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The Scrabble Player's Handbook is available for free download at www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com 1 Table of Contents Introduction Meet the Team 6 What's Different About Competitive Scrabble? 13 Scrabble Skills 14 Scoring at Scrabble 16 Understanding the Words 22 Word Learning 24 Tips and Strategies Why Scrabble Strategy Matters 35 How To Play Good Scrabble 36 The Game Behind The Game 39 The First Move 41 Understanding Rack Leaves 45 Exchanging 48 Phoneys 55 Tile Tracking 56 Time Management 60 Setups 64 Board Geography 70 The Endgame 80 Entropy 90 How to Play Amazing Scrabble 97 Your First Tournament 101 Playing Style 103 The Luck Element 114 Annotated game 115 Scrabble Info and Resources Introduction 124 Scrabble Programs 125 Scrabble Websites 144 Scrabble Apps 151 Scrabble Books 153 Scrabble Around the World 155 Youth Scrabble 157 Scrabble Equipment 160 Glossary 161 Appendix: Rules Governing Word Inclusion 166 Scrabble Variants 170 2 and 3 letter words with Definitions 172 The Scrabble Player's Handbook is available for free download at www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com 2 SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A. by Hasbro Inc., in Canada by Hasbro Canada Inc. and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Ltd. of Maidenhead SL6 4UB, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro or Hasbro Canada. The Scrabble Player's Handbook is available free of charge. There is no copyright on the contents and readers are encouraged to distribute the book in PDF or printed form to all who would benefit from it. Please respect our work by retaining the footer on every page and by refraining from reproducing any part of this book for financial gain. Thank you to the following people who helped with this project through contribution of ideas, support and proof- reading: Craig Beevers, Theresa Bennett, Robyn Bowie, Anand Buddhdev, Amy Byrne, John Chew, Bridget Dunbar, Kate Fukawa- Connelly, Oliver Garner, Barry Grossman, Cornelia Guest, Sarah-Jane Holden, Nicky Huitson, Rik 'Koftgari' Kennedy, Kitty-Jean Laginha, Chris May, Wendy Pittman, David Sutton, Michael Thelen, John Van Pelt, David Webb, Mike Whiteoak, Eli Shupak, Mina Le, Marcia Richards, Tim Weiss, Kay Möller. Scrabulizer software (www.scrabulizer.com) was used for the board diagrams. Many thanks to Seth Lipkin for the website design. Special thanks to Chris Philpot for the front cover artwork. Chris's website www.chrisphilpot.co.uk offers a glimpse into his many talents. “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!” The Scrabble Player's Handbook is available for free download at www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com 3 The Scrabble Player's Handbook Welcome! This book has been written by many of the world's leading Scrabble players. Our intention is to provide an easy-to-read guide to everything you need to know about this wonderful game, whether you are a regular online player, perhaps thinking about stepping nervously into a Scrabble club for the first time, or already a seasoned tournament attendee interested in graduating to expert status. We'll start with the basics of competitive Scrabble and cover everything the game has to offer at all levels. We are keen to share our advice on everything from word learning and winning strategies to practical information such as where to buy the best Scrabble boards and where to play online. However, this book is not just about improvement, but about appreciation of the game of Scrabble, which we believe is best achieved by understanding its complexities. We believe that the combination of creativity, strategy, luck, memory, aesthetics, tension and fun makes Scrabble worthy of being played at the highest possible level, and furthermore that consistently good Scrabble play is a lot more achievable than many people believe. It is the belief of every contributor to this book that expert level Scrabble play is achievable by anyone who has the motivation to work towards it; all you need is the confidence and inspiration to learn, along with the information telling you how to get there. We're going to provide you with everything you need to know within these pages, and hopefully raise a few smiles along the way too. A few years ago, an Israeli expert player was giving some advice to a newcomer, only for her to reply: “Oh I don't want to take it that seriously; I only play for fun”. The expert replied: “Well what do you think I play it for, misery?!”. Scrabble is a game in which enjoyment improves concurrently with ability. Wide open boards with many possibilities lead to higher scores and a more interesting experience. If crazy words with obscure meanings put you off, then you may be reading the wrong book; this is very different from Scrabble with Granny at Christmas. The book's authors know how fun it can be to lay down a bizarre-looking combination of letters knowing that the opponent's attempt to challenge it off will be unsuccessful, or how thrilling it can be to combine word-power with a well devised strategy to squeak a win out of a seemingly impossible endgame. Competitive Scrabble is tough and you must prepare to make a thousand mistakes without giving up; remember that an expert is defined as someone who has made every possible mistake within a narrow field! But remember also that 99% of people will never be more than quite good at anything. If you want to be in the 1% who are excellent at something, this book will teach you how. Whether you're an online Scrabble fan wanting a few tips to beat your friends, or you're curious about taking your game to “the next level”, we hope you get as much enjoyment out of this book as we've gotten from writing it. Please help us share our love of the game by distributing this book to anyone who might benefit from it; it is a gift to Scrabble lovers across the world from those who understand the game better than anyone else. This is how we play Scrabble. The Scrabble Player's Handbook is available for free download at www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com 4 Editor's Note The Handbook presumes that you are already familiar with the basic game rules of Scrabble, such as the face value of each letter tile, the premium squares, and how move scores are calculated. If not, a quick web search will find the standard Scrabble rules on a variety of websites. This book uses the Collins Scrabble Words (CSW) word list. If you reside in North America, and for some strange reason you prefer the American word list, many of these tips will still apply, but if the additional words throw you off you can find Scrabble tips here. For the purpose of consistency, the term 'bonus' is used to refer to playing all seven tiles in one turn. This can also be known as a 'bingo', a 'Scrabble' and various other terms used around the world. The board grid references are in the format (7d), indicating a word which starts in the 7th row in the d column. The direction of the play is shown by whether the letter or number appears first, thus a word at (7d) is played horizontally along the 7th row, while a word at (d7) is played vertically in the d column. An asterisk denotes an invalid word (a phoney) such as DICY*. Although some effort has been made to explain Scrabble terminology as it appears, in case of doubt please refer to the Glossary at the end of the book. Some chapters are written by one author and credited as such, although other Handbook team members may have offered advice and suggestions during the writing process. Other chapters are not credited to a specific author and should be viewed as written by the whole Handbook team together. This book has taken its authors several hundreds of hours to compile and it is presented to the Scrabble community entirely free. This might appear generous but our motivation for writing the book is entirely selfish: we love playing Scrabble face to face with people across the world and we want more people to play against! We would like you to distribute any part or all of the information here to anyone to whom it would be of benefit, and we positively encourage you to email around the PDF or print, photocopy and distribute any part of The Scrabble Player's Handbook as widely as possible. Just make sure you always retain the footer at the bottom of every page to give us due credit for our work. SH The Scrabble Player's Handbook is available for free download at www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com 5 Meet the Team Stewart Holden (editor) Northern Ireland I'm originally from Oxford, England but have been resident in Northern Ireland since 2008 where I live with my wife and our two children. I played Scrabble casually during my teens but only discovered the competitive scene in 2000 when I found myself at university with Brett Smitheram (below), who mentored me to expert level. I have since become an ABSP Grandmaster and represented UK at the World Championships in 2003 and 2011, finishing a satisfying 28th in the latter and notching up the highest individual game score of the tournament (694pts). I was runner-up in the UK National Championship in 2007 and have won a variety of minor tournaments over my thirteen years of competitive play. I am very active in Scrabble administration and have been on the ABSP committee for over ten years.