Puzzles - Rules, Tips and Examples

The Rules

The basic Scrabble strategy is about composing a word from the rack to place on the board to get the maximum points. Often that high scoring move isn't possible because your crafty opponent has made sure there's no place on the board to play it. The puzzles here turn that strategy around, so rather than finding a move to fit the board, you are finding the board to fit the move.

The computer will make the move using the puzzle rack, but you need to supply the board. The board must be contiguous (all tiles have at least one neighbour) and the start square (8H) must be occupied. The words you place on the board must be recognised by the computer. Once you are happy with the board you have set-up, click "Get Solutions" and the computer will return the top 5 moves that it can play using the puzzle rack on your submitted board. The top move will be automatically added to the leader board. If you want to come back to the puzzle that's fine, your last submitted board will be automatically loaded when you return.

When a leader board becomes fairly static, we will finish the puzzle and start a new one.

How to get the top points:

Remember that using all the rack tiles will give you an extra fifty points, and with some careful strategy the bonus tiles can be brought into play. The puzzle racks are often selected because they don't easily give up all 7 of their tiles in a single move, but they all will! Finding the word to use all the tiles, and position it on the point bonuses, will be a great way up the leader board.

This is an example of a good solution. Can you see what the move is?

Puzzle example1
It's COURTYARD from 1O down scoring 98 points.

But wait... using the same word, this board scores 104 points:

Puzzle example2 Can you do better?