How many letters are in Scrabble?

Scrabble is, as many people would agree, the most popular word game ever published. It is played all around the world in many different languages. In this article, we will focus on how many letters are in Scrabble, more precisely how many letter tiles there are in the English edition of this game. We will also say something about the point system in this game.

How many letter tiles are in Scrabble?

There are 100 letter tiles in the English edition of Scrabble. Of those, 98 tiles are emblazoned with one of the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Two tiles are blank and each of them can replace any other letter from the alphabet. The most frequent letter, with twelve tiles, is the letter E, which is also the most frequently used letter in the English language. In contrast, letters J, K, Q, X and Z are each represented with just one tile as the least-used letters in the English language. That shows us that letter distribution in the English language plays a fundamental role in deciding how many letter tiles are in Scrabble.

Letter distribution and frequency analysis

Letter distribution in one language shows us the frequency of the letters used to write text in that language. Among other things it also plays the fundamental role in word puzzle games, one of which is Scrabble, by being a basis for determining the frequency of the letters appearing in the game. Using letter distributions in Scrabble means that luck might play a huge role in your final scores by determining your chances to get favorable letter combinations. You can find more about luck and its role in Scrabble in article: How much does luck affect a typical Scrabble game.

Each language has its own letter distribution, but there are variations in distribution tables from various sources, depending on the actual text used as a sample in the frequency analyses. We can achieve the most accurate calculation of average letter distribution of one language by analyzing a large amount of representative text written in that language. In addition to varying distributions from different sources, languages also evolve over time, as do their letter distributions. As a consequence, the letter distributions in Scrabble differ from one language to another. You can find the letter distribution in Scrabble for other languages here.

Point values of each letter in Scrabble

In Scrabble each player gains points by making words from the given letter tiles and placing those words on the board. The tiles representing each letter carry a certain amount of points except the blank tiles, which carry no points at all. As a rule, letters that are more frequent carry fewer points, while the less frequent ones carry more.

The frequencies and point values for each letter in Scrabble are shown in the table below:

There are also premium squares on the board that can significantly boost your score by doubling or tripling point values of letters or entire words:
DL = Double Letter
TL=Triple Letter
DW = Double Word
TW = Triple Word.

Super Scrabble

The new variant of the English edition of Scrabble, Super Scrabble, was launched in 2004. This version has 200 letter tiles and the following letter distribution:

In this version designers changed the letter distribution to account for a larger tile set, among other things. As an example, letter A in Super Scrabble is represented by 16 tiles instead of 18 (2×9) as would be expected for solely larger tile set. On the contrary, there is more than twice as many tiles with letter S (10 vs. 2×4), which gives players more opportunities to use plurals and third person verbs in the game. The point values remained the same as in the original version of Scrabble.