As a famous man (hehe) once wrote,
7. Play single-letter words in the "non-intuitive" direction.
This one is somewhat hard to explain. There are two single-letter words in the game, namely A and I. Now, let's say there's an M on the board at H3, and you want to play the word AM at H2 for a trip set-up. You could play h2.am, which would be worth 4 points. However, to squeeze out the maximum amount of points possible, you should play h2d.a. In other words, instead of playing the 2-letter word across, you'd play the 1-letter word downward. And because it was played downward here, it scores 1 point for the word A, plus 4 points for the "secondary" word AM, for a total of 5 points. Yes, it's only one extra point, but every single point counts when you're shooting for high scores. This type of play can only be employed with the A and I tiles, and obviously, only if you're adding only that one tile to the beginning or end of a word. Since I think this is somewhat difficult to grasp without showing a picture, here's another example with the directions flipped -- say there's a B on the board at H8, and you wish to play the word BI downwards. You could play h8d.bi, which would be worth 4 points. The better way, however, is to play i8.i. That way, since it was played across, you'd get 1 point for the word I, plus 4 points for the "secondary" word BI. As far as I know, this technique was discovered by Teddy in late 2003, so props go to him...
Kapish? ;-) |