Barry Grossman - 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble - Top tips for Scrabble success

Incidentally both BRRR and GRRL can have either two or three Rs – BRR, BRRR, GRRL and GRRRL, depending, presumably, on exactly how cold you are and exactly how aggressive the girl is.

14 The C

The C can be a very useful letter to have. It combines well with other high-scoring letters H and K to give you the chance of a high score for just a four- or five-letter word. If you can play something like CHUNK or FLICK, with the K on a triple-letter square and the whole thing on a double-word square, you score 48 for that alone.

One drawback is the lack of those ever useful two-letter words: C only appears in one, the odd-looking CH, an obsolete South West of England pronoun meaning ‘I’.

High-scoring three- and four-letter words with a C include:

CAZ casual

COZ old form of cousin

COZE to chat

COX

COXA the hipbone

BACH to live the life of a bachelor

CHIB a knife; to stab with a knife

CHIV same as CHIB

CHAV ( derogatory ) working-class person who wears casual sports clothes

ZACK an Australian five-cent coin

EXEC an executive

15 Bonuses with a C

Another drawback of the C is that it is not a hugely productive source of prefixes and suffixes, with CON-, -IC, -ANCE and –ENCE being about the best.

Words which combine a C with those common one-point tiles AEIOU and LNRST include CERTAIN, CISTERN, CINEAST (a film enthusiast), CANISTER and CLARINET.

Our American friends are fond of putting CO- before a word to signify something done in partnership: COEDITOR, COWRITE, CODRIVE and so on, along with all their derivatives like COWRITER, CODRIVER and CODRIVEN. These are all valid words. Don’t concern yourself with hyphens. The Yanks rarely bother with them and if they allow the word, so do we.

Definitions of CO- words are usually quite self-explanatory. COWRITE is not a religious ceremony involving cows, a CODRIVER is not a river full of cod, and a COINMATE is not a friend who helps you count your money.

16 Starting on the Sevens

Some top-drawer Scrabble players know all the two-, three- and four-letter words. But nobody knows all the sevens. Well, maybe a tiny handful of dedicated word-study fanatics with photographic memories and lots of spare time, and even they must get the odd twinge of doubt over the correct spelling of HRYVNYA.

At the same time, seven-letter words are crucial to scoring big in Scrabble because if you can play one then you get that most wonderful of things, a fifty-point bonus. In the early days of serious Scrabble, players obsessed about learning as many sevens as they could because of this. It probably wasn’t the best approach to take and must have led to a lot of frustration as they waited, endlessly, to play ZYZZYVA (an American weevil). The secret is to confine yourself to the most useful ones, e.g. the sevens that are most likely to come up in play. These are those that consist solely of the one-point tiles LNRST and AEIOU – the commonest letters in the Scrabble bag.

17 Seventh Heaven

Here are some of the high-probability seven-letter words to remember as you search for a bonus-score:

NATURES

NEROLIS oil used in making perfume

NEUTRAL

OILNUTS

RETAINS

RITUALS

SALUTER

TAILORS

TRISULA trident symbol of Hindu god

Nearly all of these have at least one anagram (one has ten – can you guess which?). If you can get into the habit of being able to look at your rack and say, “Ah yes, AILRSTU, that makes RITUALS”, you will soon automatically also see the anagram, TRISULA, and you can then play whichever one fits on the board, scores more, or is otherwise the better move.

(The mighty ten-anagrammer is RETAINS, making eleven anagrams including RETAINS itself.)

18 Sizing Up the Eights

In the exact same way as it makes sense to concentrate on the sevens, which contain the commonest letters (AEIOU and LNRST), the eight-letter words with those same common letters are the ones that will pay the biggest dividends. Here are a few likely suspects:

LATRINES

LUNARIST one who believes the moon influences weather

NEUTRALS

NOTARIES

ORIENTAL

RETINOLS plural of retinol, a name for vitamin A

TENURIAL pertaining to a tenure

TONSILAR pertaining to a tonsil

TURNSOLE a plant with flowers said to turn towards the sun

Again, many of these have anagrams, and it’s a good idea to learn a few as it is often harder to place an eight-letter word on the board. For instance, ORIENTAL is an anagram of RELATION, but the third anagram TAILERON may be the only one that fits.

19 Fantastic Fours

Here are some fantastic fours to help you get rid of awkward consonants:

JIAO Chinese unit of currency

JEUX plural of JEU, a game

EAUX plural of EUA, a river

QUAI same as QUAY

QUEP expression of derision

QUOP to throb

QAID Arabic chief

QADI a Muslim judge

FIQH Islamic jurisprudence

WAQF Islamic charity

DZHO another spelling of ZO, our old friend the yak-cow cross

ZOOT as in zoot suit, a once fashionable man’s suit

VIVA to give a candidate an oral exam

VIVE long live

VIVO with vigour

VEXT same as VEXED

VIZY to look

WILI a spirit

CWMS plural of CWM, a Welsh valley

TSKS from TSK, to tut in irritation

20 Evaluate Your Rack

Good players can look at their rack at any given stage of the game and know what sort of move they should be trying to make. Most racks will fall into one of five categories; here’s what you should look to do for each type:

Too many vowels: Use one of the multi-vowel words or change.

Too many consonants: Use a multi-consonant word or change. There are lots of common five- and six-letter words which can help get rid of excess consonants: PRINT, TRUCK, CLAMP, FRONT, THRONG, etc.

Bonus-friendly: Good balance of vowels and consonants, mainly one-point tiles, no double letters (or one at most). Have a good look for a bonus word, either a seven or a playable eight. If you can’t find it, play off the least appealing letters to increase your chance of a bonus on the next turn. Don’t neglect to still get a reasonable score now if you possibly can.

High value: Two or more of the higher-scoring tiles (those scoring three or more) but with vowels to help you use them. Play the high-value tiles, making maximum use of premium squares. It helps if the high-value tiles go nicely with each other, like CHK, rather than being incompatible like GVW.

Just rubbish: Racks full of incompatible letters like IJUY, or low-value tiles that don’t look like they’re close to a bonus, like GLLNOOU. With this sort of rack you probably just have to play off as many as you can for as much as you can, or change.

21 The D

The D is one of only two letters worth two points (the other is the G), and this indicates its status as not being quite as common as the one-point consonants.

Its main use for bonuses is for forming past tenses and past participles of verbs – PLANTED, SPRAYED, INFLATED, REMAINED and thousands more. There are also lots of words with DE- at the beginning – DELOUSE, DEVELOP, DENATURE and so on. This does show the main weakness of the D which is that it needs an E to be most effective, although DIS- can also be a handy prefix, with words like DISPLAY, DISCORD, DISTRACT.

22 Short Ds

There are eight two-letter words with D:

AD an advertisement

ED an editor

ID term used in psychoanalysis; also a type of fish

OD hypothetical force or form of energy

DA a Burmese knife

DE of (found in place-names such as Ashby de la Zouch)

DI plural of deus, a god

DO

And here are some useful three- and four-letter words with D:

DSO, DZO, DZHO all alternative spellings of ZO