Scrabble Tile Values

The five prices worth memorising

Ten letters carry almost all the scoring weight, and they are the ones you plan around: Q and Z at ten, J and X at eight, K at five, and F, H, V, W and Y at four. Everything else is three or less, and eleven letters are worth exactly one.

The consequence is that Scrabble scoring is lumpy. A rack of ordinary letters plays for twenty; a rack with an X in it plays for fifty if there is a triple letter square open. Which of those turns you are having is usually decided by the tile, not the word.

Face value is not what a tile earns

The number on a tile is what it scores. What it earns depends on the square underneath it and the words it forms. An eight-point X on a triple letter square, placed so it reads in both directions, earns forty-eight. The same X buried in a long word on plain squares earns eight.

That gap is where the game is played, and it is why the solver ranks by what a move actually scores rather than by the tiles it spends.

What to hold and what to spend

• Hold the blank. It scores nothing and it is still the most valuable tile in the bag, because it is what makes the 50-point bingo reachable from an ordinary rack.
• Hold the S. One point, four in the bag, and each one turns a word already on the board into a hook you can build through.
• Spend J, Q, X and Z early. Eight or ten points each, and every turn you hold one you are effectively playing with six tiles instead of seven. The Q without U list is the specific fix for the worst of them.
• Do not hoard the one-pointers. Eleven letters are worth one, so a rack full of them is common, not unlucky. It is a bingo rack, not a bad rack.

How many of each letter exist is the other half of this: the tile distribution is what tells you whether the second blank is still out there.