Here is a Scrabble Tips quick list of words that I find myself using quite often. Without these words, I am sure I would be trading my tiles a lot more out of necessity.
Scrabble Tips The Quick List
HM, SH, BRR, BRRR, GRR [Bonus *CSW – GRRL, CH] – When you have no vowels on your rack, use these in a pinch!
FLY, PLY, TRY, THY, MY, SYN, WYN, WYND, WYCH, LYCH, HYMN [Bonus *CSW – VLY] – Don’t forget that Y acts as a vowel sometimes too!
AERIE, EAU, CIAO, AALII [Bonus *CSW – EUOI] – When you feel overwhelmed with vowels, these are my go-to words.
ULU, GURU [Bonus *CSW – UMU, UTU] – I’m sure I’m not the only one whose least favorite letter is U. Without a Q, this letter only gets in the way.
VAV – Ok, ok. I stand corrected. V is definitely the worst.
WUD [Bonus *CSW – WUDU] – What an awful combination of letters. I’m glad they go together to make this one silly-looking word.
ZA [Bonus *CSW – ZO, ZE] – The high-scoring possibilities for your Z are plentiful. The introduction of this two-letter word has made the Z extremely valuable. Even more recently, the world dictionary has introduced ZO and ZE. All of these Z options make playing in the *CSW dictionary really fun! With more words, you can score more points and with more points, you can win more games. If you win more games, you can win more tournaments. If you win more tournaments, you can win more trophies. And with more trophies, my kids might think I’m cool. So the moral of the story is to give *CSW a try…for the kids!
Scrabble Tips Bingos
STAINER – Using all 7 tiles on your rack to make a word is called a bingo. These words are critical for boosting your score by an extra 50 points each time you play one. Learn the most probable 7-letter and 8-letter words in the dictionary to take your game to the next level.
AEINRST is the most common combination of letters you can grab from the bag. It makes nine 7-letter bingos in the American dictionary and 10 7-letter bingos in the CSW dictionary. It is pretty important to take a moment to consider all of your options when making a play.
In one of my club games this week, my opponent played the word RESTORED against me. In my next game, the word was so fresh in my mind that I saw it immediately on my rack. I quickly played my bingo without a second thought. It was right next to the triple lane and my opponent slapped down JADE with a four-tile overlap and the J doubled in both directions before being tripled for a total of 89 points, which was at least 20 more points than I earned with my bingo. If I had just looked at it for a second and considered what other words might be available, I could have played RESORTED, preventing my opponent from placing the J on the critical space and I think I would have won that game. I will try not to sink into a deep dark hole of despair as I replay that move in my head over and over.
I hope you’ve found this short list helpful. The English language is full of funky words and I’m sure that plenty more words could have been added to this list. (I even played all of my Scrabble Go moves to double-check if there were any important words that I left out.) I hope when you look at your next rack, you don’t see a bunch of junk, but instead a bunch of possibilities!
*CSW – Collins Scrabble Words is the word list used in the English-language tournament Scrabble in most countries except the US, Thailand, and Canada.