[Clare~Bear]

I'm sure with such academic people, lots of you must love scrabble.

I thought it would be nice to compile a thread of hints and tips. So what advice have you got for other players?

Do you prefer to play long words that open up lots of opportunities, or play shorters words that create lots of two or three letter words next to other words?

This applies for online versions and the physical board game - of course some tips will work for one and others for both.

Seeing as it's unlikely that any of will play against each other, I thought that TSR was a good site to have such a thread.



http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/group.php?groupid=2048

[KnapAttackUK]

I'm in the UK youth team, and for me the most important thing is balancing. Balancing vowels versus consonants, balancing score versus setting yourself up, balancing blocking your opponent versus letting yourself score.

It's easy to say, hard to do

[Potally_Tissed]

Learn the random two letter words that you've never heard of which make you go "nah that's not a real word" but are in fact legal moves (things like ja, je, jo, qi, qu, zo, xi and plenty more are all words). Makes it easier to get high scoring letters onto doubles and triples

[claret_n_blue]

Read. Read LOADS. But read proper novels and stuff, not comics (all the time). The better your vocab the better chances you have of noticing high scoring words. Here is my example (even though its slightly off topic):

At uni, in one exam, we had to crack a code. The answer was "ARMADILLO". One girl panicked, and crossed out her answer and wrote down a different one because she didn't know armadillo was a real word.

If you don't know the words, you can't use them. Simple.

[KnapAttackUK]

(Original post by Potally_Tissed)
Learn the random two letter words that you've never heard of which make you go "nah that's not a real word" but are in fact legal moves (things like ja, je, jo, qi, qu, zo, xi and plenty more are all words). Makes it easier to get high scoring letters onto doubles and triples

QU and JE aren't words in the UK dictionary

[Potally_Tissed]

(Original post by KnapAttackUK)
QU and JE aren't words in the UK dictionary

They're in the back of my (fairly old) dictionary in a section of all the two letter words

Or I need to go and follow my own advice

[KnapAttackUK]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Scra...2718365&sr=1-1

This is the official tournament one, but learning the 2 letter words is still solid advice

[Norton1]

(Original post by Potally_Tissed)
They're in the back of my (fairly old) dictionary in a section of all the two letter words

Or I need to go and follow my own advice

Qu, at least, is perfectly cromulent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qu_(poetry)

[Clare~Bear]

I'll add a couple myself;

avoid the outer two rows/collums. It's easy for someone to make a two letter word or whatever, then go along onto the triple word scores. Or if you have a word that ends next to the TW, that can be pluralised, you're committing scrabble suicide - find a better alternative, as the person will then be able to get the TW for your word aswell as their own - if they've got an S or a blank.

find as many different words and places for them and work out which scores you the most. This is easiest on the online versions as it adds it up for you. It's easy to find a good word and just for it, but you might be missing an even better word.