Tips from the Champions – Philip Nelkon

Philip Nelkon, four-time National Scrabble Champion, tells us his top tips.

1. Always consider taking a few points less on score in order to avoid leaving a large imbalance of vowels and consonants amongst the letters left on your rack.

2. The blank is the most valuable letter in the set, hang onto it for a go or two if you can’t significantly increase your score by playing it.

3. If you’re trying to find a 7 or 8 letter play, worth 50 extra points, from a set of letters look for prefixes like UN-, RE-, OVER etc. or suffixes – ED, -ER, -ING. Put these letters at the beginning or end of the rack, as appropriate, and then shuffle the other letters. It’s a lot easier to find an anagram when you only have to shuffle 4 or 5 letters rather than 7.

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.

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