PogoTips.com - SCRABBLE

Find tips by game:

SCRABBLE


Game awards	500 Bingos Play 500 Bingos 8 8-Letter Words Play 8 8-letter words 100 Points Play 100 points on a turn NSA Member (requirements are not available) Rank 5 Rank 5 Rank 10 Rank 10 Rank 20 Rank 20 Rank 35 Rank 35 Rank 50 Rank 50

Challenge badges	Love for 7 points (8/13/08) Win 7 games using Pogo's House Rules

Premium badges	A is for Ascension (animated) Scrabble Secrets book Create 2 or more words on a single turn 20 times B is for Bracelet (animated) Scrabble Secrets book Create 60 6-letter words, using Traditional Rules C is for Chalkboard (animated) Scrabble Secrets book Create 50 5-letter words, using Pogo's House Rules E is for Expectation (animated) Scrabble Secrets book Play 5 Bingos L is for Ladle (animated) Scrabble Secrets book Earn 50 Triple Word score bonuses S is for Scrabble (animated) Scrabble Secrets book Earn 20 Double Word score bonuses in 1 hour or less
Mix & Match	SCRABBLE Winner Mix & Match (thru 9/15/09) Play a Blank tile 10 times

Badge tips

Be aware of the one hour time limit for S is for Symbol!

Be aware that you must select & use Traditional Rules for B is for Bracelet, and Pogo's House Rules for Love for 7 Points and C is for Chalkboard!

The NSA Member badge shows up in Badge Central, but there's nothing there about how to earn it; nor does it appear in the game's How-to at this time.. stay tuned.

Ranks are earned by playing letters. You don't need to win games to increase in rank.

500 Bingos, 8 8-Letter Words, and and 100 Points badges are separate from rank badges and are earned by making 500 Bingos (using all your letters); making 8 8-letter words; and scoring 100 points or more on a single turn.

To earn these three badges faster, play with a friend or cooperative partner and check "Allow challenging a word" and select "No more tiles left" under "End game when game reaches" in the advanced table options. Each player lays down all of their tiles in any order on each turn, but do not challenge the words. Note that you won't make any rank progress using this method.

Game tips

ALWAYS read a game's How to Play, and also check for a Hints or Tips tab and/or Tutorial. They do help!

If you have the letter that a played blank tile represents, you can click the blank to replace it with your letter and acquire the blank at the beginning of your turn. Note you must have options set to Pogo House Rules to swap blanks.

You can earn more points by planning ahead for the next move. Example: suppose you can play TEAR in a downward direction. Consider playing EAR, then use the T in the next turn to make TEAR as well as a horizontal word containing T. You can almost always do this with an S. Example: if you can play TRAPS horizontally, play only TRAP on the first turn and turn it into TRAPS on the next, along with a vertical word containing S.

Don't just think about lengthening words by adding endings - you can often add letters at the beginning of words also. Example: EAR could become BEAR, DEAR, FEAR, GEAR, HEAR, etc.

Placing letters in tight "clumps" that form several words horizontally and vertically will make high scores but they're tricky to do. Use the 2 Letter Words button to see which 2 letter words are legal in SCRABBLE whenever you think you can make a "clump".

Use the Mix Up button if you're stuck. Rearranging your letters will often show you something you didn't know you had.

Don't be afraid to test out words even if you're not sure they are words - the Enter button will light up when a play is legal. Set the table options to 10 minutes per turn to have more time to experiment if you play against a Pogobot, but remember that a human opponent might not want to wait for you to try every combination.

If you have really bad letters, it's often worthwhile to forfeit a turn to trade some or all of them in for new ones, particularly if it's early in the game and/or you're ahead by a good margin.

More about SCRABBLE

This game is almost identical to QWERTY, except new words can be made by connecting to any existing word (which you can only do in QWERTY after both players' words are connected). SCRABBLE also has traditional bonus squares, plus many additional table options. However, Pogobots are a lot better in SCRABBLE than in QWERTY.

At this time, SCRABBLE is only available to players in the USA and Canada.. I wonder if they'll have weekly badges for it?

Ratings for this game are calculated using the National SCRABBLE Association's system. You can find the details plus the table options required to play rated games here.

Return to PogoTips.com home