Target audience:

• Semi-competitive player with 10 or fewer simultaneous games
• Enjoys winning slightly more than making clever words
• Wants to limit playing time but still win 60% or more of the games
• Has mastered all the skills listed in Part I – Basic Tactics

Tactics

20 point minimum.  Strive for this minimum score in all cases.

• Use this as a guideline to get your score above 350.
• This rule-of-thumb helps balance time management with a decent score. (i.e. Find a 20 point word with decent defensive stance and move to next game.)

 30+ point word.  Play whenever and wherever.

• With this many points, it’s OK to let down your defensive stance.
• Often, the worst case is your opponent will respond with a similar score, but it’s worth the gamble and keeps you in control of the board.

2-letter words.  You must know these to be speedy and see the pairings naturally.

• For Blackjack players, this is no different than memorizing simple strategy.
• This is big time booster and prevents unnecessary trial-and-error.
• See the following table for a list of these:

AA	AB	AD	AE	AG	AH	AI	AL	AM	AN
AR	AS	AT	AW	AX	AY	BA	BE	BI	BO
BY	DA	DE	DI	DO	ED	EF	EH	EL	EM
EN	ER	ES	ET	EX	FA	FE	FI	GI	GO
HA	HE	HI	HM	HO	ID	IF	IN	IS	IT
JO	KA	KI	LA	LI	LO	MA	ME	MI	MM
MO	MU	MY	NA	NE	NO	NU	OD	OE	OF
OH	OI	OM	ON	OP	OR	OS	OW	OX	OY
PA	PE	PI	QI	RE	SH	SI	SO	TA	TI
TO	UH	UM	UN	UP	US	UT	WE	WO	XI
XU	YA	YE	YO	ZA

Defensive letters:  V, C & K (to some extent)

• Use these letters to play words to prevent your opponent from connecting to your word.
• These letters can be used to render a TW or DW unusable for the rest of the game.

Other Posts

Introduction

Part I – Basic Tactics

Part II – Intermediate Play 

Part III – Intermediate Play (cont)

Part IV – Advanced Strategy

Part V – Hard Core Tactics