Two of the same letter on your rack at one time is nearly always bad news. Why? Because it drastically reduces the number of alternative ways of arranging your rack. With seven different letters, there are 5,040 different ways of arranging the seven letters. No wonder it takes you so long to work out if you’ve got a seven-letter word! But with a duplicate letter, you have only half as many ways – 2,520.
So, with the possible exception of E, which is a sufficiently useful and flexible letter to make it no bad thing to have a couple of them, you should generally be looking to get rid of any duplicates.
By Barry Grossman
Barry is a leading UK Scrabble player and winner of several tournaments. He is the author of Scrabble for Beginners (Chambers), Need to Know Scrabble, Scrabble – Play to Win and The Little Book of Scrabble Trickster. He has also contributed to numerous other books on the subject of words and word-games, has been a series champion of Channel 4’s Countdown, and has written four comedy series for BBC Radio 4. He lives in Hertford.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
