…with Gary Moss

Proper placement of words onto the board during a game of scrabble accounts for a significant percentage of ultimate wins. Whether placement is offense or defense, the strategic spot where a word is dropped can earn a player a big score and/or prevent an opponent from scoring a bingo.

Even the simplest of words, the 2-Letter-Words, can play a big part in determining the ultimate winner: the big pointers ( J, K, Q, X, and Z ) can all a part of 2-Letter-Words. When place on the board, over ‘hot spots’, and being a part of both a horizontal and a vertical word on the same play, the score of the play can be as much or more than some bingos.

On the board at the left, the sequence of plays occurred like this:
A.1) opening play was ‘outvies’ (see tvi-s) (68pts).
B.2) next played was ‘wed’ (21 pts).
A.3) next played was ‘tad’ (12 pts).
B.4) then player B used the ‘Z’ in two directions, creating ‘za’ horizontally, and ‘zesty’ vertically (76 pts).
Now that’s how to play scrabble. Obviously, player A never saw it coming.

Newbies are generally so happy to find a place where a word fits that they are blind-sided by the placement. This frequently opens triple-lines and bingo-lanes where their opponents feast on easily earned points.

While it is only natural for newbies to go through this stage for a while, it pains me to see some seasoned players, at club, continue this practice for months or years. None of these folks would ever touch a hot stove more than a single time. I guess for them the pain of losing isn’t as hurtful as a hot burner. (I am very hard on myself when I make the same mistake over and over again.) A key to developing any skill is for us to learn by our errors and then move on to the next level.
On the right is another example of fung shway in scrabble. Pamela Stubblefield jumped on the opportunity to hit hard when her opponent placed an ‘E’ over the DLS on the TWS line. Having the right combination of tiles at the right time always helps, but no one can slip an opportunity like this by Pamela without getting stung. In this case it was for a tidy 66 points for ‘execs’.

Tip #311 for scrabble players is: ‘Mind Your Scrabble Shway’.

Learn about proper placement and many other skills of scrabble champions, taught in my online class, Scrabble 101. CLICK HERE!