
• Text Twist
• Boggle clones such as Scramble (Facebook app) — I’m so bummed that Boggle and Scrabble are no longer available on atari.com. Boggle taught me more about the Scrabble dictionary’s obscure three- and four-letter words than several hundred games of Scrabble ever could.

6. Play with score previews, if available. Or, play against yourself. Learning how different combinations score differently makes all the difference in your ability to score more points, and can help you determine whether it’s better to play “bark” across off an existing B, or “ba” across and “ark” down off that same B. Playing against yourself allows you to explore and experiment. Similarly, online engines with score previews let you see just how many points you are going to rack up before you commit to the play. That’s a tool–use it!

7. If you truly cannot play something worth more than 10 points, you might be better off swapping tiles. You might have a rack with six vowels, most of which are U, and a Z. (I had this happen yesterday.) That rack is not going to get better in a hurry, because at most, I might be able to place the Z with an A and score 11 points, and spend the next four turns trying to figure out what to do with the litter of grunting noises I can maybe spell. Or, I can hold on to the Z (because it’s a high-point tile) and one or two of the better vowels, and swap out. It’s a gamble, but four turns of crappy scoring is a lot more difficult to bounce back from than one turn of no score at all.

8. Use–or block–bonus squares strategically. Pink/red indicates a word bonus, meaning the score for all the tiles is combined and doubled or tripled. Blue (light and dark) indicates a letter bonus, meaning the score for that tile ONLY is doubled or tripled. It is, however, possible to have a word stretch across such that tiles touch more than one bonus square, particularly where the light blue squares are concerned. If you can place a high-point tile on the light blue tile and make the word cross a pink or red tile, you’ll start seeing higher and higher scores–even more so if you’re using a combine or stack multiword play. But a caution: if you try to set up an awesome play for yourself on one of these tiles, chances are your opponent will see it and play it before you can. Sometimes it’s better to use tough-to-play-off letters such as C or V adjacent to these squares to block your opponent from making a high-scoring play off that bonus square.

9. Buy a Scrabble dictionary. Using online tools to learn the Scrabble dictionary can backfire, especially if an application is using the SOWPODS dictionary, which is more common in international versions of the game (and therefore has more words, if you ever thought that could be possible.) But having one handy is not only a great reference for your scrabble games, it can also illuminate some of the more obscure answers in Sunday crossword puzzles.

10. Watch those last few plays. Towards the end of the game, if the Q, Z or J haven’t been played, keep an eye out to leave appropriate vowels open to be able to play these tiles if you get stuck with them late. Qi, za, and jo are the last minute saves to remember, but V and U can be particularly problematic. The real problem is that whatever points are left on your rack when the game ends? Those points get subtracted from your score and added to your opponent’s, and it will make or break a close game. You also don’t want to hold a tile for a better rack only to find that there are no tiles left in the “bag.” There should be a tile distribution window that will let you see how many of each letter are available: if all four S tiles have been played, for instance, you know that your opponent can’t do a trick combo using that letter. But if there are only three on the table, SOMEONE has it.

Start, for now, by keeping track of your score. If you’re presently scoring 150-200 points per game, aim for 250. Don’t be afraid to challenge people of all skill levels: it’s the best way to learn!