The Balderdash board game is a different kind of word game from Scrabble and Upwords, two of the other game titles I’ve discussed this week.

Balderdash tests your knowledge of words and the meaning of words, but it also helps to have a gift for (convincing) writing and bluffing. I’ve heard Balderdash described as a trivia game, too, and I suppose the board game is in its own way–if by trivia you mean the definition of terms.

A Basic Description of the Balderdash Game

When you begin a game of Balderdash, every competitor rolls a die to determine who is the first “dasher”. You could say it’s this person’s turn to be what other games might call the dealer or judge. The dasher draws the top card from the Balderdash deck and rolls a die to determine which of the listed words on the card will be used. This word has a definition written on it for each word, and the dasher writes that definition onto a sheet of paper provided by the game.

At the same time, everyone else writes their definition for the same word. These contributors have several options when writing their version of the word’s meaning. If you know the definition or think you know the definition, you can write a real definition. If you don’t know the definition, you try to write what you think the word’s meaning is, or at least a convincing-sounding definition for the term. Even if you know what the word means, if (for tactical reasons) you think you can write a misleading definition that is more likely to fool a person, you can write a fake definition instead.

Reading the Balderdash

Once everyone has written their definition, they hand these to the dasher, who mixes them up randomly. The dasher looks through the definitions submitted and those who wrote the right definition are awarded three points, but if more than one person writes the correct definition, the round is abandoned, with the correct players receiving their points. Then the dasher reads out the definitions one-by-one.

At this point, people are asked to guess which definition is right. If you guess the correct meaning, you receive 2 points. If you wrote a fake definition and one or more people choose your definition as the correct one, you receive 1 point for every person who guesses incorrectly. Finally, if no one guesses the right definition, the dasher is awarded three points.

Finishing a Balderdash Game

Once points are added up for a round, you move your game piece one space for each point you acquired in the game. If no one has won the game by moving their game piece to the final square, then the person to the left of the dasher becomes the dasher for one round.

In the event of a tie at the end of the game, you have several options for selecting the winner. The most common way to break ties in Balderdash is to arm wrestle, with the winner obviously winning the game. If your group decides that’s a perfectly horrible way to choose a final victor, you have the option of either declaring the tied opponents each a winner, or having a sudden death round to determine who wins or loses.

Review of Balderdash

Balderdash is a fun game for wordsmiths who enjoy pretending they could write a dictionary, for funny men who think they could write good comedy, or for con men of any persuasion (though writing skills would help). While you can impress your friends with your vocabulary and your mastery of obscure words, most of the fun is when a player either has to guess at a word’s definition or deliberately tries to fake a definition to throw people off the trail.

Balderdash Words & Examples

A classic example of a Balderdash word would be “phlebotomy”, the practice of drawing blood for medical testing. One player might write that phlebotomy is the study of flea bites or the medical treatment of flea bites. While you might think that’s so ridiculous that no one would ever guess that, if people at the table aren’t immediately familiar with the work of a phlebotomist, you have to ask yourself whether they would guess “drawing blood” over one of those other definitions.

Other examples might be “coquinate” (to cook), “masticate” (to chew), “namelings” (people with the same names), “rogitate” (to ask frequently), “sagittiferous” (bearing arrows), “theomeny” (God’s wrath), “rimestock” (almanac with runic writings), “gelicide” (frost), and “myriander” (consisting of ten thousand men).

Balderdash and Fictionary

Balderdash is based on a previous board game named Fictionary. Other word games derived from Fictionary include Flummoxed, Weird Wordz, and Dictionary Dabble. Those searching for Fictionary online or in a store should also be aware that Fictionary is sometimes called either “Dictionary” or “The Dictionary Game”

Beyond Balderdash

My favorite version of Balderdash is “Beyond Balderdash“, a 1993 expansion of the game into a bit more of a trivia game. If your family or friends aren’t interested in matching wits over dictionary definitions, you might persuade them to play Beyond Balderdash, instead.

Besides using unusual or uncommon words, Beyond Balderdash tests your knowledge of film titles, dates, names, and even acronyms. The same game mechanic is in place, but like Trivial Pursuit, you have different categories, with a die roll every round determining which category the dasher presents to the contestants. Those who may not have an expansive vocabulary, but who love movies or personalities, may find a more satisfying game experience with Beyond Balderdash.

Upwords is marketed by Hasbro in over 20 different language. In fact, Hasbro has full rights to market Upwords internationally, which means it has rare control over the Internet publishing rights for Upwords. Scrabble, on the other hand, is complicated somewhat by licensing agreements in Europe involving Mattel.

Scrabble Upwords Game Rules

Scrabble Upwords is for 2 to 4 players and the average game time, according to Hasbro, is between 45 to 90 minutes. While Scrabble is played on a 15×15 tile board, Upwords is played on a 64-space grid that is 8×8. You might think this makes Upwords a more limited game than Scrabble, but Upwards is played in three dimensions, not the two dimensions that Scrabble is played in. In Upwords, you have the ability to place letter tiles on top of one another, building up from the original word.

The title characteristic is the major difference between Upwords and Scrabble. Building words upwards also helps players score more points. While you might think this makes scoring more complicated, Hasbro in fact simplifies the scoring in Upwords so that it’s a matter of simply counting game tiles in your word.

Scoring in Upwords

If you build a word with all letters on the ground level of the Upwords game board, you score 2 points for each letter. Otherwise, you only count 1 point-per-word for any word you build in Upwords. You do count any letters that have built upon. So if you build the word “S-H-A-V-E“, but it was built on the top of the word “S-H-A-R-E” and it was built on the word “S-N-A-R-E“, then you would receive not only 5 points for the five letters in “Shave”, but also two points for the extra two letters that are under the word “Shave” for a total of 7 points.

As you can see, once the game gets going, it’s much to your advantage to be able to build on top of words that already exist and have been built upon.

Upwords Game Tiles

I should mention that the Upwords game tiles are built so they stack easily on top of one another, much like many plastic lawn chairs are built to do. This means you can built stable letter towers that are easy to see and read.

Special Rule – No Pluralization

I have a brother-in-law whose pet peeve in Scrabble is when people pluralize a word to move on to the next turn. He would love Upwords, because the rule states you can’t pluralize a word by building an “S” on the end to get points and end your turn. You can place a complete pluralized word on the board, if you wish. This keeps players from using the plural gambit too often in Upwords and making the “S” letter tile to powerful.

Special Rule – No Bonus Squares

Unlike Scrabble, Upwords has no bonus square multipliers. Since the bonus squares are a key part of any Scrabble game and Scrabble player’s strategy, many Scrabble players who first play Upwords find this unsatisfying.

The inclusion of such a rule, since players can play endlessly on top of other words, would tend to make a farce of Upwords, since the best strategy for players would be to build and rebuild minor word variations (like the ones given above) in the corners and edges of the Upwords board. Since you don’t have this rule, players are allowed to focus their eyes over the entirety of the board, much like you would in Scrabble games when the bonus squares (in one part of the Scrabble board) have already been utilized.

Comparisons to Scrabble

Like Scrabble, Upwords requires that players have 7 letter tiles at all times. When you play letters, you receive new letters from the unused letter pile. This means that Upwords is going to have a quite similar feel to it when playing, enough so that Hasbro now markets the game as “Scrabble Upwords“. Differences abound, though.

Perhaps because it’s on a smaller board or perhaps because it offers more word variations due to its 3-dimensional nature, Upwords tends to play faster than Scrabble in my experience. Over the years, I’ve found that home games of Scrabble at family reunions and impromptu get-together “friendly” games tend to go slower than competitive Scrabble, perhaps because the less experienced players don’t see opportunities as quickly.

Because Upwords offers opportunities for building up and scoring points by making relatively minor changes to already existing words, the game moves faster with less experienced players. In a friendly game, you’ll occasionally have a player you would prefer to prompt because they let their turn bog down, so game durations vary wildly from group to group, but that’s my general experience.

Upwords Online Review

While I still prefer good ole Scrabble to most other word games out there, Upwords is a nice change-of-pace game for groups who feel intimidated playing with experienced or competitive Scrabble players, or who feel Scrabble afficionados tend to have too many word games tactics and strategies from their years playing Scrabble. Playing Upwords lets you enjoy a more straightforward point-counting system and still have all the fun of board games about words.

Unlike many popular word games, Boggle is a test of pure word skill without a whole lot of randomness or luck added in.

That’s because all players are finding words from the same grid of letters, so a player won’t lose because they got a lousy set of letters (like Scrabble) or because they got harder questions than the other players at the table. Everyone is on the same playing field.

How to Play Boggle

A Boggle game begins when you take the 16 letter-dice and roll them onto a table or flat surface. All sixteen dice contains six different letters, one on each side. Once they are rolled, you take the letters (face up) and place them inside a 16-cube grid in a 4×4 pattern. The 16 letters facing up are the letters everyone at the table is going to be using for the next round of play.

Building Words in Boggle

Once you have the letters in place, a timer is set in motion. Everyone has 3 minutes to find as many words in the grid as possible. To build a word, the letters in the word must be adjacent to one another, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Your word doesn’t have to stay in the same straight plane as it would in a game of Scrabble, so you can have a word that goes vertical, then horizontal, and even diagonal, if you wish.

The letters in the word must be in sequential order, so if you spelled the word “bison,” the “B” would have to be adjacent to the “I”, the “I” would have to be adjacent to the “S”, and so on. Also, you cannot use the same letter twice in the same word. So if you spelled the word “tart”, you would have to use two different “T” letters and the word couldn’t wrap back upon itself. Words must be at least three letters long and plural versions of a word are accepted.

Keeping Score in Boggle – Rules

With these Boggle rules in place, you have 180 seconds to write down as many words on the board as you can. Each player is given a pencil and a scratch sheet of paper to jot down the words they see. At the end of three minutes, everyone reveals their words, goes over where they found them, and points are awarded for correct words. How those points are awarded is where Boggle starts to get really interesting.

All duplicated words are eliminated. So if two of the players find the word “DOG”, it’s thrown out. It doesn’t matter if two or four players write down the same word, it gets tossed no matter what. Once all duplicate words are eliminated, then players move on to determining which words are valid. As in Scrabble, dictionaries can be referred to when settling disputes about spelling.

Once words have been confirmed, you count up how many points each player gets, based on the length of the words. The longer the word you have, the higher the score.

Boggle Point Chart

8+ Letters – 11 Points
7 Letters – 5 Points
6 Letters – 3 Points
5 Letters – 2 Points
4 Letters – 1 Point
3 Letters – 1 Point

As you can see, Boggle places a high premium on finding long words. A jump between a 6 and 7 letter word is 2 points, while a jump between 7 and 8 letter words is a whopping 6 points.

Boggle Strategy

Boggle strategy tends to involve finding all the small, obvious words quickly, then concentrating on finding longer and higher scoring letter combinations. Some players focus on finding as many mid-level words as possible, while others search for a few big letter combinations.

Resolving Ties in Boggle

If you have a tie after a round of Boggle, most people resolve the tie by a count of long words. If you need to resolve word disputes, it’s recommended you buy an Official Scrabble Dictionary, which is suitable for Boggle use as well.

“Qu” Tile in Boggle – Scoring the Qu

Since the “Q” would be useless in most situations, given how unlikely “U” would be to appear adjacent on the grid, Boggle includes the Q and U together in a “Qu” letter box. Though it’s only one tile, the Qu counts as two letters when adding up scores. So if you built the Q word “quote” with Qu-O-T-E, it would count as a five letter word, even though it only uses 4 dice.

Boggle Game Variations, Including Online Boggle Games

You’ll still find a Travel Boggle, sometimes called Boggle Folio, still marketed. Kids can play a version called Boggle Junior, too. Most of the Boggle variants are found online, though.

You can play online Boggle on Facebook with either the Prolific or Scramble applications. Parker Brothers also has licensed online Boggle games to various Internet gaming websites, so you can play classic Boggle in an electronic setting with little trouble.

Word games are good distractions because they’re educational and fun at the same time. I remember playing word games in school when the teacher needed to kill some time or when I would finish an assignment early. Word games train your brain to think more clearly about words and language, and allow for a little friendly competition.

There are all sorts of word games, from simple games you can draw with a pencil and paper to more complicated online word games that require a video game system or computer to play. Here are three of the world’s most popular word games, a brief history of each, and different ways to play them.

Hangman

Today’s schools are so politically correct, it isn’t common to find teachers playing hangman with their students anymore. Watered-down versions of the game are still played, like “Wordman” where a character walks off a chalkboard if the students don’t guess the word in a certain number of tries.

The original Hangman game was a word game played with pencil and paper. One player thinks of a word or phrase and the other players has a certain number of guesses to get the word right. Every wrong guess ends with the player holding the pencil drawing another part of the hanging man until eventually the entire man is drawn out, hanging from a noose, on the page. Different players use different numbers of guesses, but a standard game of Hangman allows six guesses–one for the head, one for the body, and one each for the arms and legs.

Hangman appears to have come from Victorian England, because the first known mention of a version of Hangman comes from a games book published in 1894 in England. The game was called “Birds, Beasts, and Fishes”, and in this version of the game, the first player writes the first and last letter of an animal and the other player has six guesses to guess the rest of the word.

To play a fun online version of Hangman in different categories, check out the Storyman game at eastoftheweb.com.

Codeword

The name “codeword” refers to at least two different types of games–the better-known version of codeword gives a player ten guesses to figure out a five-letter word by guessing one word at a time. The other version of codeword is an enhanced crossword puzzle where certain numbered spaces in the crossword puzzle represent a different letter, spelling out a secret codeword after the crossword is complete.

Both games are relatively new inventions, especially considering that the more popular version of codeword, spelling out a five-letter word with ten guesses, comes from a classic 1980s board game involving numbers instead of letters. Crossword puzzles have been around since 1890, so its possible that the crossword version of codeword has been around longer than the more familiar “word guess” version.

For a fun “word guess” game of codeword, check out the codeword games at Brainbashers.com.

Word Search

The lovable, friendly old word search is a much maligned word game–regarded by many word game fans as too juvenile to maintain a true word gamer’s attention. But the humble word search was most people’s first word game, handed out in elementary school to kill time or during holiday parties as a learning opportunity / fun activity.

A book of word searches is the perfect companion on a boring transatlantic flight, long bus trip, or to kill time during a jury duty wait or any other less than exhilarating activity. There are word searches for every skill level, including so called expert level word searches that use a giant pool of letters and more difficult words to find to increase the skill level required to complete the word search.

The first word searches in America appeared in a small circular newspaper in Oklahoma in 1968, though a Mexican newspaper had been publishing something similar to today’s word searches for decades before that. The word search spread through American schools when teachers in the small Oklahoma town where the paper was circulated sent them to their teacher friends around the country as an educational classroom distraction. The explosion of word searches since that time is evidence of their popularity and use in the classroom setting.

For a great collection of word searches of different skill levels, check out the collection of word sleuth games at abcteach.com.

Apples to Apples is one of the most popular board games at family gatherings around my house these days. Apples to Apples lets the people with big vocabularies show off (a little) without alienating those who aren’t wordsmiths.

Without turning the game into a complete luck fest, Apples to Apples lets all kinds of people–including kids–compete in legitimate contest. My nephew 9 and 10 year old nephews enjoy Apples to Apples and don’t need a whole lot of prompting, as long as you’re patient and explain words to them. This is a game which (like Scrabble) helps build word knowledge in a round-about way. The chance for fun is great and my family (at least) laughs and laughs when we play.

I’m impressed at how Apples to Apples does all this, because it is one of the least complicated games you’ll ever play. Apples to Apples is a game of comparisons and the fact the game involves quite subjective comparisons is what keeps it fresh and makes it challenging without making it too serious. Here are the basics of how to play Apples to Apples.

Apples to Apples Basic Setup

Apples to Apples requires nothing more than the board game, a kitchen table, and enough seats for everyone. You don’t even need a pencil and paper to keep score.

Apples to Apples Cards

The game pieces are also simple: two different types of Apples to Apples cards. The green Apples to Apples cards are adjectives, while the red Apples to Apples cards include nouns of all sorts. These tends to be people, places, and eras. The people and places are often from the past, though you’ll find plenty of current references. Examples might include Confucius, Carl Sagan, Rush Limbaugh, Democrats, Ghost Towns, The Planet Saturn, and Pond Scum.

Each of these red cards contain a short, one-sentence explanation of the person, place, or time, for those who don’t know who or what is on their card. All players keep 7 red cards in their hands throughout the game, drawing a new card when they play one of their old ones.

Apples to Apples Judge

The green cards are used by the judge, a position which changes each turn. The judge position moves clockwise around the board, much like the dealer in a home game of poker would. When it’s the judge’s turn, they select a green card. This card will have an adjective on it: “Silly” for example. Besides the one word, you’ll also have three synonyms on it. For example, you might see Silly, Frivolous, Irrational, and Ridiculous on the card.

Playing Apples to Apples

Everyone in the game who isn’t a judge on a turn selects a card from their hand. This card is supposed to match the adjectives on the judge’s card as closely as possible. When everyone has turned in a card to the judge, then the judge mixes up the cards so he/she doesn’t know whose card is which.

The judge then calls out the cards (usually to laughter or approval), then selects the card which most closely resembles the adjectives offered. This is often done by process of elimination, which also serves to let you explain to people why you’re rejecting their card. When you have a match, the winner of that round is the person whose cards you selected. The adjective card is awarded for safe-keeping by the winner and the first one to collect seven such cards wins the game.

That’s all there is to Apples to Apples. You continue around the table until a winner is declared. It sounds simple in theory, but in execution, it’s hard to predict who’s going to win. Some of the reasons why follow:

Selecting a Card Each Hand

You’ll have plenty of hands where you don’t have a card that exactly matches the judge’s word. When you don’t have a perfect match, you have to decide whether to select a card with some tenuous connection and hope everyone else also has lousy matches, or whether you should get rid of a card that isn’t likely to be chosen in subsequent rounds (which is hard to predict) and take the loss that round. Another reason luck plays a hand is that you might play a card that’s a good match, but an opponent plays a card that’s just a better match. Finally, the subjective or arbitrary nature of the judge might ruin even the best-played cards.

For example, I have a lovable doofus of a nephew who, God bless him, isn’t what you would call book-smart. He’s a good guy, but seems air-headed, if guys can be air-headed. One time we were playing, we get the card “Silly” and everyone turns in their cards. No one had a really good match and my card, “Knock-Knock Jokes”, was the only card even approximately silly, frivolous, or ridiculous. But my nephew was the judge that turn, so anybody’s card was still in the running. Eventually, the contest for which came closest to “silly” was “Knock-Knock Jokes” and “The Planet Saturn”.

Indignantly, I asked my nephew (in perhaps a breech of etiquette), “Why in the world is the Planet Saturn still out there?”

He answers, “Because Saturn is cool”. Someone else pointed out the adjective was silly, not cool, to which my nephew replied that he thought silly things were cool. Well, obviously.

This example spells out why the game is so much fun. Not only does it get you talking about words and vocabulary, but it brings out people’s quirks in big doses. I’m not the type to blurt out things when it’s someone else’s turn. I also should point out that my nephew wasn’t trying to make a mess of things, either.

When Not to Play Apples to Apples

I should mention a few things about games of Apples to Apples. If you have family or friends of a different political persuasion than you, you’ll find plenty of awkward moments. Because you have cards like “Barack Obama”, “George W. Bush”, “Dick Cheney”, “Rush Limbaugh”, “Republicans”, and “Democrats”, you’ll find that political comments get thrown out there a lot.

Our larger family is split pretty evenly between Democrats and Republicans. So when the word was “Influential” and I put out the card “Republicans”, I hesitated, even though I assumed I wasn’t making much of a political statement.

I assume that either major party would be the textbook definition of influential, given each has 60,000,000-plus voters (some of those voters quite influential) in the most powerful country in the world. When you consider all the broadcast networks, lobbying firms, and cottage industries devoted to getting their word out there and influencing people, either the Democrats or Republicans would be considered massively influential organizations.

But apparently my G.O.P. kinsman is so partisan that he can’t even admit that “The Republicans” as a whole are more influential than George Lucas, who survived the cut longer than my card. I had no idea George Lucas wielded that much power and influence. Heck, he may be a Republican, for all I know.

So if that remotely resembles your family, you might think once or twice before playing Apples to Apples. In our family, those moments are quickly forgotten, though they do make it into blog post reviews of Apples to Apples. Read more about how to play Apples to Apples here.

One little-known Scrabble rule is the one which lets you swap letters during your turn. The reason the Scrabble letter-swapping rule is so little-used, though, is because you have to forfeit your chance to place a word on the board that time.

Since this is a crippling action in most competitive games, most people prefer to place small, low-scoring words that get rid of one or more of the letters they don’t like, instead of executing the swap maneuver.

If you simply can’t place a word on the board, then you can swap out the letters you want to get rid of and choice from the remaining pile of unused Scrabble letters, like you would when replacing letters you’ve put on the board.

Learning Rare Word Lists

One reason people learn lists of Scrabble words with the difficult letters (Q, V, J, X, Z) is it allows you to place any combination of letters on the board, thus avoiding the need for swapped letters. It’s almost always a better idea to place a low-scoring word than scoring no points, especially if you can get rid of the offending letters. But it’s also good to know the rule exists, so you always have other options.

Seven Tiles Must Remain

The one stipulation that might trip you up is the 7-letter stipulation. To legally swap letter tiles on your turn, there must remain at least seven unused letters in the Scrabble letter bag. If fewer than 7 tiles remain, you may not exchange letters.

Official Rules for Swapping

Below are the pertinent official Scrabble rules, from an online version of the game approved by official authority on Scrabble, Hasbro: “Players are allowed to use their turn to swap one or more tiles…You cannot exchange tiles if there are fewer than seven tiles left in the bag.”

Scrabble Rules Interpretation – What It Means

So you swap 1 of your letter tiles or 7 of your letters, or any number in-between. How many you plan on placing back in the bag, you replace. The only time you cannot do this in the game is when there are 6 or fewer letters in the bag. But if you invoke this rule, you lose your ability to place letters on the board that turn.

Passing in Scrabble

A similar rule allows a person to pass their turn in Scrabble (by choosing not to place a word on the board). A player with the option to either pass or swap words should always attempt the swap. If you can’t play those letters this turn, there’s a decent chance you won’t be able to play them next turn, either. So take the letters that are gumming up the works and swap them.

The pass rule is mainly in place for the last stages of the game, when there are not enough letters in the bag for a letter swap. Remember, if all players pass twice in succession, the game ends. This is a rare occurrence.

Avoid Swaps in Scrabble

It’s a bad idea to swap letters too many times in Scrabble, because your opponent or opponents are going to be adding to their point total while you’re fiddling around with the letter bag and taking a zero.

Sometimes these things cannot be avoided, especially in home games where players haven’t taken the time to learn all the annoying and obsessive Scrabble strategies some of us study. But it’s almost always better to play a few letters that don’t score much than to take a zero. Those few points could be the difference in winning or losing.

Whether you’re playing competitive Scrabble at an officially sanctioned tournament or you’re playing with the family around the kitchen table, there’s no more dramatic moment in the Scrabble board game than when someone decides to challenge a word. This often is the moment which decides the outcome of the game.

Since this is also the time when feelings get hurt and reputations are on the line, you need to know the official Hasbro rules for challenging words in Scrabble games, so everyone at the table is on the same page.

Is Challenging Words Legal in Scrabble?

First, let’s get this out of the way: a Scrabble word challenge is perfectly legal. It’s in the Scrabble rule book. So let’s take a look at when you can challenge a word, what happens when you challenge and are proven right, and what happens when you challenge and are proven wrong. That’s one thing you should know–in many Scrabble playing clubs and tournaments, there’s risk in it for you, too.

Double Challenge Rule – Original Scrabble Rules

This rule is still used by some Scrabble players and is analogous to the original Scrabble rules on challenges.

It’s called the “double challenge” because both sides of the question are in jeopardy. If the person who placed the letters loses the challenge (the word is invalid), they must remove their letters from the board and lose their turn. If the person who made the challenge loses (the word is valid), they lose their next turn.

One criticism of this rule is that it encourages bluffing, because many players are loathe to challenge, for fear they’ll be wrong and lose a turn.

Single Challenge Scrabble Rules

In the single challenge game, a player may challenge a word placed on the board at any time, with no penalty for being wrong (if the word is valid). If the word is proven invalid, then the player who placed the letters must take them off the board and return those same letters to their rack, and their turn is noted as a pass on the score tally.

One disadvantage to this rule is there is no disincentive for a player to challenge words they know to be correct, so they can use this rule to garner additional time to think out their next play in timed games (usually in tournaments).

Penalty Challenges – Scrabble Word Challenges

Another option is to assess a set number of points as a penalty in these cases. If a person challenges and their challenge is upheld, the player placing the word loses a set number of points. If the challenger proves wrong, he or she loses that same number of points.

When these rules are in effect, players agree before the game on how many points the penalty is worth. These points might either be deducted from the score of the person losing the challenge (certainly used in games with 3 or more players), or given to the person winning the challenge. Often in tournaments, the tournament organizers will decide what the penalty challenge points as a standard throughout the tournament.

In many ways, this rule splits the difference between the single challenge and double challenge rules. A person might be less likely to challenge, fearing they will lose points, so that bluffing might become a little more likely than single challenge Scrabble.

At the same time, while a person is unlikely to challenge in order to stall for time with the penalty points enforced, they might occasionally calculate that the loss of 5 or 10 points is worth the infraction. While this makes either less likely, some criticize this rule as “falling between two chairs”.

When to Challenge in Scrabble

There’s actually a strategy to challenging in Scrabble. Especially if there is a penalty for challenging, it’s not something you want to do all the time.

Think about it. If your opponent places a word that you think is suspect, but you aren’t absolutely certain about, you should analyze to see if he/she has better word choices with those letters (or word close to those letters). If so, you might be better off letting the letters sit on the board and not risking the penalty, figuring your opponent is always leaving points on the table.

Online Scrabble Word Challenges

This problem is less likely in Internet Scrabble, because sites often use automatic verification software to assure that any word played is actually legal according to the website’s Scrabble dictionary. Since no one accepted by the software would be invalid, there is no need for a Scrabble challenge. At the same time, this might lead players to keep placing doubtful words until one is accepted–though many Scrabble games online are timed. As you can see, there are many ways (though perhaps no perfect one) for resolving Scrabble challenges.

While that gets around the problem of murky challenge rules in most forms of electronic Scrabble, it pays to know your Scrabble challenge rules if you are considering playing in a tournament. There are times when you’ll face an opponent who tries to bluff to hit on that huge score.

“V” is another of those Scrabble letters which present problems for newcomers to the game. If you’ve memorized the list of V words, though, the V becomes an opportunity to score big points.

Here are the lists of 3-letter, 4-letter, and 5-letter words containing the letter “v”, so you can capitalize the next time you have the good luck to draw a “V” from the tile pile.

3-Letter V-Words

You might be incredulous about some of these words, so I’ll point out a few here and there as you go through these lists. “Dev” is a word for a type of Hindu deity, divine being, or even king. “Guv” is a British term for governor, a shortened form of “guvnor”. “Tav” is the 23rd letter in the Hebrew alphabet.

Players less familiar with the Official Scrabble Dictionary books are occasionally going to get bent out of shape about you using Hindi words and Hebrew words, but these appear on most official Scrabble lists for English-language games. I’ve had people complain about Japanese words like “sake” and “manga” before, but when a word is so common that a sizable part of the English-speaking peoples have a pretty good chance of knowing what a foreign word refers to, it deserves to be on a Scrabble word list. Certainly, if “tav” is considered an English word, then manga should be.

• D-R – dev, guv, lav, lev, luv, tav, rev
• V - vac, van, var, vas, vat, vau, vav, vaw, vie, vim, veg, vex, vet, via, vid, vis, vig, voe, vow, vox, vug,

4-Letter V Words

The few 4-letter V-words that don’t start with a “v” are particularly valuable, because you’ll be trying to place a vee onto a word that’s already on the board (almost all of the time).

• P-S – perv, shiv, spiv
• VA – vacs, vail, vain, vair, vale, vamp, vane, vang, vary, vasa, vase, vast, vaus, vavs, vaws, vatu, vagi, vail
• VE – veal, veep, veer, vees, vein, veld, vend, vera, vert, very, vest, vext
• VI – vial, vibe, vice, vide, vied, vier, vies, view, viga, vigs, vile, vims, vina, vine, viny, viol, vino, visa, viva, vise, vive
• VO – void, vole, vote, vows, voes, volt
• VR-VU – vrow, vums, vugg, vugh, vugs

Use the word “vrow” sometime in a game and see how that flies with your opponents. A “Vrow” is word for a Dutch woman. I’ve seen it used in a book describing the Boer War, so I’m assuming the word is also used for Dutch-descent Afrikaaners.

5-Letter V Words

The words in this list may not be in strict alphabetical order, so I apologize. I was transcribing them from a much longer list of V-words, but at least you know I’m not copying and pasting these from just anywhere. “Ganev” is a Yiddish word meaning “an unscrupulous opportunist who stoops to sharp practice” (also spelled “ganef”), while “schav” is a Yiddish word (from a similar Polish word) which describes a “chilled soup made with sorrel, onions, lemon juice, eggs, and sugar–served with sour cream.”

• G-S – ganev, schav
• VAC-VAM – vacua,  vague, vagus, vails, vairs, vakil, vales, valet, valor, valse, value, valve, vamps, vampy
• VAN-VAU – vaned, vanes, vangs, vapid, vapor, varas, varia, varix, varna, varve, vasal, vasts, vasty, vatic, vatus, vault, vaunt
• VEA-VEL – veals, vealy, veeps, veers, veery, vegan, veges, veins, veiny, velds, veldt, velum
• VEN-VEX – venae, venal, vends, venge, venin, verbs, verso, verts, vertu, verve, vesta, vests, vetch, vexed, vexer, vexes, vexil
• VIA-VIM – vials, viand, vibes, viced, video, viers, viewy, vigas, vigia, vigil, vigor, viler, vills, vimen
• VIN-VIZ – vinal, vinas, vinca, vined, vines, vinic, vinos, vinyl, viols, viper, vires, virus, visas, vised, vises, visor, vista, vivas, vivid, vizir, vizor
• VOC-VOM – vocab, vocal, voces, vodka, vodou, vodun, vogie, vogue, voice, voled, voles, volta, volte, volti, volts, volva, vomer
• VOT-VOW – voted, votes, vouch, vowed, vowel, vower
• VRO-VYI – vrouw, vrows, vuggs, vuggy, vughs, vulgo, vulva, vying

Words with Multiple Vs

Sometimes you’ll find yourself with two V’s on your rack. When that happens, it’s good to have in your head the short list of words that have two Vs. Here’s that list.

• Vav, Vavs, Viva, Vive, Civvy, Divvy, Navvy, Savvy, Valve, Varve, Verve, Vivas, Volva, Vulva

Playing V’s in Scrabble

If you can commit just the 2-letter and 3-letter v-words to memory, you’ll become a better Scrabble player from that knowledge alone. If you get serious about your Scrabble playing and decide to memorize the longer lists of 4-letter and 5-letter words for the less used letters in the English language, you’ll become an intermediate to advanced opponent who can give most serious players a challenge.

The letter “j” is one of the pivotal letters in Scrabble, due to its relatively high point level and its rare usage in the English language.

Because so many of our names start with “J”, you tend to think there are a lot of words you can build with the letter. But once you have a j in your rack, the unstudied Scrabble player suddenly realizes how few words you can spell with the darned thing.

To help with that particular problem, here are several lists of j-words that are most likely to help you: 2/3 letter j-words, 4-letter j-words, and 5-letter j-words.

2 and 3 Letter Scrabble J Words

• jo, haj, jab, jag, jam, jar, jaw, jay, jee, jet, jeu, jew, jib, jig, jin, job, joe, jog, jot, jow, joy, jug, jun, jus, jut, raj, taj

4 Letter Scrabble J Words

• A-H – ajar, ajee, djin, dojo, fuji, hadj, haji, hajj
• JA – jabs, jack, jade, jagg, jags, jail, jake, jamb, jams, jane, jape, jarl, jars, jato, jauk, jaup, java, jaws, jays, jazz
• JE – jean, jeed, jeep, jeer, jees, jeez, jefe, jehu, jell, jeon, jerk, jess, jest, jete, jets, jeux, jews
• JI – jiao, jibb, jibe, jibs, jiff, jigs, jill, jilt, jimp, jink, jinn, jins, jinx, jism, jive, jivy
• JO – jobs, jock, joes, joey, jogs, john, join, joke, joky, jole, jolt, josh, joss, jota, jots, jouk, jowl, jows, joys
• JU – juba, jube, juco, judo, juga, jugs, juju, juke, juku, jump, junk, jupe, jura, jury, just, jute, juts
• K-S – koji, mojo, puja, raja, soja

5-Letter J-Words – Scrabble Word Lists

• A – ajiva, ajuga
• B – banjo, bijou
• C – cajon
• D – djinn, djins, dojos
• E – eject, enjoy
• F – fjeld, fjord, fujis
• G – gadje, gadjo, ganja
• H – hadji, hajes, hajis, hajji, hijab, hijra
• JAB-JAM – jabot, jacal, jacks, jacky, jaded, jades, jager, jaggs, jaggy, jagra, jails, jakes, jalap, jalop, jambe, jambs, jammy
• JAN-JAZ – janes, janty, japan, japed, japer, japes, jarls, jatos, jauks, jaunt, jaups, javas, jawan, jawed, jazzy
• JEA-JEM – jeans, jebel, jeeps, jeers, jefes, jehad, jehus, jello, jells, jelly, jemmy
• JEN-JEW – jenny, jerid, jerks, jerky, jerry, jesse, jests, jetes, jeton, jetty, jewel
• JIB-JIM – jibbs, jibed, jiber, jibes, jiffs, jiffy, jiggy, jihad, jills, jilts, jimmy, jimpy
• JIN-JIV – jingo, jinks, jinni, jinns, jisms, jived, jiver, jives, jivey
• JN – jnana
• JOC-JOM – jocko, jocks, joeys, johns, joins, joint, joist, joked, joker, jokes, jokey, joles, jolly, jolts, jolty, jomon
• JON-JOY – jones, joram, jorum, jotas, jotty, joual, jouks, joule, joust, jowar, jowed, jowls, jowly, joyed
• JUB-JUM – jubas, jubes, jucos, judas, judge, judos, jugal, jugum, juice, juicy, jujus, juked, jukes, jukus, julep, jumbo, jumps, jumpy
• JUN-JUT – junco, junks, junky, junta, junto, jupes, jupon, jural, jurat, jurel, juror, justs, jutes, jutty
• K – kanji, kojis, kopje
• M – major, mojos, mujik
• N – ninja, objet
• P – pujah, pujas, punji
• R – rajah, rajas, rajes, rejig, rioja
• S – sajou, shoji, slojd, sojas
• T – tajes, thuja, unjam

More About J-Words

Every time I post a list like this, I get stray comment such as “‘jinn’ and ‘hajj’ are Arabic words”. But words like that have been used enough by English-speakers that they have entered the language, just like many English words and American slang terms have entered other language. With the era of the Internet, languages are evolving quicker than ever, and some foreign words become proper Scrabble plays.

Anyone who has ever played Scrabble knows the “x” can be a troublesome tile to possess, especially in an endgame scenario. While there are worse letters to possess, the high score value of the “X” should encourage you to learn the best x-words to play in the high-scoring spaces of the board.

Below is a list of the words you’ll want to memorize to become an effective Scrabble player with the letter x. I suggest learning the two and three letter words first, then move on to the four-letter words with x, and finally the 5-letter words with x. Numbers dictate that the smaller words are going to be more useful in more situations, so you learn them first. Many new Scrabble players, , overlooking that simple fact, focus too much on the bigger words.

Words with X – Scrabble Two-Letter Words

As I go through this list, I’ll add in a few defintions of interesting words that people aren’t immediately going to know–unless they are more well-read or better-travelled than I am (a real possibility). A “xu” is a minor unit of Vietnamese currency. A “xi” is both a Greek letter and the name of a type of barion in particle physics.

• ax, ex, ox, xi, xu

X-Words – Three-Letter Scrabble Words

“Kex” refers to a certain type of hollow-stemmed umbelliferous plants, or the stalks of such plants. “Dex” is a slang term for Dextroamphetamine. “Gox” is an abbreviation in rocketry which means “gaseous oxygen”, while “lox” is a similar term meaning “liquid oxygen”. I believe these have been used enough that they are considered real words, and not just abbreviations anymore (such as “scuba”, “laser”, or “radar”).

• axe, box, cox, dex, fax, fix, fox, gox, hex, kex, lax, lex, lox, lux, max, mix, nix, oxo, oxy, pax, pix, pox, pyx, rax, rex, sax, sex, six, sox, tax, tux, vex, vox, wax, xis, zax

X – 4-Letter Scrabble Words

When you start to look over this word list, you’ll probably recognize more than half of them. That’s one reason it’s good to look over word lists before playing Scrabble, because it refreshes what you know as much as it exposes you to new words. Sure, you might learn words like “ixia”, “moxa”, or “falx”, but you’re more likely to remember more of the everyday words like apex or crux, or the alternate spelling of words like mixt and vext.

• A – apex, axal, axed, axel, axes, axil, axis, axle, axon
• B-D – boxy, brux, calx, coax, coxa, crux, dexy, doux, doxy
• E – eaux, exam, exec, exed, exes, exit, exon, expo
• F – falx, faux, fixt, flax, flex, flux, foxy
• H-I – hoax, ibex, ilex, ixia
• J-L – jeux, jinx, luxe, lynx
• M-N – maxi, minx, mixt, moxa, next, nixe, nixy
• O – onyx, oryx, oxen, oxes, oxid, oxim
• P – pixy, plex, poxy, prex
• R-S – roux, sext, sexy
• T – taxa, taxi, text
• V-X – vext, waxy, xyst

The Letter X – 5 Letter Scrabble Words

• A – addax, admix, affix, annex, ataxy, auxin, axels, axial, axile, axils, axing, axiom, axion, axite, axled, axles, axman, axmen, axone, axons
• B – beaux, bemix, borax, boxed, boxer, boxes, braxy, buxom
• C – calix, calyx, carex, cimex, codex, comix, coxae, coxal, coxed, coxes, culex, cylix
• D – deoxy, desex, detox, dewax, dexes, dexie, dixit, doxie
• E – epoxy, exact, exalt, exams, excel, execs, exert, exile, exine, exing, exist, exits, exons, expat, expel, expos, extol, extra, exude, exult, exurb
• F – faxed, faxes, fedex, fixed, fixer, fixes, fixit, flaxy, foxed, foxes
• G – galax, goxes
• H – hapax, helix, hexad, hexed, hexer, hexes, hexyl, hyrax
• I – immix, index, infix, ixias, ixora, ixtle
• K – kexes, kylix
• L – latex, laxer, laxes, laxly, lexes, lexis, loxed, loxes, lurex, luxes
• M – maxed, maxes, maxim, maxis, mirex, mixed, mixer, mixes, mixup, moxas, moxie, murex
• N – nexus, nixed, nixes, nixie
• O – oxbow, oxeye, oxide, oxids, oxime, oxims, oxlip, oxter
• P – paxes, phlox, pixel, pixes, pixie, poxed, poxes, prexy, proxy, pyrex, pyxes, pyxie, pyxis
• R – radix, raxed, raxes, redox, redux, refix, relax, remex, remix, retax, rewax, rexes
• S – saxes, sexed, sexes, sexto, sexts, silex, sixes, sixmo, sixte, sixth, sixty
• T – taxed, taxer, taxes, taxis, taxol, taxon, taxus, telex, texas, texts, toxic, toxin, tuxes, twixt
• U – unbox, unfix, unmix, unsex
• V – varix, vexed, vexer, vexes, vexil, vixen
• W – waxed, waxen, waxer, waxes
• X – xebec, xenia, xenic, xenon, xeric, xerox, xerus, xylan, xylem, xylol, xylyl, xysti, xysts
• Z – zaxes

Scrabble X-Words

As you can see, there are a lot of terms that use the letter x–probably a lot more than you might have guessed. Many scientific terms seem to gravitate towards the “X”, such as axons, helix, redox, taxon, or deoxy.