How To Layout a Scrabble Board
Laying Out Words on a Scrabble Board
Knowing how to layout a Scrabble board is using the confines of the Scrabble board and the various word and letter modifiers and multipliers on the board help you score. Don’t play Scrabble just from your rack. Spend as much or more time looking at the Scrabble board as the letters in your hand. That way, you’ll take in all the possibilities and find better places to play your words.
Remember that using the Scrabble board layout to your advantage doesn’t involve only offensive Scrabble. Learning how to use the Scrabble word layout to your advantage often involves defensive Scrabble. Try not to set your opponent up for huge scoring opportunities by remembering where the double and triple squares are on the Scrabble board.
Build Partial Words on Your Rack
When you are moving letters around on your letter rack, don’t look for just complete words. Look for words that are almost complete, but need one letter to complete them. Focus on words that need one letter at the beginning or the end of the word especially.
Why?
Because you’re trying to build onto already placed words on the Scrabble tree that’s been laid out on the board, so you don’t need to build complete words on your rack. Partial words increase the possibilities. Find partial words on your rack, then look for possible plays on the board layout.
Keep Moving Letter Tiles on Your Rack
For the same reason, don’t build one word and leave your letter combination like that on your rack. Instead, keep moving letters around the rack, to see if there are other possibilities. Sometimes, your brain won’t immediately see a possible word, so if you give your brain a different letter combination to compute, you’re likely to find more word combinations for laying out words on the board.
Be Aware of the Multiplier Squares
The “multipliers” in Scrabble are the double letter, triple letter, double word and triple word scores. Multiplying your score is one of the best ways to rack up a points advantage on your opponent in Scrabble, and the 2x and 3x squares are all about the Scrabble board layout. These squares are arranged in a rough “X-pattern” across the board, flaring out from the center towards the four corners, which end with triple word scores.
Also, there are four triple word scores placed in the squares on the outer rim of the board, exactly between all four corners. Remind yourself when the word layout is set up for a double word score as the words begin to work out from the center of the board. This will happen pretty quickly in Scrabble, perhaps by the start of your first turn.
At the same time, avoid giving your opponent easy double and triple word scores. This is called playing defensive Scrabble and it’s a perfectly legitimate strategy. Don’t put down a good word that is going to set up your opponent for an even better score. That’s what happens with the double word scores. Triple word scores are even worse.
Place Root Words on the Board
When you play words to the board, place root words where you can put stems on them later. For instance, you might place “bright” on the board. Later, you might have the “-er”, “-est” or “-ly” to make the words brighter, brightest or brightly. If you place the word bright near a double or triple word, but leave room for the expanded version of the word, you can score a big total.
One bit of warning, though. Your opponent is going to get at least one shot at playing off that word before you do. Also, you aren’t certain of receiving the necessary letters, so if your opponent sees the possibility and gets those same letters, knowing how to layout the Scrabble board might work against you. This brings me to another point.
Conserve Blank Tiles
Don’t immediately use a blank tile, if you don’t have the opportunity to do something special with it. Use the blank tiles to build bigger words onto double and triple word scores, or to get rid of all 7 letter tiles at once and get the +50 bonus tiles. The blank letter gives you so many opportunities, you should maximize its usage when putting the blank into words on the layout.
Learn the 2 Letter Words
One way to improve you game is to learn the two letter words in Scrabble. This allows you to use the Scrabble board layout to your advantage much easier. You’ll be able to put these two letter words in tighter spots. You’ll be able to points for a word on two lines at once. And in the end game moves, you won’t be as likely to be stuck holding letter tiles.
Learn the 3 Letter Words
Almost as important is to learn the three letter words in Scrabble. Once again, you’ll be able to learn a relatively small number of words that can help you out in tight jams when the board starts to get full, or when you want to be able to use a short word to get a double word or triple word score. Once you know a host of 2 letter and 3 letter Scrabble words, you’ll be able to layout the Scrabble board a whole lot better.
Learn the Q Words
Another way to fit words into the Scrabble layout or to make words fit that normally wouldn’t is to learn the “Q” words that don’t require a “QU”. This makes it so much easier to fit your Q onto the Scrabble board, especially when the “U’s” are all used up and the board is full at the end of the game. Put those 10 points to work for you, not against you.
Ultimately, if you use the Scrabble strategies above, you’ll have the know how to layout a Scrabble board where it’s more to your advantage than the advantage of your opponents. That should produce better Scrabble scores and more wins on Scrabble night.
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This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 5:12 pmand is filed under Scrabble, Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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