What is Bingo in Scrabble? How to get more Bingos?
- Bingo is a term used in Scrabble where a player puts seven tiles on the board in a single turn. Outside North America, Mattel, the game’s producer, uses the term bonus to describe such a word. It is called Scrabble in French.
- In addition to what the word would normally score, a player that does this receives 50 points.
- Bingos are an important part of achieving high scores in this game.
- Bingo examples:
The highest scoring 7-letter bingo is “MUZJIKS”.
The highest scoring 8-letter bingo is “QUIZZIFY”
The highest scoring 8-letter bingo is “QUIZZIFY”
The highest scoring 8-letter bingo in Naspa Word List and the highest scoring 8-letter bingo without a blank is “QUINZHEE”
The lowest possible score for bingo is 56
The highest scoring 15-letter bingo “OXYPHENBUTAZONE”
Using the TWL(Naspa Word List) lexicon, the most probable bingos are ANEROID, AILERON/ALIENOR, ATONIES, ELATION/TOENAIL, and ERASION.
How to get more Bingo?
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Bingos are when a player makes a word that uses all their letters, usually a seven-letter word using no letters currently on the board, or an eight-letter word using one letter on the board. If the player holds the letters AEGINRT and the word CAR is on the board, the following boards will show examples of the 7-letter and 8-letter bingo that can be played:
Bingos are important because making one yield a 50-point bonus on top of other scores. Therefore, Bingos have the potential to drastically change the dynamics of a game. In a typical Scrabble game, the player who makes the most bingos will be the victor the vast majority of the time. A single player making 2 or 3 bingos is very common, and it is not unheard of for a player to make 5 or even 6 bingos in a strong game. In the Scrabble Tournament, it is rare for a player not to make a single bingo throughout the game, even in games where they lose a lot.
Bingos are important because making one yield a 50-point bonus on top of other scores. Therefore, Bingos have the potential to drastically change the dynamics of a game. In a typical Scrabble game, the player who makes the most bingos will be the victor the vast majority of the time. A single player making 2 or 3 bingos is very common, and it is not unheard of for a player to make 5 or even 6 bingos in a strong game. In the Scrabble Tournament, it is rare for a player not to make a single bingo throughout the game, even in games where they lose a lot.
Despite this Bingos are very hard to pull off. Let’s imagine a scenario, it is the start of the game and you are going first. The chance that you will draw 7 random letters that make up a valid English word is about 10%. And many of these valid words are obscure and unknown to the average Scrabble player. For example, if IJLNOQU were drawn, even players with strong word knowledge would have a hard time recognizing JONQUIL, a yellow flower.To play bingo, you must have the letters, know the word, and successfully identify the word in your jumbled rack within the time constraint, hardly an easy task.
Time constraint is a real issue for the players of the tournament. Each player has a total of 25 minutes to play in the game. Since the average game is 12-14 rounds, this means that each player uses 1:30 to 2:00 per round, holding back some time in case they need it for late-game decisions, where they can spend 2:00 to 4:00 for a decision. This is the part of the game where there is a lot more clarity about what letters remain and how many points are needed to either catch up or get the game out of reach.
The chances of a player finding a bingo rely heavily on recognition of probability and letter distributions. Letters such as E, A, S, T, R, N, I, or the blank tile are considered “bingo prone” because they appear in a high percentage of valid English words, whereas letters such as V, U, Z, X, W, K are bad bingos.Since some letters are more represented in the letter bag than others, you can learn words that have a higher chance of being drawn. Bingo prone letter can drastically improve your chances of drawing a bingo on the following turn. Now let’s look at another example. Say your leave consists of the letters AEINRT, which spell the word RETINA. You can make BARINET if you draw a B. C makes CERTAIN, D makes TRAINED, E makes TRAINEE, F makes FAINTER, G produces TEARING, etc. There are only a handful of letters that do not combine with AEINRT to make a valid 7 letter word. Throughout the game, players track which letters have been played so that they can deduce the letters that are currently left in the bag and calculate the chance that they will draw a bingo with their leave. It’s done on the official score sheet. The AEINRT letters are referred to as ‘stems,’ and there are hundreds of stems commonly memorized by tournament players. List of common stem words:
- diastem. stemmas. stemmed. stemmer.
- blastema. bluestem. diastema. diastems.
- blastemal. blastemas. bluestems. distemper.
- abstemious. blastemata. diastemata. distempers.
- blastematic. distempered. intersystem.
- abstemiously. distemperate. distempering.
- biosystematic. epistemically. nonsystematic.
- abstemiousness. biosystematics. biosystematist.
Although AEINRT is a good leave, it would be very uncommon to have this leave in a game. To guarantee a leave of AEINRT, you would need to only play the letter A. It is very difficult to score a lot by placing only 1 letter on the board. On the other hand, if you played a longer word for more points, like maybe RETINA itself, you would only be leaving A, and you would have a much lower chance of playing bingo on your next turn. There is a huge tradeoff between scoring high on your play and leaving as many bingo prone letters as possible. In most situations, the best play would be to leave a few bingo prone letters, like ERT or AERT, which give you more flexibility in the play you make now while improving your bingo chances in the future.
Scrabble games are timed and precise calculations often take too long to execute in practice. Being able to quickly recognize how bingo prone a leave is, and to determine how many points you would be willing to sacrifice in the current play to obtain it, can only be achieved through trial and error throughout thousands of practice games.
#3 scrabble rules to help you win the game
#1 Bingo - If you can’t play bingo, don’t play big at all. Keep your words short: a reliable maximum is 5 letters.
#2 Dictionary- There is an official Scrabble dictionary. he Official Scrabble Players’ Dictionary (OSPD) for normal play, and the Official Tournament and Club Word List (OTCWL) for regulated competitive play.
#3 Bonuses- Premium squares: using those bonus squares to your advantage seems pretty straightforward.
Scrabble Bingo Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc30nYTjO9A
How to use Hooks in Scrabble to win a game?
Players refer to the letters played at the front or back of a word as a hook. A well-placed hook can make for surprising changes in the meaning or sound of the original word. In laymen terms, The hooking refers to a kind of “parasite” attaching to the words that are already on the board. You add a letter to a word that already exists. The easiest way to do this is, of course, to form a plural word out of a singular one. For eg, the term HOOK can be applied to HOOKS. The letter S is the “hook” and the word HOOKS is hooked, so it’s the word “hook.” But the trick with Hook is not only to spread a word, but also to create a new word.
Example of front hook words:
NAKED – SNAKED
RATIFY – GRATIFY
EARN – YEARN
WADDLE – SWADDLE
INCH – FINCH
FAR – FARD
OKAY – TOKAY
LUNG – LUNGI
NANA – JNANA
HILL – THILL
2-3 letter hook words:
- AD – ADZ
- AG – ZAG
- AS – ZAS
- AX – ZAX
- BE – BEZ
- BI – BIZ
- EA – ZEA
- ED – ZED
- EE – ZEE
- EL – ZEL
- EX – ZEX
- FE – FEZ
- HO – ZHO
- IN – ZIN
- IT – ZIT
- MI – MIZ
- MO – MOZ
- OO – ZOO
- OS – ZOS
Consider the Outplaying - It’s more than eight letters. We netted all those lovely points by slipping OUT at the start and -ING at the end of the word PLAY.
Prefix and Suffix examples - OUT : Outplay, outrun, look out, run out. OVER : overblow, overtake, turnover, walkover, UP : makeup, upbraid, DOWN : downbeat, downpour, rundown, sundown.
Wrap around letter examples: Turn Deal into Ideals. Me can become Amen or Demean.
What are Vowel dumps?
There are words with several vowels in them, at least two or three in common. When you play Scrabble, the last thing you want is to be left with a bunch of letters that you can’t play and you can’t think of any words that you can do with it. The best way to use vowel dumps correctly is to learn as many vowel dumps as possible:
2 Letter Words
Aa- 2 points
Ae- 2 points
Ai- 2 points
oe-2 points
3 letter words
Eau - 4 points
4 letter words
5 letter words
6 letter words
7 Letter words
10 letter words
Source: wordgamedictionary.com
Short J/Q/W/Z words that you should know
Here are the 50 most played words in Scrabble, which include the letter “J” Words are presented in the rank order play, meaning that JA is the most frequently played word in the bunch, JO is the second most frequently played word, and so on down the scale. Both these words are widely played and should be memorized.
1. ja
2. jo
3. jai
4. joe
5. jar
6. jor
7. jaw
8. jot
9. jag
10. jet
11. jin
12. jow
13. jol
14. jog
15. jee
16. jab
17. jam
18. jay
19. taj
20. job
21. jap
22. joy
23. raj
24. ajee
25. jew
26. jiz
27. jail
28. ajar
29. jig
30. haj
31. jete
32. jun
33. jeu
34. jak
35. djin
36. jobe
37. jiao
38. jape
39. jud
40. jib
41. gju
42. jut
43. haji
44. jota
45. joey
46. jato
47. jaga
48. jane
49. jive
50. jedi
Short q words
Here are the 50 most played words in Scrabble that contain the letter “Q”.QI gets played a lot.
1. qi
2. qis
3. qat
4. qadi
5. qats
6. suq
7. qua
8. qaid
9. aqua
10. tranq
11. qadis
12. quai
13. qanat
14. quag
15. quod
16. quad
17. niqab
18. equid
19. quep
20. faqir
21. aquae
22. talaq
23. quin
24. waqf
25. quay
26. queen
27. qorma
28. roque
29. quoif
30. quim
31. quid
32. quat
33. quiet
34. quiz
35. qibla
36. quit
37. qoph
38. quair
39. quey
40. qintar
41. quoad
42. quop
43. suqs
44. quino
45. quern
46. quate
47. quean
48. queer
49. qaids
50. Toque
Short Z words
Here are the 50 most played words in Scrabble which contain the letter “Z”.
1. za
2. zo
3. azo
4. zag
5. zoa
6. zap
7. zoo
8. zol
9. zas
10. dzo
11. zax
12. zee
13. rez
14. zed
15. zea
16. fez
17. zos
18. zin
19. zex
20. adz
21. bez
22. zit
23. zel
24. azon
25. lazo
26. jiz
27. lez
28. wiz
29. riz
30. biz
31. miz
32. zags
33. zig
34. zati
35. zho
36. trez
37. poz
38. zep
39. dzos
40. ditz
41. adze
42. saz
43. zite
44. caz
45. luz
46. fiz
47. zein
48. zine
49. zoot
50. riza
Short W words
- wacke.
- wacko.
- wacks.
- wacky.
- waddy.
- waded.
- wader.
- Wades.
- Was
- Why
- Win
- Wan
- Wax
- Wis
- Wig
- Who
- Wyn
- Wet
- Won
- Way
5. Short 2/3 letters to win scrabble
There are 124 legal 2-letter words in the SOWPODS official tournament word list.
- qi
2. re
3. in
4. er
5. it
6. en
7. et
8. ne
9. id
10. we
11. te
12. el
13. ed
14. ar
15. or
16. ti
17. za
18. li
19. if
20. de
21. gi
22. ja
23. ef
24. di
25. fe
26. at
27. an
28. ee
29. on
30. xi
31. ex
32. zo
33. jo
34. ag
35. aw
36. ad
37. al
38. ur
39. na
40. ta
41. no
42. io
43. ow
44. be
45. la
46. pe
47. un
48. to
49. da
50. od
51. wo
52. ut
53. lo
54. ea
55. go
56. bi
57. ax
58. oe
59. ae
60. em
61. fa
62. pi
63. he
64. ye
65. eh
66. ab
67. ug
68. ny
69. of
70. Op
Short 3 word to win scrabble
1. qis
2. qat
3. ide
4. exo
5. axe
6. awe
7. ene
8. azo
9. owe
10. ere
11. ate
12. ita
13. eta
14. are
15. zag
16. ado
17. eme
18. ode
19. obe
20. jai
21. one
22. oxo
23. ope
24. obi
25. oda
26. joe
27. ahi
28. ore
29. ewe
30. ane
31. ono
32. aye
33. ami
34. jar
35. ute
36. emo
37. ana
38. zoa
39. aba
40. ire
41. jor
42. ure
43. abo
44. ago
45. eft
46. xis
47. nye
48. zap
49. oye
50. Zoo
