muffin_with_tentacle

Oh God dammit, of course this gets voted to the top.

Come on, people, what if my mom finds this thread!

Erm... do they have to be real words?

You're allowed to play phonies in competitive Scrabble and risk having your play challenged off. I've had some success in the past bluffing bullshit words onto the board in desperate situations.

Off the top of my head, I've gotten away with the following (non)words in tournament games: SPAMELLIAS, GUMWHITE, ARMYCLAW, DAKSA, HUVYKA, and more I can't recall at the moment

JUN and JUT are the only words really worth playing, though I'm not happy about keeping two U's.

JUN is better defensively

Simply due to the "hooks", i.e., the letters you can add to the front or end of the word.

JUT can hook an E or S to make JUTE or JUTS. Whereas JUN can only hook with a K to make JUNK. So by playing JUT, you're giving the opponent more options

Improve your bingo-finding skills!

First, learn how to look for them on your rack. Most bingos include a common prefix or suffix. If you have -ING, -ERS, -ABLE, or -IEST on your rack, that's a good place to start. It's a lot easier to find the 8-letter words in EEGINRST if you start with the common suffixes.

Second, learn how to manage your leaves better. The "leave" is the leftover tiles when you make a play. We know that ERS is very powerful, so if we're not able to bingo this turn, it might be a good idea to make a play that saves those tiles for next turn.

Third, learn more words. There's no way around this one. You'll play more bingos if you learn more words. One of the most common 7-letter words in Scrabble is ANEROID. You have to know it to be able to find it!