The Official SCRABBLE ® Puzzle Book »

Joe Edley is the 1980 National Scrabble Champion and is widely considered one of the foremost experts on the game today.  He lives on Long Island.

There is a certain mental process that good SCRABBLEr game players undergo as they look for good plays. The puzzles in this book are designed not only for entertainment but to help the average player develop that process. It's possible for someone with an average vocabulary, enlarged only with the two hundred extra words listed on pages 7-8, to solve every one of the puzzles in this book.

Here is a suggestion for the aspiring expert: Start with a board and tiles in front of you. Recreate the diagrams and racks and rearrange your tiles while trying to find the solutions. For each diagram of five puzzles, take at most thirty minutes to solve them, and then look at the answers. Ask yourself what you could have thought that would have led you to the answers. This process of replaying in your mind how you can improve your thinking can have a profound influence on developing your crossword game skills. If you don't get useful results from this "questioning" process, then don't labor over it. Let the questions simply alert you that you'd like the answers at some future time, and then forget about them.

Of course, for those who aren't easily frustrated, you may enjoy the challenge of spending extra time to earn the very best score attainable. For those readers, I say good luck!

Part One is all about learning how to "read the board." "Reading the board," in part, is being able to find the open rows and columns where you'll be able to score the most points, and where you cannot.

Chapter 1 shows you how to read our notational system and learn some important and useful definitions. There's also a short word list of about two hundred words, including all ninety-seven twoletter words, that you'll want to learn in order to solve all the puzzles and increase your word-game skills.

Chapter 2 is all about learning the best way to utilize two-letter words. There are a hundred puzzles, and every two-letter word is showcased in order to familiarize the reader with them.

Chapter 3 is about using bonus squares, two-letter words, and making parallel plays. 50 puzzles.

Chapters 4-6 are designed to increase your ability to use bonus squares effectively. The complexity increases with each chapter. 150 puzzles.

Chapter 7 shows how to take advantage of the J, Q, X, and Z. 50 puzzles.

Chapter 8 will give you a tougher challenge. These puzzles combine all you've learned in the previous chapters. 50 puzzles.

Part Two is about playing the weaker combinations of letters from your rack in order to save the really good ones.

Chapter 9 gives practice playing off three tiles at a time. 50 puzzles.

Chapter 10 can help you learn how to play off four tiles at a time. 50 puzzles.

Chapter 11 is devoted to practicing finding five-tile plays. 100 puzzles.

Part Three is all about playing all seven tiles of your rack at once.

Chapter 12 shows how to find seven- and eight-letter plays. 150 puzzles.

Part Four is about the theory and practice of making the Ideal Play each turn.

Chapter 13 explains how to go about finding the Ideal Play.

Chapter 14 gives real game positions and analyzes them in order to give you a framework for how experts think. 50 puzzles.

Contents

ABOUT THIS BOOK

PART ONE: READING THE BOARD

1 Notations, Definitions, and a Short Word List

2 Two-Letter Words

Answers

3 Placing Your Words on Hot Spots

Answers

4 Bonus Squares, One at a Time

Answers

5 Bonus Squares, Two at a Time

Answers

6 Bonus Squares, Choice of Five

Answers

7 The J, Q, X, and Z

Answers

8 The Highest-Scoring Play, No Hints!

Answers

PART TWO: BALANCING YOUR RACK

9 Three-Tile Plays

Answers

10 Four-Tile Plays

Answers

11 Five-Tile Plays

Answers

PART THREE: PLAYING ALL SEVEN TILES

12 Bingos: Beginnings and Endings, the Key to Success

Answers

PART FOUR: MAKING THE IDEAL PLAY

13 A Practical Guide for Choosing the Ideal Play

14 Actual Game Positions: Your Move!

Answers