Learn the two-letter words before anything else
Collins recognises around 127 of them and we carry 107, and they are the reason strong players seem
to squeeze points out of nothing. A two-letter word is how you play parallel to an existing word and
score every letter twice, and it is how you shed an awkward tile without giving up your turn. The
list is short enough to learn in an afternoon and it will do more for your average score than
memorising obscure eight-letter words.
The ones people miss most often are the vowel pairs. AA, AE, AI, OE and OI all count, and so do the
newer additions QI and ZA, which between them turn the two worst tiles in the bag into something
playable. The full list, with what each one means, is here.
Chase the rack bonus, not the big letter
Playing all seven tiles in one turn is worth fifty points in Scrabble. That is more than most single
plays involving a Q or a Z, and it comes up far more often than beginners assume. If your rack has a
reasonable balance of vowels and consonants, spending a turn setting up a seven-letter play is
usually better arithmetic than grabbing eighteen points now.
A practical version of this: when you have a choice between two plays of similar value, keep the
rack that looks like it could become a word. Holding S, E, R and a couple of vowels leaves you
somewhere to go. Holding V, W, U and two Is does not.
Treat your S tiles as currency
There are only four in the bag and each one can turn an existing word on the board into a hook for
something of your own. Spending an S to score six points is usually a bad trade. Holding it until it
lets you play two words at once, or complete a seven-letter rack, is where the value is.
Look at the rack you just played
This is the one that actually builds vocabulary, and it is the honest use for a tool like this one.
After your turn, put the letters you were holding into the solver and look at what you did not see.
You will notice the same patterns coming back: the -IER and -IEST endings, the RE- and UN- prefixes,
the handful of words that let a Q live without a U. Recognising those in the moment is a skill, and
it comes from reviewing rather than from reading lists.