Having been with us for a few years shy of a century, scrabble is among the most exciting games you can play with friends and family. The crossword-style board game is known to provide numerous benefits other than just boosting one’s vocabulary. Since it engages the mind from various dimensions, scrabble is known to help improve memory, alertness, mental sharpness while helping fight stress, and improving mood. Studies have also shown that playing scrabble regularly can help improve blood pressure, boost immunity, and reduce your risk of suffering from mental illness. Most importantly, it is a fun game that helps bring people together, thus helping to strengthen friendships and relationship ties.
But to best enjoy the game, one needs to be smart and strategic to score the highest points from their turns. After all, the fun in any game is winning. Here are some tips to help you get high scores in a scrabble match.
Use a Word Finder
The main idea in scrabble is to create words on the board from a set of letter tiles on each turn. Now, sometimes you will get really stuck and can’t seem to create a high-scoring word from your set of letters once your turn comes. As you will discover if you read more here, a Scrabble Word Finder helps you unscramble letters to get a list of possible words you can create from them. You just need to enter the letters on a search bar, and the tool generates a list of words from which you can select the word that will score highest on the board. You can call it a cheat or just a hack, but this tool can really make it easy to outshine your opponent and score higher on the scrabble board.
Peruse the Dictionary Regularly
Games are for fun and leisure, but scrabble is more of an English booster. If you play two or more games and you don’t learn something new, you were probably not keen enough in your scrabble class. The scrabble dictionary may contain some words that the common dictionary doesn’t. It revamps your scores as it gives you ideas on words you can form with your letters. It comes in handy for those who understand the scrabble rules less. Often sold alongside the board, the players use the scrabble dictionary to confirm the existence of words they feel doubtful about during the game.
Don’t Waste Letter S
Letter “S” is probably the easiest letter to use on the scrabble board. This is because apart from using it as part of a word, you can also add it to an existing word to create its plural. The S can be applied anywhere but remember, your focus is to score high against your opponent. It is advised that you use the S where you will get maximum points to boost your scores. However, you do not always need to keep it around for a hefty score. You never know what you’ll pick from the pot once you discard it.
Watch Out For Hooks
Scrabble requires you to be word-smart in your moves. A scrabble hook is one or more letters that are added to a word to give it a completely different meaning. For example, you can add ‘or’ after the word ‘super’ to create the word superior. Simple, isn’t it? But you have to be smart, juggle around your letters for higher scores.
Employ High-Value Tiles First
The high-scoring letters such as Q, Z, X, and K can either save you or penalize you. The sooner you use them, the better because there are few words with these consonants. Uncommon words like qabala, faqir, qadi, qwerty, qi, and qat are found in the scrabble dictionary and can help you earn high points whenever you get the chance to use these letters. You don’t want to be left with these letters at the end of the game since they’ll deduct high points from your tally.
Affix Suffixes and Prefixes
Prefixes are letters added at the beginning of a word, such as de in ‘dehorn’, dis in disappear, and anti in antitheft. Suffixes, on the other hand, come at the end of a word. For instance, you can add ance in the word disturb to create the word disturbance. You can also and able in the word comfort to create the word comfortable. Being smart with this can help you score higher in scrabble.
