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Scrabble Rules

What are the Scrabble rules and what words can I find with my letters?

Making words

The first word needs to be placed in the center of the board, with one of the letters on the pink square. All words made during the game, need to be connected to a letter that’s already placed on the board. The words need to be placed vertically or horizontally. Allowed words have at least 2 letters and are in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, which is based on 5 different scholarly dictionaries.

If the letters you place on the board touch other tiles, these tiles need to form an allowed word. It can occur that a player makes more than one word in one turn, by placing the tiles in such a manner that they touch several other tiles.

A blank tile can be used for every letter. At the end of your turn you take new tiles out of the bag until there are 7 letters on the rack again for the next turn. If you’re not able to make a word with the letters on your rack, you can use your turn to change a tile on your rack for another one out of the bag.

Scrabble Scoring system

With each word that is played, the value of the separate tiles determines the score. Points are earned for every new word that is made in one turn. You can add up the scores immediately or write down the scores of every turn and add them up at the end of the game.

Extra points

By placing a word on the colored squares of the board, you earn extra points. On the light blue squares you get double letter (DL) score, on the dark blue squares triple letter (TL) score. If you place one of the tiles of a word on a pink square, you get double word (DW) score and on a red square triple word score (TW).

If a word is placed on a blue as well as on a pink or red square, first the value of the letters is determined and after that the value of the word. A tile on a light blue square doubles in value, and after that the doubled value counts 2 or 3 times when the word is also placed on a red or pink square.

Other rules

When you use all 7 letters on your rack in one turn, you get 50 extra points. An important rule to remember when playing Scrabble!

Another important rule is that the colored squares only get you extra points one time. If you make a word by placing tiles next to a tile that was placed on a colored square in another turn, you don’t get the extra points.

End of the game

The game ends when one of the players used all the letters on his/her rack and there are no more tiles in the bag. It's possible that no more tiles are left in the bag, but nobody can finish their remaining tiles. This will also end the game. Each player has to subtract the value of the remaining tiles on the rack at the end of the game from his/her score. To the score of the players without any tiles left, the value of the remaining tiles of all players gets added up.

See also