Unpopularity
I’m competitive in a weird way.
I’m not really afraid to lose, but at the same time, I don’t really like it. Who does?
When I lose at something, it’s more about improving my general skills than beating a specific person (except when it comes to the Spiderman: City Raid game that Dave, Beth and I are addicted to).
One of my favourite games is Scrabble. I wrote an article recently about how much I love playing Scrabble on Facebook. I’ve completed about 87 games and won 67 of them.
I suspect that a lot of my opponents think I am some kind of Scrabble Wizard, which is really not the case.
Considering that most of these people are my friends, I would like to offer up some of the cheap tricks that I use to usually score big points.
To Be or Not to Be
I have made a lot of Bingos. A Bingo (in Scrabble) occurs when you use all seven of your tiles at once, as a new word, or part of an existing word. On top of the normal score for the word, one gets a 50 point bonus for using all of their tiles.
A really good trick to spelling large words is to use an underrated prefix. The BE combo, as I like to call it. Here are some examples of random tile draws and what you can make out of them using this strategy…
- LDEOCUB – You could spell the word CLOUD, but it would be better to spell the word BECLOUD
- MEBASCL – You could spell the word CALMS, but it would be better to spell the word BECALMS
- CEKSBED – You could spell the word DECKS, but it would be better to spell the word BEDECKS
- GMOOLBE – You could spell the word GLOOM, but it would be better to spell the word BEGLOOM
See? A great cheap trick that nets you an extra 50. That could mean the difference between losing and winning. Or the difference between winning and kicking major ass.
🙂
Filed under: Gaming, General Dialogue |
Well, I’ll bedarned! I’ll totally beusing that the next time I play.
I’ve got the hang of it already!
Oh wild Scrabulous Wizard. We are not worthy of your secrets.
Now I’m going to try your mojo on another unsuspecting scrabulous player….
🙂
We are bemused and beguiled as we muse over your guile.
Alas, J-man, I am not addicted to Spiderman: City Raid. In fact, I stand by the comment I left on Dave’s blog: “That game is hard”
Also, your link to my blog in this posting doesn’t work.
Thanks for nothing.
Oh wait, you gave that Scrabble tip…. thanks for something =)
Weird.
It should work now, Beth!
Hooray! It works now! Bethy thanks you for the link love!
The thing I found most useful was just knowing when to look for the seven letter word – if you have 3 vowels in your rack there’s a reasonable chance you have one, 2 or 4 still worth looking. Otherwise, much less so! (The exception in your post doesn’t seem to me to spell the word you claim 😉
Oops!
Thanks for the save, Sarah.