The Official Scrabble Puzzle Book FROM THE PUBLISHER
There is a certain mental process that good SCRABBLEr game players undergo as
they look for good plays. The puzzles in this book are designed not only for
entertainment but to help the average player develop that process. It's possible
for someone with an average vocabulary, enlarged only with the two hundred extra
words listed on pages 7-8, to solve every one of the puzzles in this book.
Here is a suggestion for the aspiring expert: Start with a board and tiles in
front of you. Recreate the diagrams and racks and rearrange your tiles while
trying to find the solutions. For each diagram of five puzzles, take at most
thirty minutes to solve them, and then look at the answers. Ask yourself what
you could have thought that would have led you to the answers. This process of
replaying in your mind how you can improve your thinking can have a profound
influence on developing your crossword game skills. If you don't get useful
results from this "questioning" process, then don't labor over it. Let the
questions simply alert you that you'd like the answers at some future time, and
then forget about them.
Of course, for those who aren't easily frustrated, you may enjoy the
challenge of spending extra time to earn the very best score attainable. For
those readers, I say good luck!
Part One is all about learning how to "read the board." "Reading the board,"
in part, is being able to find the open rows and columns where you'll be able to
score the most points, and where you cannot.
Chapter 1 shows you how to read our notational system and
learn some important and useful definitions. There's also a short word list of
about two hundred words, including all ninety-seven twoletter words, that you'll
want to learn in order to solve all the puzzles and increase your word-game
skills.
Chapter 2 is all about learning the best way to utilize
two-letter words. There are a hundred puzzles, and every two-letter word is
showcased in order to familiarize the reader with them.
Chapter 3 is about using bonus squares, two-letter words,
and making parallel plays. 50 puzzles.
Chapters 4-6 are designed to increase your ability to use
bonus squares effectively. The complexity increases with each chapter. 150
puzzles.
Chapter 7 shows how to take advantage of the J, Q, X, and Z.
50 puzzles.
Chapter 8 will give you a tougher challenge. These puzzles
combine all you've learned in the previous chapters. 50 puzzles.
Part Two is about playing the weaker combinations of letters
from your rack in order to save the really good ones.
Chapter 9 gives practice playing off three tiles at a time.
50 puzzles.
Chapter 10 can help you learn how to play off four tiles at
a time. 50 puzzles.
Chapter 11 is devoted to practicing finding five-tile plays.
100 puzzles.
Part Three is all about playing all seven tiles of your rack
at once.
Chapter 12 shows how to find seven- and eight-letter plays.
150 puzzles.
Part Four is about the theory and practice of making the
Ideal Play each turn.
Chapter 13 explains how to go about finding the Ideal Play.
Chapter 14 gives real game positions and analyzes them in
order to give you a framework for how experts think. 50 puzzles.
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