How to beat family and friends at Scrabble

Self-isolating is the perfect time to up your table top skills.

A Scrabble board.

“QI” is the most important word to know. The word used in acupuncture to mean the life force that flows through your body, it will enable you to play a Q (10 points!) without a U. Two-letter words are the building blocks of your game, and there are 127 of them. If your quarantined housemate constantly makes up words that don’t exist, make sure you have the dictionary at hand.

The more words you know the better; a lot of people find rote learning of the dictionary very boring but I enjoy it because I’m a lover of word puzzles and crosswords. There are many sites online for testing yourself on anagrams – can you find the everyday seven-letter word from the letters ACHMOST?

Unfortunately just reading your favourite authors isn’t focused enough; you’ll be distracted by the story instead of paying attention to letters and words. If you have a bunch of terrible letters, don’t be afraid to throw them in. Better still, avoid this situation in the first place. Keep aside synergistic sets of letters such as STER.

Don’t always go for the highest-scoring word. Dump the tough tiles first and try to leave yourself with a balanced rack of vowels and consonants. Don’t use the S – the most flexible tile other than the blank – for less than an extra eight points.

Towards the end, when the board is full, go back to your two-letter words. “XU” is a Vietnamese coin, “ZO” is the name of a yak and cow hybrid and “ZA” is the slang word for pizza — which is on your housemate, of course. No point playing on an empty stomach.

Andrew Fisher is a multiple UK and Australian national Scrabble champion, and co-author of How to Win at Scrabble.