Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing Scrabble strategy and tournament culture, with John Chew
Jan 22, 2026
Join John Chew, head of the North American Scrabble Players Association, as he dives into the intriguing world of competitive Scrabble. He shares the strategic connections between math and game enjoyment, the nuances of tile counting etiquette, and the rules governing tournament play. Learn about the challenges of online randomness and how language affects scoring. Chew also discusses the importance of memorizing two-letter words and offers insights on joining local clubs for improvement and community.
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Luck Meets Strategy
- Scrabble blends luck, strategy, and visualization into a single competitive arc.
- Early-game randomness shifts into a chess-like deterministic endgame when tile knowledge matters.
Observe Proper Tile-Draw Etiquette
- Follow tile-draw etiquette: keep the bag opening visible and show an open hand before drawing.
- Learn the rules for overdrawing because tile infractions are common in live play.
Entropy Matters For Fair Play
- True randomness matters in online tile draws and depends on sufficient entropy.
- Using a single seeded RNG can produce repeatable patterns that distort fairness.
