How To Play Scrabble tutorial

Board games are a great way to keep your mind healthy. That statement goes double for word games like Scrabble. When you learn how to play Scrabble, you're learning game that lets you flex your word muscles, building your spelling skills and your vocabulary. When you teach your kids to play Scrabble, you increase their knowledge of the English language - all while having a fun time with the family.

Scrabble give you an opportunity to interact and spend time with your family and friends, competing with one another, but also enjoying the funny words each other comes up with. For the serious word game competitor, there are more formal settings, like tournaments, Scrabble clubs and online Scrabble sites, where you can find Scrabble challenges at your level of skill.

What Is Scrabble?

Scrabble is a word game that you play with lettered tiles of different values. The lettered tiles are placed on a board, in crossword fashion. Each player tries to get the highest score by using the letter tiles, as well as the premium squares available on the board. There can be two, three or four players. The Scrabble game box recommends players be ages eight to adult.

When you open your Scrabble game, you will have a game board, 100 letter tiles, 4 tile racks, an hourglass timer and a tile storage bag. Some games come with a scoring method, but a pen and paper are just as good. The following gives you a description of how to play Scrabble.

Scrabble Setup

Place all the tiles in the provided tile storage bag. Each player takes a turn picking one tile. The player who picks the tile closest to the letter A plays first. A blank tile is considered better than an A.

Once the first player is chosen, all tiles are placed back in the bag. Each player then picks seven tiles and places them on the tile rack in front of them.

Please note that using the Scrabble timer is optional. Prior to playing, you should decide if you want to limit the time available to look for a word. The Scrabble timer allows approximately three minutes.

Also, prior to playing, a dictionary should be chosen to use in the case of a challenge. All words labeled as a part of speech are permitted with the exception of capitalized words, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes standing alone, and words requiring a hyphen or apostrophe.

The dictionary should only be used for challenges. There are stipulations (listed below) for challenging words, though either the challenger or the challenged is going to lose a turn. This is usually a tense moment in a game.

Scrabble Game Play

The first player makes a word using two or more of his tiles, then places it either horizontally or vertically on the center of the board, utilizing the star space. You may not place words diagonally on a Scrabble board. The points on the tiles are counted and recorded.

The first player then replaces the tiles used with new tiles from the tile bag. You should have seven tiles in your rack until all tiles are used.

Play moves to the player on the left. This player must add one or more tiles to the board to form another word. If the tiles touch other letters in adjacent rows, those must also form complete words in crossword fashion. You receive full credit for all words formed or modified in your turn.

  1. There are three ways that words may be formed. The first is by adding tiles to an already existing word. For example, adding an S to BOOT would make it BOOTS.
  2. The second way is to use a letter from an existing word to form a new word, in typical crossword fashion.
  3. The third way is to place a complete word parallel to a word already played. The touching letters must form complete words. If you place the word BIT under the word PASTE (already on the board) with the I under the P and the T under the A, you end up with three new words: BIT, PI and AT.

There are two blank tiles in the game. They may be used for whatever letter you chose. You must announce what letter the blank represents and that blank remains that letter for the remainder of the game.

A player may challenge another player’s word. If the word challenged is unacceptable, the player placing the word must remove it from the board and lose a turn. If the word challenged is acceptable, the player who challenged loses a turn.

Instead of placing a word on the game board, you may choose to trade in all or some of your letters. Doing this ends your turn.

The game ends when all tiles have been used and one player uses all of his or her tiles, or when there are no more plays possible.

Scrabble Scoring

The score for each turn is the sum of all letter tiles used or modified, plus any extra points obtained by utilizing premium squares. Premium letter squares (light blue) double the letter points of the tile placed on it. Premium word squares double the value of the entire word (pink squares) and triple the value of the entire word (red squares).

After a premium square is used once, it cannot be reused. So if your opponent gets a double word score by placing a word on a double-word square, you don't get a double-word score for placing a word perpendicular to the other word on the same double-word square.

The score value of a blank tile is zero. If the blank tile is placed in a premium word square, credit is still given. There is no value if the blank tile is placed on a premium letter square.

If you play all seven tiles in a turn you have a Bingo. You score a bonus of 50 extra points.

At the end of the game, each player’s score is reduced by the value of any unplayed tiles. If one player has used all of their tiles, this player’s score is increased by the value of the other players’ unplayed tiles.

The player with the highest score wins the game.