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

Copyright

HarperCollins Publishers

Westerhill Road

Bishopbriggs

Glasgow

G64 2QT

First Edition 2013

Second Edition 2017

© HarperCollins Publishers 2017

eBook Edition © June 2017 ISBN 9780008104344

Version: 2017-06-23

Collins® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Scrabble® is a registered trademark of J.W Spear & Sons Ltd, a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. © 2017 Mattel, Inc.

All rights reserved.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Author: Barry Grossman

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

1. Think Positive

2. Two-letter words

3. Using the A-Team

4. Too Much of a Good Thing

5. Three-Letter Words

6. Three-dom!

7. Small but Powerful

8. Not the B All and End All

9. Queen Bs

10. B is for Bonus

11. Four-Letter Words

12. Four Play

13. More on All Fours

14. The C

15. Bonuses with a C

16. Starting on the Sevens

17. Seventh Heaven

18. Sizing Up the Eights

19. Fantastic Fours

20. Evaluate Your Rack

21. The D

22. Short Ds

23. Making the Change

24. Before We Leave Those Vowels …

25. Keep Scoring

26. Play Parallel

27. Ode to the E

28. Short Es

29. You Can Put an E After That?

30. Six-Letter Stems

31. Retain Those Good Letters

32. Using the F

33. Bonuses with an F

34. Seven-Letter Stems

35. Q but no U

36. Don’t Forget the Americans

37. The G

38. Nuthin’ but a G Thang

39. G8 Summit

40. Retains is a STARNIE

41. Teasing Anagrams

42. The Angriest Words

43. K-Obsessed Kiwis

44. The H

45. H-H-High Score

46. Noun(s)

47. Verbs

48. Don’t Push a Verb too Far

49. Tricky Adjectives

50. The I

51. Is on the Prize

52. Captain Hook

53. Compound your Chances

54. Those Incorrigible Aussies

55. Double Trouble

56. Joy with J

57. Wonders of India

58. The Blank

59. Don’t Forget Mnemonics

60. Remember Retold

61. Watch Where you Put Those Tiles

62. The K

63. Out of Africa

64. Opening and Closing Time

65. Premium Squares

66. Benjamins

67. Anagrams

68. Which Anagrams are the Most Useful?

69. How Do You Spell That?

70. Calm Canadians

71. Spoilt for Choice

72. The L

73. The M

74. Bonuses with M

75. You Don’t Get Two Goes in a Row

76. Keep on the Right Track

77. The N

78. Challenge!

79. The O

80. The P

81. Sneak Preview

82. The Q

83. The R

84. Match an Opening with an Opening

85. Words Can Begin and End with Anything

86. The S

87. Time for T

88. Play to the Board

89. Edge the Endgame

90. How Many can Play?

91. The U

92. The V

93. The W

94. (Im)proper Nouns

95. Serious Hooking

96. The X Factor

97. A Word to the Ys

98. Y is that a Word?

99. Last but not Least – The Z

100. More Than Just a Name

101. The Strangest Words

The 124 two-letter words playable in Scrabble are …

The three-letter words playable in Scrabble are …

Further Resources

What’s this about Clubs?

And what about Tournaments?

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Foreword

It’s played by millions worldwide. Half of the households in Britain have a set. It’s the board game of choice everywhere from Buckingham Palace to prisons.

But are you getting the most fun you can out of Scrabble? Do you run out of inspiration, find you always have awkward racks, or just keep losing?

This book gives you 101 tips to improve your play and help you enjoy the game. There are useful words (along with helpful definitions for the unusual ones), cunning tactics, and a handy tip for each letter. A two-letter word with a Q, a six-letter word composed entirely of vowels, and the crucial difference between MELINITE and GMELINITE – they’re all part of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble .

After the 101 tips, you will find a list of the vital two-letter and three-letter words that make the game so much easier by allowing you to fit other words in. There’s also information on Scrabble resources, clubs, and tournaments to allow you to take your game further. So whether you want to play like a champion, or just avoid getting stuck with three Is and two As, 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble is your key to Scrabble enjoyment and success.

1 Think Positive

One comment you may often find yourself making in Scrabble as you stare at your rack or play a really low-scoring move is “I just can’t do anything”.

This is the wrong way to think. You can always do something. You may not necessarily have a great-scoring move on that shot, but you can do something to improve your rack and give yourself a better chance next time.

Too many vowels? Too many consonants? A lovely word on your rack but it doesn’t fit on the board? There are ways of dealing with all these problems, so read on, but the first tip has to be “Think positive!”

2 Two-Letter Words

Two-letter words are the most useful words in Scrabble. And the most useful two-letter words are … all of them. There are 124 in total. (You’ll find them in a handy list at the back of this book.)

The ones that contain what we call the power tiles (J, Q, X and Z) are perhaps first among equals but there is really no substitute for knowing the lot. Some of them are very common, like IN, AT and DO, while others will be familiar to you but you may not be used to thinking of them as words, such as AD (an advertisement), EX (an ex-partner or the letter X), or sounds like ER and HM. A good few, such as GU (a violin in the Shetlands), LI (a Chinese unit of distance) and ZO (a cross between a yak and a cow) will probably be completely unfamiliar to you. It will really help your game if you can learn as many as you can.

3 Using the A-Team

The A is usually a useful letter to have, though you don’t particularly want more than one of them. It will fit nicely into lots of good seven- and eight-letter bonus words.

To help you find them, remember some of the prefixes and suffixes that A is a part of. There’s AB- and AD-: loads of words begin with both of these, such as ABJURES (renounces on oath), ABSTAIN, ADRENAL and ADHESIVE.

ANTI-, being made up of four of the one-point tiles, starts a lot of useful words too. Here are a few handy