How to Play Scrabble

Setting up

A set has 100 tiles: 98 lettered and two blanks. Put them all in the bag and shake it. Each player draws one tile, and whoever draws the letter nearest the front of the alphabet goes first, with a blank beating an A. Return those tiles, then each player draws seven and keeps them hidden.

Agree before you start which word list you are playing to and keep it to hand. This is the single most useful thing you can do to stop an argument later, and it is the part most casual games skip.

Taking a turn

On your turn you do exactly one of three things.

• Play a word. Place tiles in a single row or a single column, reading left to right or top to bottom. Everything you form must be a word.
• Exchange tiles. Swap any number of tiles for new ones, provided at least seven tiles remain in the bag. This scores nothing and uses your whole turn, and it is often the right move: a rack of five vowels will not improve on its own.
• Pass. Score nothing and change nothing.

After playing, draw back up to seven tiles. The first word of the game must cover the centre square and be at least two letters long. Every word after that has to connect to what is already on the board, either by crossing it or by running alongside it.

Playing alongside an existing word is where the game gets interesting. Every new sequence you create, in both directions, has to be a word, and every one of them scores. A single tile placed well can form three words at once.

Scoring a turn

Add up the value of every tile in every word you formed. A tile that appears in two words is counted in both. Then apply the premium squares, in this order.

• Letter premiums first. A double or triple letter square multiplies that tile's value before anything else happens.
• Word premiums second. A double or triple word square multiplies the whole word, after the letter premiums have been applied. Two word premiums in one word multiply together, so a word covering two triples scores nine times its face value.
• Once only. A premium square counts on the turn it is covered and never again. Later words that run through it score the tile at face value.
• Both words get it. If a premium square sits under a tile shared by two new words, it applies to both of them.

The board carries 61 premium squares: 24 double letter, 12 triple letter, 16 double word, and eight triple word, plus the centre star, which acts as a double word square on the opening play. Our letter values page has the full tile distribution.

The fifty-point bonus

Use all seven of your tiles in a single turn and you score an extra 50 points on top, called a bingo. This is the largest single swing available to an ordinary player and it is worth playing towards: holding a balanced rack of common letters, and keeping an S or a blank back, makes it far more likely.

Blanks

A blank can stand for any letter. Say which letter when you play it, and it stays that letter for the rest of the game. It scores nothing, even on a double letter square, but the word premium still applies to the word it sits in.

Challenges

If you think a word just played is not valid, you challenge it before the next player takes their turn. Look the word up in whichever list you agreed on at the start.

Under the tournament rules used in North American clubs, if the word is not on the list, the tiles come back and the player who played it loses their turn. If the word is on the list, the challenger loses their turn instead. That symmetry is what stops challenges being free, and it is why knowing that QI and ZA are valid is worth real points: opponents challenge them and forfeit a turn. Some home editions use a milder rule where an incorrect challenge costs nothing, so agree which you are playing.

Ending the game

The game ends when the bag is empty and one player has used every tile on their rack, or when play stalls completely, which by tournament rule means six consecutive scoreless turns.

Then the tiles left over settle it. Every player subtracts the value of the tiles still on their rack from their score. If someone went out, they add the total of everyone else's remaining tiles to theirs. Being caught with the Q unplayed is a twenty-point swing, which is why unloading an expensive tile late is worth more than it looks.

Where the word list comes in

Everything above is how the game works. What counts as a word is a separate question, settled by whichever official list you agreed on, and those lists are not ours to reproduce. Wordton's finder searches ENABLE, a public-domain list, which is useful for practice and for finding what a rack can make, but it is not a Scrabble dictionary and will disagree with one in both directions. The two-letter reference covers the short plays that come up most, and the QI page is the clearest example of the two lists parting company.