What A Difference A ________ Makes.
Fill in the blank with BLANK. That’s the truth for me and my opponents at CLUB #350 when we’re head-to-head in scrabble competition. The person who draws the blanks, is usually the winner.
One of the most difficult lessons that I teach is to novice players who see the ‘BLANK’ as trivial, since it is worth zero points. Because they don’t know too many bingos yet, they don’t yet understand the true value of the BLANK as a wild card.
I teach my students that one should never play the BLANK for less than 50 points. And in spite of my instruction, when the novice can’t see a word on their rack, they will play their BLANK in a word that earns 17 points. They’ll say something like, “I couldn’t find anything else”.
When you can’t find anything else you should exchange tiles or play off a simple 2 Letter Word.
For some, the BLANK is a difficult tile because they have a hard time visualizing it as a specific letter. I highly recommend the following exercise: 1) put a blank on your rack; 2) draw six random tiles from the tile bag; 3) set a timer for two minutes; 4) write a list of as many words that you can identify; 5) use a Franklin or Zyzzyva to generate the words on your rack; 6) compare your list to the generated list.
Information and tips like this make up the basis for my new DVD, SCRABBALUTION, to be released on November 15. CLICK HERE for more information and a discount offer.