Last month, I wrote about my love of the board game Scrabble. You can click this link to read all about it. I believe Scrabble to be a fun, challenging, and mentally rewarding game to play. I am endeavoring to share tips that I have learned along a 30+ year career of playing Scrabble. If you don’t play that often, I would encourage you to play, even against an AI, to keep your brain engaged, which is always a good thing.
The game of Scrabble begins with blind-drawing seven letters, usually from a bag, though some people like to lay them out face down in the box lid and choose from there. However you draw, you shouldn’t see the letters, and should draw as randomly as possible. If playing an AI, the game will draw for you. Ideally, there is nothing you should be able to do to influence the letters that you draw at the beginning or throughout the game. For me, this is part of the excitement (simultaneously also the frustration) of playing. I never know what I am going to get, and that both gives and takes away.
What makes a good set of 7 letters or a bad one? Usually a bad draw includes low point value letters, repeated letters, or letters that are difficult to utilize (“C” and “V” and “I” come to mind right away, even though “C” and “V” are worth 3 and 4 points, respectively, they don’t form two letter words and thus are slightly harder to play. More on that later). A good draw has more frequently used vowels (“A” and “E”) and a good mix of other letters, and hopefully a few higher point letters.
Fortunately, a game mechanism exists for replacing a terrible draw: the exchange. Players can, on any turn, choose letters they have previously drawn (up to the entire 7) and exchange them with blind letters from the pool of undrawn letter tiles. This allows you to, potentially, improve a hand (though plenty of times I have drawn differently yet equally frustrating letters). I have a few rules of thumb for when to exchange letters. First, I do it rarely as it costs a turn to do so; the player who exchanges letters does not get to actually play a word when they exchange. Depending on how advanced your opponents or the AI, this could result in a deficit of points that will need to be surmounted throughout the rest of the game.
Second, I usually do not exchange an “E” or an “S” tile, as these are very versatile and useful letters, but I am ruthless about the rest of the letters I exchange. Even if I have a 3-point or higher letter, if I haven’t or can’t make a word with it, it needs to go. Generally I find that the more letters I exchange at a go, the better chance I have of drawing a few useful letters that I can play on my next turn. I usually always will exchange a blank tile, even though that can be any letter, because it also doesn’t gain any points. Again, it goes back to the number of tiles I am exchanging, and as there are only two blanks, my chances of acquiring a letter tile with a point value is high. By the way, if I have multiple “E” tiles, I will only keep one, and exchange the rest.
I usually only wait through one turn of suffering with a less than ideal 7 letters before exchanging. The longer I go trying to make shorter words for (usually) less points in hopes of drawing one or two good letters, the more damaging it is to exchange letters. It compounds the problem: with terrible letters, one cannot make good, high-point words, and losing a turn to exchange letters after a few turns of no good words played usually ends in a point deficit that could have been avoided by losing a turn right away and coming back strong with better letters.
Beyond that, sometimes the best you can do is play the letters you have. They may not be what you want, or be the coveted high point letters, but if you can make words and keep the points accumulating, do so. Don’t exchange just hoping to find the “J”, “Q”, or “Z”, in other words. Play words as often as you have them to play, and let the luck of the draw of new letters come to you as you play through. I have found that Scrabble is a game of ups and downs, and that playing with serviceable, though perhaps less than ideal, letters is better than constantly trying to draw the perfect letters.
In summary, exchange letters rarely, and when you do, exchange as many letters as possible, keeping only a single “E” or “S” if already acquired. I’ve found that this yields the best possible replacement set of letters for getting right back into the criss-crosswords action of Scrabble.
a simple man 