Words With Friends is a Scrabble clone you can play on devices like the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad or on Facebook. In the end the aim turns out to be very simple: get more points than your opponent. To achieve this with ease a lot of players try one of our word generators. In any case, there are generally 3 basic Words With Friends Strategies you should know before using our Words With Friends Cheat to help you score even higher.
1. Pluralize Words
Extending a word is a very basic strategy to get points for letters already on the board. Reasons might be that you don’t want to lose very many good letters for an upcoming move, you don’t have a choice because you have a lot of bad letters or you can extend words with q and in so doing get at least 10 points from existing letters. Pluralization is the most common way to extend a word (e.g. QUAD => QUADS). If you are intent on using pluralization as a Words With Friends strategy, it helps to look out for bonus fields. If you are lucky, your opponent has left you a word ending right in front of a double or triple word score. Don’t hesitate to use your S there. Remember that letters from extended words just count with their normal points. Bonus fields only count the first time a tile is placed on them.
Pluralize Even More Intelligent
Instead of just pluralizing an existing word with an S, one of the more advanced Words With Friends Strategies is to try to add a whole new word containing an S. Place the S-tile of the new word at the end of the existing word, to build the plural of it. If you see QUAD on the board, for example, and you have the letters to build the word BASE on your rack, you might place it so that it extends QUAD to QUADS. In doing so, you don’t just get the points for BASE, but from QUADS as well. The S is counted twice (once for each word) and you might even benefit from bonus fields.
You might get the feeling, that pluralization is a powerful Words With Friends Strategy. You are right, so use your S wisely.
2. Longer is Not Better
Playing a long word might bring you your opponents respect. Often you don’t even score very high with it though, because you might use lots of E, S or R or other tiles with a lower value. Playing all seven letters from your rack building a low-value word is only interesting if you can get the bonus of 35 points. On the other hand, there are a lot of reasons not to play the longest possible word. Especially if you can affort it, the following is one of the top 3 Words With Friends Strategies.
Don’t Give Opportunities
Playing a long word on the board opens up new opportunities for your opponent. Your word might bring him closer to a triple word bonus square, play an interesting letter with lots of free squares around it or open other opportunities. If you play short words instead, the board won’t change a lot. Use this technique especially if you feel he might have problematic letters and needs every opportunity he can get. Don’t give in. Force him to play low-value words, change letters or even pass one round.
Another reason not to play longer words with plenty of good letters is that you don’t know which letters the Words With Friends fairy might bring you next.
3. Connect More Words
If you follow the strategy for short words mentioned above, you might be ready for the most advanced of all Words With Friends Strategies. This really requires training, knowledge and an eye for detail. Connect as many words as possible together. Professional players of Words With Friends even learn 2 and 3 letter words to use this strategy without a tool.
Knowing short words might even enable you to play a word parallel to another one. For example, you can play SAM directly above ARE and you don’t just score for SAM, but also for SA, AR and ME that got build vertically. This allows you to score a lot with little effort. It also makes it even harder for your opponent to play a word himself, because he needs to use a small combination of letters that might not fit his strategy for the next move.
Train!
These are the 3 Words With Friends strategies I use in every game of Words With Friends. Even if I use our Words With Friends Cheat, I need these basics to know exactly where I want to play or to reduce the number of patterns I want to check. It took me some time to learn this in any case and I could still use some more practice.
Did you know these Words With Friends strategies and do you find them helpful? Or do you want to share your own strategies here as well? Please use the comments below this article.
The letter game is interesting. More important, it is really useful ones. Thanks for the strategies of brain training.
Thanks and great you like it.
Sometimes the answers are right there in front of us, and we don’t see them. Simple is better. Your strategies are great. I’ll let you know how I do!
That reminds me of another strategy: just shuffle the letter tiles to get some ideas for words.
Sure it may be good but with 2, 3, letter words a pretty boring game. Think I’ll revert to chess!
Why is it boring by the 2-&3-letter words? I guess that’s the real challenge of WwF.
Trying to anticipate what words could result the possibilty for the opponent to build its own words.
I think everyone should use WWF Cheat as much as needed.
Though it takes the guess work out the possibilities and correct spelling – it cannot tell the player where to play the word.
The game becomes an intense battle of strategy while expanding ones vocabulary thus making it an extremely educational tool.
I lost miserably to an avid player for six months until I discovered WWF Cheat. He is now constantly on the run and the games are exciting and I win often. We play 24-7 !
Exit strategy is also important so you don’t get caught with no words to play or nowhere to play a C, or loose because you held that 10 point letter too long and now can’t get rid of it
Hi FlaKeys, thanks for your insights. May the Q be with U.
Your short word example SAM has an errorr, the game will not allow the word SA!
Thank you, Ian, you are totally right. I need to find a better example.
One of my regular opponents uses the 2 and 3 letter word strategy extensively. However, I try to combat that by opening up the board with larger 4, 5, and 6 letter words. I end up getting many more points per turn than him and win much more often than lose.
Gary, thank you for your comment. Indeed, just using short words is not a guarantee to win a game.
I don’t use wwf cheat because that’s exactly what it is- cheating.
Knowing how many of each letters are left is a good strategy do you think it’s cheating?
That is actually a good strategy that I have seen professional players use in real time Scrabble games. They have a paper with all the tiles and simply cross the ones already played. The tough thing is to manage this under the pressure of a tournament. And if you use this feature in Words with Friends you would still need to use the information such a list provides. It is not as easy as it may sound.
I just started playing WWF and have noticed an error. When I play ‘Solo’, the game uses the word YID (twice so far) against me, yet the game dictionary says it is an invalid word, yet YIDS is a valid WWF word. So which is in error, the game or the game dictionary? I tried using YID in a game and it wouldn’t allow me to do it. So why can ‘Solo’ use it and not me?
Interesting. I will check next time I have the letters YID on my rack.
I’m not sure all of your 2-letter words are acceptable. I’ve tried to play te on numerous occasions and WWF says that it’s not an acceptable word.
Hi Linda,
that list is a list of two letter words generally found in word games. We have tried to be comprehensive and include as many games as we could find. As a consequence some of the words will not be acceptable in WWF.
Here you can find the list with two letter words, that should be acceptable in WWF.
I took these words from the ENABLE word list. The tricky thing is, that ENABLE list changes from time to time.