How To Win At Scrabble


I have gotten pretty good at online Scrabble and I rarely lose. Alas, this makes me a bit of a loser. Playing online (with the Scrabble dictionary) is a bit of a skill in itself apart from the usual double words of friendly play. Rather than a big word, the ideal formation in this Scrabble is something akin to a square. A tight bunch of usually nonsensical words which make for a bunch of score in one turn. Also, whoever gets the high scoring K, J, X, Q and Z tends to win. Since words like ko, jo, xi, qi and za are permissible this leads to numerous double and triple word bombs. I previously thought this Scrabble dictionary was bullshit, it includes words like nae, kat and others humans never really use. The titles of what seems like the entire Hebrew alphabet for example. However, being rules, it tends to make for a good game as long as everybody follows the same.

The video above details some of the basic ways to play, and some ways to play dirty. The making stuff up doesn’t work online cause the dictionary is built in. Everybody looks stuff up and the computer kicks out anything invalid. The other tips seem to work though. One other thing I discovered is that someone being an ass, scoring shitty conservative words that close the board and passing a lot can actually trick a more ‘skilled’ player. I just lost to a guy who kept waiting for me to open up the board. I don’t think I’ll do that again.

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3 Comments »

2009-09-29 09:59:30

your life is just full of excitement isn’t it

 
Anne
2009-09-29 12:26:43

Apart from “where in the world do you have the time ?” All I can say is anyone who does not stick to the Oxford dictionary is a looooser.
Come on, the very purpose of scrabble is to learn new words that you can use in conversation or documentation. Last time I used “ko” was to ask” Ko poosa” note, not Ko kat !!!

 
2009-09-29 14:12:12

I don’t think the purpose of scrabble is to learn words, it’s just a game. It’s logical but not especially educational for learning new words, certainly not many long ones. Democracy, procrastination, these are all good words to know that basically never occur in Scrabble.

These are the tournament rules, but with friends I usually use whatever dictionary is in the house.

 
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