Crossplay Strategy

The first play must cover the centre square, which doubles it. Beyond that, what matters is what you leave behind. A five-letter opening word reaches further towards the double letter squares on row 4 and row 12 than a three-letter one, and gives your opponent more to hook onto — which cuts both ways.

A reasonable default: play four or five tiles, keep a balanced leave, and avoid ending your word on a letter that takes an easy S or an easy hook.

Aim for four consonants and three vowels, with no duplicates. When choosing between two plays worth about the same, take the one that leaves the better rack — the difference compounds over the next two or three turns.

The tiles worth keeping are S, E, A, I, R, T and N. The tiles worth spending are V, W, K, U and any second copy of a letter you already hold.

A hook is a letter added to the front or back of a word already on the board. Add an S to CAT and play SPARE downwards from it, and you score CATS and SPARE in the same turn — with both collecting any premium the S covers.

The S is the obvious hook, but far from the only one. Learn the front hooks too: AX becomes PAX, WAX, TAX, LAX, ZAX. Each one is a square you can play through.

Instead of playing through a word, play alongside it. Every tile you lay forms a two-letter word running the other way, and every one of those scores. A four-tile parallel play can score five separate words.

This is why the two-letter list is the highest-return study in the game: without it you cannot see these plays at all, and with it they appear on nearly every board.

A blank scores zero. Spending one to gain six points is close to throwing it away. There are only 2 in the bag, and each one is worth roughly the value of the sweep it eventually enables.

Hold a blank unless the play is genuinely large — 30 points or more — or the game is nearly over and you will not get another turn to use it.

The eight triple word squares sit on the outer edge, and a single word reaching one can swing a game. When you are ahead, the value of not opening a lane usually exceeds the value of five extra points.

Practical version: before committing to a play, look at the row and column leading to each open triple word square. If your word gives an opponent a clean run at one, look for an alternative that scores slightly less and closes the line.

The sweep bonus is +40, which is more than most turns score in total. When you hold six good tiles and one bad one, playing a small word that sheds only the bad tile is often correct even though it scores four points.

Learning the common six-letter stems makes this much easier — see the sweep words page.

A Z played flat is 10 points. A Z on a triple letter square is 30, and if the word also reaches a double word square it is 60-plus. The difference between a good player and an average one with the same tiles is usually just patience about where the expensive tile lands.

Wait one turn for the right square. Do not wait three — premium squares get covered, and a 10-point tile you never play is worth nothing.

You do not need to track all 105 tiles. Track four things: the blanks, the S tiles, the single high-value letters, and the vowel-to-consonant balance of what is left.

That is enough to answer the only question tracking is for — should I take the points now, or hold this rack? The unseen-tiles panel in the solver does the arithmetic for you.

Once the bag is empty, the game becomes a counting exercise. Work out what your opponent holds from the unseen tiles, count how many turns are left, and play to go out first — the tiles left on their rack are deducted from their score.

A play that scores four fewer points but goes out a turn earlier is usually the winning one. This is the phase where most close games are actually decided.