Scrabble Help

The Rules Of The Game Scrabble

What you need to play Scrabble

You need 2-4 people, a Scrabble game and a paper and pen to keep scores with. One player is assigned to handle the score keeping.

The game begins

After the tiles are shuffled in a bag, each player picks a tile, and the person with letter closest to 'A' alphabetical order gets to begin the game. If a blank wildcard tile is drawn, that has precedence over the 'A', and if two players each draw a blank the process is done over. The drawn tiles are returned to the bag and reshuffled.

Every player now gets to pick seven tiles from the pouch, and players should place their tiles on their racks so only they can see them.

It is now time for the person who won the first turn to lay his or her first word. This player can make up any word from the tiles on the rack, but must place one of the tiles on the starting slot in the center of the board. The score keeper must tally and write down the score of this and all subsequent words and attribute it to the right player.

After each turn, each player must pick up enough tiles so he or she always has seven tiles on hand, until all tiles are played.

Scrabble Game Play

In clockwise succession, the turn passes to the next player. The player laying the second word and all subsequent words must connect their words to at least one letter already on the board. A player may opt to pass their turn, and if they do, they have the right to exchange some or all of their tiles by putting them back in the tile bag, and drawing new tiles after shuffling the bag.

If all players pass twice in a row, the game ends.

All words must be laid in a left-to-right or up-to-down direction. It is allowed to connect to any amount of already laid tiles. The player gets the score of any new words created by connection, although bonus modifiers do not count in connected words.

Once all tiles are played the game ends.

Bonus modifiers

Some slots on the board gives the player who lays a tile on them a bonus. It can be a bonus that multiplies the score of just the tile laid, or of all tiles in the word laid. A word can span multiple bonus modifiers, and the bonus modifiers then amplify each other.

Jackpot bonus

If a player manages to lay all seven tiles on hand in one turn, he or she is granted a 50 point jackpot bonus.

Valid words

Different Scrabble word lists are in use in different countries of the world, and some tournament games also uses slightly different dictionaries of approved words. Practically all words in the standard english dictionary are valid. You can check any words validity with our Scrabble Dictionary.

Names are not permitted, neither are prefixes, suffixes or words that uses apostrophes and hyphens.

Needless to say, a good place to get help if you are stuck on a certain set of tiles is Scrabble Help.

Challenging other Scrabble players words

If a player doesn't think another laid word is valid, he or she may challenge this word, but it must be done right after the offending word is laid. The Scrabble Dictionary may be consulted, and if the word is invalid the player who laid them must pick the played tiles back up, and forfeits that turn.

Ways the game can end

  1. If all players passes their turn twice in a row.
  2. If a player runs places all tiles on hand, and the tile bag is empty

After the game ends

Each players accumulated score is calculated, but any tiles each player may still have left on their must have its tile score subtracted from the players grand total. If a player has no tiles left when the game ends, he or she gets all other players remaining tiles scores added as a bonus to his or hers grand total.

More Scrabble Help