Boost Your Scrabble Scores by Playing Parallel Words
When I first started playing Scrabble as a kid, my games were always the same. Someone places a word, and your next play had to go in the opposite direction: build off the beginning letter, the ending letter, or cross the word.
I would imagine many novice players build words the exact same way. However, now that you know all the two-letter words allowed in Scrabble, it’s time to boost your scores by playing parallel words!
What are parallel words?
Instead of “switching directions” when building words, place your tiles in the same direction, and overlap as much as you can. By playing words parallel to each other, you can make multiple words – for multiple points.
Examples of parallel words
It’s the first play of the game, and your opponent has played end. Your rack isn’t great: aadenoq. Not much here, let’s just dump dead or dean for 6 points and move on, right? If we think parallel, however, there’s quite a few options.
In Option 1, if we overlap on the e, you can build two words: dean and ne (9 points). Not bad, but better than 6 points. That play does, however, leave an easy build to the triple word score. Let’s keep looking.
In Option 2, we can overlap and make three words: nada, de and an (12 points). Much better, but you use all your a’s (great for building qat or qaid with your q). Can we do even better?
In Option 3, we’ve found the highest scoring play by playing four words: dean, de, ad and an. Factoring in the two double-word scores, we end up with a final total of 16 points – 10 more than our first option.
The sky’s the limit
In my examples I used low-point tiles to show the principle of parallel words, but imagine the damage you can do with some of the high-point tiles. And don’t stop with four words in one play – I have been the victim of a six-word play (but thankfully, never a parallel bingo).
Good Scrabbling!
jared says:
how do parallels work when 2 overlapping words cover a bonus square? i had a board with the word ’sex’ where the ‘x’ was above a triple word score. i wanted to play ‘him’ in parallel like this:
sex
him
so the ‘i’ was on the tws. how does this score? does the tws apply to ‘xi’ or ‘him’ or both?
November 9th, 2009 at 11:30 pm ::