How to play Scrabble for beginners has become a recent search surge as a lot of people love a good game of Scrabble. While most people love a good game of Scrabble, it goes without saying that not every one of them knows how to play the game properly.
For every board game, there is a set of rules that comes with it but most people including myself love to skip the boring part and go straight onto the fun part. What I will be showing you in this article are some of the basic rules to get started with playing Scrabble properly.
How to Play Scrabble for Beginners
As a beginner, you probably heard of or seen the game Scrabble for the first time and you are wondering how to play it. You may also be quite intuitive with the game and want to learn how to play more professionally with the proper rules.
Well, that is why you landed on this page. There are a variety of things I would show you starting from the scoring pattern, the challenge words, how to calculate the scores, and quite a few other things you need to know.
Scrabble Equipment’s
Scrabble equipment is simply what you need to start playing your game of scrabble. First of all, scrabble is played by at least two opposing players. The maximum number of people that can play Scrabble at a time is four. To get started with playing Scrabble, you must first purchase a Scrabble board game or have any of the Scrabble applications on a mobile phone or computer. If you go with the option of purchasing a board, then you would need to know the rules of playing the game.
If you should go with the other option of downloading any of the Scrabble applications on your device, then you don’t need to know much of the rules as the computer would just do all the heavy lifting for you.
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How to Set Up a Game Scrabble
There are quite a few steps to get started playing a game of Scrabble, they are;
- Preparation.
- Choose a dictionary.
- Determine who plays first.
Let’s look at these.
Preparing to Play Scrabble
The preparation is the first part of playing a good game of Scrabble. Preparation is necessary not just for Scrabble but every other board game out there. Preparation is making sure you have everything you need to play the game till the end.
These would include a game board, a rack for each player, a hundred letter tiles, and a cloth bag to hold all the other tiles that wouldn’t be in play. If you purchased a complete game of Scrabble, you would have all this equipment. You would also need a scoreboard to take players’ scores.
Choosing a Dictionary
Most of the time, some players may try to spell improper words. This is where the use of a dictionary comes in. Before the start of the game, all the players have to decide on a universal dictionary to use.
It could be the official Scrabble dictionary or the English dictionary. You could also download a Scrabble dictionary app for your device and use it for the game. You can download a Scrabble dictionary pdf by following this link.
Determining Who Plays First
This is one area in which a lot of people often break the rules. Determining who plays first is quite easy. This is decided by passing the bag full of tiles around the board and allowing each player to pick a tile. The player that gets the letter closest to “A” gets to play first.
Playing the Game of Scrabble
After knowing all about the preparations, the next obvious step is getting the game started. Here are a few guidelines to do so;
- Play the first word.
- Scoring.
- Drawing new tiles.
- Building on other players’ words.
- Challenge other players to dispute a word.
- Exchange the tiles you don’t want.
- Determining a winner.
Let’s get into each of these guidelines.
Playing the First Word
When it comes to playing Scrabble for beginners, how the first word is played matters a lot. After deciding who plays first by following the previous guidelines, you have to pass the bag containing all the tiles around the board for all players to pick up seven tiles. After each player gets their seven tiles, the first word on the board must start at the center of the board. The first word can be laid out both horizontally or vertically but can not be laid down diagonally.
Scoring
When calculating the points for the first player, keep in mind that the score should be double the overall score as the star counts as a premium square which doubles the score of the player. Premium squares are squares on the board that aren’t blank. These squares are;
- Double Letter Score: This simply means the letter placed on this tile would receive twice the number of points on the letter.
- Double Word Score: This simply means the word with the letter placed on this tile would receive twice the number of points the word would have in other cases.
- Triple Letter Score: This simply means the letter placed on this tile would receive triple the number of points on the letter.
- Triple Word Score: This simply means the word with the letter placed on this tile would receive triple the number of points the word would have in other cases.
Each time a player makes a word, the points for that word should be taken and added to the scoreboard or scoresheet used during the gameplay. You also get fifty more points added to your score when you get a bingo. Bingo refers to a situation where you use all seven of your tiles to make a word. When the tiles are finished where a player can no longer form a word, the overall score is calculated and the winner is determined.
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Drawing New Tiles
After each turn, each player has to draw the exact number of tiles he or she just played thereby replenishing his or her total number of tiles back to seven. This means if you just made a word of 5 tiles, you would need to draw five new tiles from the bag containing all the tiles currently not in play.
Building on Other Player’s Words
When playing a game of Scrabble, especially for beginners, all words must be linked back to the first word. This means you have to build on words others have built before. You cannot simply make a new tree standing on your own other than that of the first player.
Challenging Other Players to Dispute a Word
If a player makes a word you think isn’t correct or in the predefined dictionary, then you can challenge the player to dispute the word. The results of a dispute are;
- If the word is found in the dictionary, and the player has spelled it correctly, then the player would get his or her initial points and the challenger would lose his or her turn.
- If the word isn’t in the dictionary or it’s spelled incorrectly, then the player must remove the word from the board and they lose their turn.
Those are the results of disputes.
Exchanging Tiles You Don’t Want
How to play Scrabble for beginners isn’t complete without players knowing they can decide to change tiles they don’t want or can’t make use of. Know that changing your tiles would cause you to lose a turn. For instance, if it gets to your turn and you are unable to make a word, you can decide to change some or all of your tiles but you won’t be able to play that round.
Determining a Winner
A winner is determined when the game comes to an end and the overall scores are calculated. The player with the highest score is determined the winner of the game. I hope that with these little guides, you got to know how to play the game of Scrabble. Peace out till we meet again.