Preparation for playing Words With Friends is a really good idea. Just showing up online and hoping for the best won’t cut it anymore if you want to defeat the best players. Sometimes Scrabble players get caught up with traditional tile distribution and point value when they start playing Words With Friends. However, there are differences between the two so it is important to understand what they are; the more knowledge, the more power–learning more never hurt anything, especially when it comes to word games. One of the differences is that there are 104 Words With Friends tiles as opposed to 100 Scrabble tiles. This means that there is a different tile distribution so keep that in mind if you are counting on a certain tile and waiting for it to make a word bingo. To make things a bit more clear, the Words With Friends game has one more E, two more Hs, one more D, one less N, one less I, one more T, and one more S. Of course, no one would ever complain for an additional S in a word game. Furthermore, twelve of those letters actually have different point values in comparison to its Scrabble counterparts.

The main objective of the game is to make words using the tiles on your rack. In order to easily make words, a preference among word game players is to have the right combination of consonants and vowels, which means four consonants and three vowels or vice versa. Selecting letters has a lot to do with luck so if you do in fact have duplicate tiles on your rack, try to play them as quickly as possible so you are stuck with four O tiles. Another tip for creating words is to eliminate letter combinations that just don’t go well together. For example, some awkward combinations are UW and VX. When you do make a word on the board, always keep in mind what letters you are leaving behind on your rack so that you are not left with horrible letters when it is time to build your next word. If you do not have any vowels in your rack, and you happen to select the elusive blank tile, try not to be tempted to quickly use it since you may need to hold on to it for the right opportunity to open up on the board. Unlike the more difficult Z and Q tiles, you do not have to use the blank tile immediately since it is a lot more versatile and can be used in a variety of high point plays and strategic moves. But when push comes to shove and you happen to have ‘difficult’ tiles such as the Z, Q, X, J, and K, using them as early as possible will help since the board is not that crowded yet and you have elbow room to fit these letters onto existing words or words of their own. Popular words to memorize are ZA, QI, XU, XI, and JO. These are just a few two-letter words to know off hand. It would be crucial to also learn more words that utilize these more ‘difficult’ letters. Another versatile tile is the letter S. You can use this letter to easily pluralize a word as well as simultaneously creating another word resulting in big point possibilities. For example, if the word PORE appears on the board, simply add an S to the end of the word to pluralize it and create another word vertically on the board to create multiple words. Or, another option would be to add the S to the beginning of the word to create the word SPORE and then again, you can create a word vertically. As you can see, the options are limitless when it comes to the S tile and of course the blank tile as well. Balance and rack management are just a few techniques to create winning words.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In the RACK box, enter your letters to find the best possible word by clicking on SEARCH.  Use a question mark to designate a blank tile.
2. If you want to use a specific beginning or ending for a word by using existing letters on the board, enter the letter or set of letters that your word must begin or end with in the PREFIX or SUFFIX box accordingly..
3. Select SCORE to filter results by maximum point value, or select LENGTH to filter results by the number of letters in a word.