How To Always Win at Scrabble
It’s probably fair to say that Nigel Richards isn’t your average Scrabble player.
On Monday, the three-time English-language World Scrabble Champion from New Zealand won the equivalent French-language title … despite not speaking a word of French.
Mr Richards, 48, reportedly memorised an entire French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks before the tournament, which took place in Louvain, Belgium.
His achievement was immediately recognised by the French-speaking audience, who stood to offer rapturous applause after he defeated a rival from Gabon 2-0 in the final.
In comparison to Mr Richards’s feat, the rest of us mere mortals probably settle our Scrabble sights a little lower: the odd seven letter word, for example, or deploying a word that our opponent has never heard of.
But if there’s one thing that Mr Richards shows, it’s that you don’t have to have a wonderful grasp of language to win at Scrabble. After all, Scrabble is just a game – and that means means there’s always ways to train yourself to get better and defeat others, whatever their ability…
1. Get sneaky
Do you know your quod from your qoph and your zuz from your zzz? Well you should, because knowing a range of small yet high-scoring words could help you shift difficult letters from your hand while racking up the points.
Two letter words are particularly useful, so begin your training by repeating the following list of little known but utterly acceptable words: ex ox jo ka ki xi xu za.
Knowing this by rote is like the Scrabble equivalent of blood doping.
(Try Harry Wallop’s sneaky Scrabble word quiz to test your knowledge of more high-scoring stunners.)
2. Get childish
In his book 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble, former Countdown winner Barry Grossman outlined a simple way to score heavily: use the appendage ‘ish’. “Childish”, “warmish” and even “pixyish” are all entirely legitimate entries.
3. Get memorising
As Nigel Richards proves, playing Scrabble well is more of a test of your memory than your daily vocabulary.
There are plenty of techniques available to train your brain into better memorising things – try sites like memorise.org to discover exercises that boost your powers of recall.
To become exceptionally good at memorising something, players often utilise the journey method, which requires you to attach things on a list to landmarks in an imagined journey.
For those who don’t fancy such a time intensive and exhaustive method, Grossman outlines a simpler, Scrabble-specific mnemonic: the use of acronyms. For example, ‘euoi’ can be recalled by thinking of ‘Excessive Units Of Intoxication’, while ‘jiao’ can be called to mind by reciting ‘John Is Always Out.’
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