Scrabble Online

These Scrabble Hints will help you improve your game almost instantly.

These are different than our tips from our Scrabble Strategy page, because they are individual hints, not broad strategies.

-Think about defense, not just offense.  Don’t open up good board spaces for your opponent unless you have to.   Don’t set your oppononent up with a “Triple Letter Score” tile where they could use an X or a Z, for example.  And don’t allow your opponent to use Triple Word Score tiles either, unless you will score a lot of points by doing so.

-Don’t trade your letters in when it’s not necessary.  It’s tempting to trade in a lot when you don’t have a great play, but you’re usually better off making the best of what you have.  New players have a tendency to trade their tiles too often, and this is a bad habit to form.  Some of the best Scrabble hints are about what NOT to do, rather than what to do.  And this is an example of that.

-Learn all of the 2 and 3 letter words.  These will give you a lot more options in general, and will result in much higher scores.  This is probably one of the most common Scrabble Hints out there, because it is extremely important to the game.

-There are some letters that are tough to make Bingo’s with, you should get rid of these as soon as possible.  Some exceptions exist, for example if you have the Q, you should try to get a lot of points with it, even if it does make it hard to get a Bingo while it’s in your rack.  But for letters like V and C, it’s usually a good idea to use them as quickly as you can.

-Plan ahead.  This is one of the best Scrabble hints, and is often overlooked.  Don’t just make the best play for this turn; think about what you rack is going to look like next turn with the tiles you will have leftover.  Obviously it’s impossible to guess which new tiles you’ll receive, but if you’re leaving yourself with U U A I C, and playing your 2 other letters, chances are you’re going to struggle next turn.

-Big Time Multipliers. If you can get a high-scoring letter on a Triple or Double Letter Score space, and then extend the word so that the end of the word hits a Double Word Score tile, you will get a huge amount of points.  Doing this with a Q or Z can get you 60+ points without  a Bingo.  It takes a bit of luck to have the board set up properly for this, but you should always be aware of it because it usually isn’t that difficult to make a 5 letter word starting with Q or Z, as long as the situation happens to be right for it.  This Scrabble hint can’t be used frequently, but it certainly is fun when it happens, and it can win you the game highhandedly.

If you found these hints helpful, visit our Scrabble Blog for weekly articles and tips that will further help you target and improve specific areas of your game.