Short Words in Scrabble
with
John Williams and Matt Silver
Two and three letter words can really pack a punch if played well in a game of Scrabble. Learn how to use short words in Scrabble.
Transcript: Short Words in Scrabble
Hello I am John Williams. I am the executive director of the National Scrabble Association. I am Matt Silver. I am two time national school Scrabble champion. And we are going to show you some moves to get a lot better in Scrabble, so if you are wiling to follow us for a few minutes we guarantee you will become a much better player.Two and Three Letter Words in Scrabble
We are going to talk to you now about two and three letter words, the foundation of Scrabble. The twos and the threes are invaluable in terms of creating opportunities to hook onto existing words and also burn off some high-value tiles.Best Short Words
There are about 100 two letter words most of them people already know. Our real treasure trove is DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO. Those are all good words. As you can see here I am making what is called a parallel play. I play the word JAB here and at the same time for AT and JO. JO is not a very common two letter word, but if you know it, it is very invaluable in this situation. The score of this word would be 39 points.60 percent of scoring in Scrabble games are words of 5 letters of less.
Keep Making More Words
I was thinking we could make another parallel play, OWE, as you can see I formed the word JOW, which is not a very commons three letter word, but again, if you know it, you can score a lot of points in this situation. You score 33 points - all for a three letter word.The fundamental idea is to see how many new words you can make on each play. Every new word is scored, so when you make parallel plays, not only do you get a score for this word, but for all these other words as well.
A common theory among living room players is that you have to make all these long, big, obscure words to be really good at Scrabble. And while that helps, that opportunity just is not going to come up that often.
Thanks for joining us today. To learn more you can go to About.com. We hope these tips help you become a better Scrabble player.