How to Play Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game for 2 to 4 players. Each player draws seven letter tiles and takes turns building words, crossword style, on a 15 × 15 board. Every letter has a point value, and coloured premium squares double or triple a letter or a whole word. The player with the highest score when the tiles run out wins. In a 2-player game, a good player scores in the 300 to 400 range, according to the official rules.

Scrabble Rules at a Glance

How to Set Up Scrabble

1. Mix the tiles. Put all 100 tiles in the bag, or face down beside the board, and mix them.
2. Decide who goes first. Everyone draws one tile. The letter closest to A goes first, and a blank beats any letter. Put the tiles back and mix again.
3. Draw seven tiles each and put them on your rack, hidden from the other players.
4. Agree on a dictionary before you start, so any challenge can be settled.

How to Play Scrabble

1. First word. The first player puts two or more letters on the board to make a word reading across or down, with one letter on the centre star. Diagonal words are not allowed. The star is a double word square, so the first word scores double.
2. Score and draw. Count and announce your score, then draw as many tiles as you played, so you always have seven while the bag lasts.
3. Build on the board. Play passes to the left. Each player adds one or more tiles to make new words. All the tiles you play in a turn must sit in one line, across or down, and join the words already on the board.
4. Every word counts. If your tiles also touch letters in the next row or column, those must form real words too, and you score every word you form or change.
5. Or exchange. Instead of playing, you can swap some or all of your tiles: put them face down, draw the same number from the bag, then mix yours back in. That uses your turn. Tournament rules allow it only while at least 7 tiles are left in the bag.
6. Tiles stay put. Once a tile is played and scored, it can’t be moved or replaced.
7. Blanks. A blank can be any letter. Say which letter it is when you play it; it stays that letter for the rest of the game.

There are three ways to make a new word: add letters to a word already on the board (HORN to HORNS), cross a word at right angles using one of its letters, or lay a whole word parallel to another so that every touching pair of letters also makes a word.

Scrabble Letter Values

The rarer a letter, the more it is worth. These are the values and tile counts in the English-language set:

How many tiles are in Scrabble? 100: 98 letter tiles and 2 blanks. There are 42 vowels (A, E, I, O, U), and E is the most common letter with 12 tiles. Add up every tile and the set is worth 187 points.

How Scrabble Scoring Works

1. Add up the letters in each word you form or change.
2. Letter premiums first. A light blue square doubles the tile placed on it; a dark blue square triples it.
3. Then word premiums. A pink square doubles the whole word; a red square triples it. A word covering two pink squares counts 4 times; two red squares, 9 times.
4. Premiums only count once. On later turns, letters already sitting on premium squares count at face value.
5. Blanks score 0, but a blank on a pink or red square still doubles or triples the word.
6. Bingo: use all seven tiles in one turn and add 50 points after totalling the words.

Challenges and Allowed Words

Any word in the agreed dictionary is allowed, including archaic, slang and foreign-origin words. Not allowed: words always written with a capital letter, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes on their own, and words that need a hyphen or an apostrophe.

Any play can be challenged before the next player starts. If a word is not acceptable, the player takes the tiles back and loses that turn. If the play stands, the challenger loses their next turn. A challenge covers every word made in that play.

Clubs and tournaments use fixed word lists: the NASPA Word List (NWL2023) in the United States and Canada, and Collins Scrabble Words (CSW24) in most other countries.

How Does Scrabble End?

• The game ends when all the tiles have been drawn and one player has used their last tile, or when no more plays are possible.
• Each player then subtracts the value of their unplayed tiles from their score.
• The player who used all their tiles adds the total of everyone else’s unplayed tiles.
• The highest final score wins. If scores are tied, the player with the higher score before the unplayed tiles were counted wins.

Scrabble Rules Questions

Two-Letter Words and the Q

Two-letter words are the most useful words in the game: they let you slip a tile alongside another word and score in two directions at once. The official rule sheet says learning the two- and three-letter words can add as much as 50 points to an average game. The North American tournament list has 107 two-letter words; Collins has 127. Foreign words are allowed once they have entered English, which is why QI is playable; so are the names of letters, such as XI from the Greek alphabet.

The Q is worth 10 points but usually needs a U. The rule sheet lists Q-without-U words from the third edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, including QAT, QAID, QOPH, FAQIR, QANAT, TRANQ, QINDAR, QINTAR and QWERTY.

Scrabble Strategy

• Learn the short words. Two- and three-letter words open up the board and let you hit premium squares in two directions.
• Use the S carefully. It can turn one word into two scoring words; save it for a play worth the extra points.
• Aim for premium squares, especially a high-value letter on a triple letter square that also forms two words.
• Keep a balanced rack. Leave yourself a mix of vowels and consonants; common letters like E, R, S, T, N, L, A and I make seven-letter bingos more likely.
• Look for hooks. A single letter added to the front or end of a word already on the board (HAND to HANDY) can make a second word.
• Find a play, then look for a better one. The first word you spot is rarely the highest-scoring.

Scrabble by the Numbers

Quick Scrabble Variations

• 9-tile Scrabble: everyone holds 9 tiles instead of 7, and the 50-point bonus applies for using 7, 8 or all 9 tiles in a turn.
• Finish Line Scrabble: the game ends when one player reaches a target score, whatever tiles are left. The official targets depend on level:

A Short History of Scrabble

An American architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, invented the game in 1931 as a variation on his earlier word game, Lexiko, and called it Criss-Crosswords. He set the tile counts and values by counting how often letters appear in sources including The New York Times. In 1948 James Brunot bought the rights to make it, rearranged some premium squares, simplified the rules and renamed it Scrabble. Today Hasbro makes Scrabble in the United States and Canada and Mattel makes it elsewhere; by 2008 it was sold in 121 countries in more than 30 languages.

More Games to Try

If you like Scrabble, try Rummikub and mahjong for more tile games, or family board games such as Clue, Sequence and Yahtzee.

Scrabble: frequently asked questions