Using High Score Scrabble Tiles Like Q and Z

Win at Scrabble Through Clever Use of Difficult Letters

Dec 21, 2008

Tips on how to use difficult Scrabble tiles and remember two letter words to increase chances of winning this popular family board game.

Scrabble is a popular board game of luck and skill where players create words from randomly chosen letters. Invented by Alfred Butts in 1931, the game celebrates its official 60th anniversary in December 2008 and remains popular today thanks to online versions of the game including the addictive Facebook version of the game called Scrabulous.

Aficionados of the game know how to play scrabble using the most difficult letters like Q and Z and also how to close a game using one or two letters remaining. They also make clever use of the two valuable blank squares and the letter S wisely at the right point in the game.

Using Scrabble High Value letters

The letters Q and Z are worth 10 points; X and J are worth 8 points. If you don’t have a U, good words using Q are qi (Chinese life force), QAT (tea-like drug) and QADI (Muslim magistrate).

For those impossible situations when you simply cannot use a difficult letter, remember to always hang onto a blank if you are lucky enough to pick one of the two blank tiles. They can win a game.

Scrabble Two Letter Words

Having a good list of two letter words is another great way to increase winning chances when playing Scrabble.

There are 124 possible two word combination in the English language from popular ones like AN, BE, MY and WE to less obvious words like AB (abdominal muscles), EA (a river), KO (a Maori digging stick), IO (cry of joy), OO (Scots for wool), PO (chamber pot), XU (Vietnamese currency) and YU (precious jade).

Try to memorise such two letter words as well as other longer words useful for getting high scores like OJIME (a carved bead), OXIME (chemical compound) and TOUZE (to haul).

High Scores in Scrabble

The highest possible score on the first turn is 128. Remember MUZJIKS if lucky enough to draw those letters! This means Russian peasants. The highest record for one word in a competition by the way is 392 for the word CAZIQUES (West Indian chiefs) using the relevant triple word/letter squares.

Other Helpful Scrabble Tips

Regular players may want to purchase the official Scrabble dictionary to help increase their vocabulary. Note that this dictionary does contain swear words but the US version of the dictionary does not as these were banned in 1993.

Scrabble word lists are available to download online and some unscrupulous online payers have been known to use software which generates highest scores from available letters at the click of a button. This of course is not in the true spirit of the game of luck and genuine skill/general knowledge.

How to Win at Scrabble

Commit to memory a list of key words to use difficult Scrabble tiles together with a good set of less than obvious two letter words and winning regularly at Scrabble could be well within your grasp.

The copyright of the article Using High Score Scrabble Tiles Like Q and Z in Kids Games is owned by Helen Smeaton. Permission to republish Using High Score Scrabble Tiles Like Q and Z in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.