Vocabulary and Timing is everything
In playing the game, Words with Friends the user usually has access to the internet. You can’t play the game without it. So there is a temptation to look up words before actually placing them. That is actually bad Words With Friends etiquette and my friend Brandon and I call that, “You using googlebro?” But since there is an automatic feature to see if what you placed is actually a word, there is no problem with experimenting and going on the fringe of one’s vocabulary limits. Once you place a word that you may only know 60% or so because you heard it briefly in a movie or in a book or article, then look it up and try and memorize the meaning. This will improve your vocabulary and will help you recognize even better word patterns later on. This is especially a good strategy to use when a friend plays a word that you don’t know, look it up and try and remember the word. Remember, a good vocabulary can help out in many professions as well as in school.
The first board strategy that people need to know is that the bonus point tiles are king. It doesn’t matter how snazzy your word is, if someone uses the bonus tiles they can clobber you point wise if you’re not careful.
The best way to play the game I find, is to maximize your own points rather than trying to limit the points of your friend. This means, try and avoid “blocking” expensive tiles and instead use them yourself.
You can combo letter and word bonus tiles. So if you see a triple letter score and a triple word score…try and make a word that uses both of them. Recently, I placed the word, “Azure” on the board. The ‘a’ was already there, the ‘z’ was a triple letter score and the ‘e’ was a triple word score. I ended up getting 30 points for the Z and then the entire word was tripled so the word, Azure in this case was worth 105 points. Not bad…sorry Krystal, I had to use it.
There are even better strategies that I can tell you. Most people play the game by using a letter that someone else used and then starting a new word. That’s normal right? Well, if you create a new word out of someone’s existing word by using only one letter and then make a new word in another direction based on that letter, you get the points of the original word (without the bonus tiles on that one of course) plus the new word that was created in the other direction including the newly activated bonus tiles. The next paragraph will explain this in more detail.
Let’s say someone plays the word ‘frog’ horizontally on the board. But you have a bunch of letters including an ‘s.’ You can place the ‘s’ to make frog into ‘frogs.’ Then you can write the word, ‘seven’ using the new ‘s’ in frogs that you just put down. This will give you all the points for the word frogs and the word seven, plus any bonus tiles you acquired in the word ‘seven’ …pretty cool huh?
Here’s some secret hints with playing with random people you don’t know. Sometimes people that you randomly join a game with like to talk in the chat zone. But other times they can be really shy. One time some guy played a word that was pretty good and I said in the chat, “Do you really think you have what it takes to go against the webmaster of Overidon.com?” Then a few minutes later the guy said, “I’m not sure. I may die of old age before we finish this game because it takes you 5 – 10 hours in between each turn.”
I laughed when I read that and a few minutes later I placed a word that combo’d one of his words and also received a triple word score. He immediately resigned the match after that and then didn’t want to play again. So I recommend being nice and non-taunting towards people who don’t necessarily understand your sense of humor or personality.
-Tyler