How to Play Words With Friends

A turn, start to finish

1. You hold seven tiles, refilled from the bag after every turn.
2. Place tiles in a single line, across or down. The first word of the game must cross the centre square; every word after it must touch a tile already on the board.
3. Every word your tiles form must be valid — the one you meant, and every short word formed sideways.
4. Score the main word and each perpendicular word separately.
5. If you used all seven tiles, add 35.

The rule beginners break most

You place four tiles downwards, spelling a perfectly good word. Two of them also sit beside letters already on the board, forming two-letter words sideways. If either of those is not a word, the whole play is illegal — even though your word was fine.

This is why the two-letter list matters twice over: it is simultaneously what makes plays illegal and what makes them score three times.

Blanks

A blank becomes any letter you choose and scores nothing, in every word it forms. Once played, the letter is fixed for the rest of the game. There are two in the bag, and spending one on a small play is usually a mistake: a blank is what makes the 35-point seven-tile play possible.

What a good turn looks like

• Twenty or more early, twenty-five or more once the board opens up.
• Leaves you three or four vowels against three or four consonants, no duplicates.
• Does not hand your opponent a clean run at a triple word square.

If you want to know how your turns actually measure up, the move analyzer scores what you played against the best play available and shows where the difference came from.