Top Scrabble Tips for Beginners

Last update: 3/3/2023

scrabble school

Did you just recently receive a good, hard bite from the Scrabble bug? If so, congratulations! You can now enjoy membership in a vast group of fellow Scrabble addicts who want to play the game, or variations on it, as often as possible. Today, a Scrabble enthusiast can find countless ways to hone their skills through the use of online games, apps, and simple game play with others. There are even board game groups (such as those you might find on sites like Meetup.com) which meet on a regular schedule to play formal, and even intense games.

So, how do you make the most of your Scrabble adventures? One of the most obvious ways to really enjoy playing against others is to sharpen your skills on your own, ensuring you have all kinds of tactics and winning strategies on hand throughout any game. Let’s look at a few of our top tips for Scrabble beginners who want to really master their technique and become constant winners:

  • Read the instruction manual – It is pretty amazing to discover just how many people who are admittedly nuts over the game will also say that they have never taken the time to read the instructions. This is a big mistake because it provides a somewhat surprising number of tips for becoming a pretty potent player. If you don’t believe it, go online to Hasbro’s official site and read them here.
  • One of the most significant tips that Hasbro suggests, and what we must reiterate here is to learn as many valid two and three letter words as humanly possible. There are some great websites for helping you with this, so spend some time “googling” to discover the words with two or three letters.
  • Balance the rack – If you can keep three vowels and four consonants on your tile rack at any given moment in the game, you will have a pretty good shot at coming up with great combinations. Go too far in either direction, and you will find it harder and harder to create good, high point earning words.
  • Prefix it – So many times we are looking at ways to spell out words using a single letter from another player’s words or even a previous word of our own. However, you are missing a huge opportunity by not considering if your rack has any workable prefixes for words on the board. Everyone knows to pluralize if possible, but never forget to add a prefix if you can – “anti” is a good one to consider, as is “im” such as the word perfect becoming “imperfect”.
  • “Ish” it – Are you someone who will answer a question and then tack on the suffix “ish” to a word you just spoke. For instance, “I think we’ll be there around noon…ish”. Well, why not look at the words on the board to see if that “ish” is a valid addition to them? For example, child becomes “childish”, and so on.
  • Q with no U is good, but Q with no E is important too – You may already be working on mastering a list of valid Q words you can build without also having a U in the rack. Don’t overlook the struggle of using that Q without an E as well. Check out this page of words containing Q, yet also free of the letter E.

Perfect these tactics and take these tips to heart, and you will soon be playing like a seasoned Scrabble professional and serious contender.

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