{"id":1516,"date":"2022-11-23T16:30:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T16:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2025-09-16T12:41:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:41:33","slug":"most-common-winning-scrabble-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/most-common-winning-scrabble-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Most Common Winning Scrabble Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Are you a new Scrabbler looking for a way to improve your skills? Welcome to our blog, where you can find all the tips and tricks you need! Tips like: what the best <a href=\"https:\/\/scrabble.hasbro.com\/en-us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Scrabble<\/a> words are to study as you learn. One of the best ways to get better at Scrabble is simple: build your vocabulary. But the dictionary&#8217;s a pretty big book and you can&#8217;t exactly go memorizing the thing overnight. What to do? This list will give you a starting point in terms of what the most important words to know are to have a good game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em><strong>Haze<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Once you get used to Scrabble, you&#8217;ll start to notice that the best winning words have a few things in common. Case in point: haze. Not only does it have a high-point-value letter &#8212; the Z &#8212; it also has a few commonly-occurring vowels, like A and E. That makes it more likely you&#8217;ll be able to put together this word from your hand. Overall, this short word is worth a hefty 16 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"2\">\n<li><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unscramblerer.com\/most-useful-scrabble-words\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jam<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>This short word doesn&#8217;t have the classically rare letters, but it does have a J &#8212; a letter any Scrabble aficionado knows its worth a surprisingly high 8 points. That means &#8216;jam&#8217; is 12 points and can be a good option if you&#8217;re pinched for tiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"3\">\n<li><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/entertainment.howstuffworks.com\/leisure\/brain-games\/20-words-to-learn-for-scrabble.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Yo<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of the words on this list will be short. Why? Well, first of all, they&#8217;re more realistic for beginners to play. And while it might seem like the only way to be successful is to play a bunch of 8-letter words, shorter terms can actually build up a lot of points. Yo, for example, can get rid of a couple of vowels while earning you 5 points when you&#8217;ve got a tough board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"4\">\n<li><em><strong>Ajar<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s that sneaky J coming back into play! This again follows the pattern of realistic, high-value words, with a high-point letter and a bunch of more common tiles, meaning &#8216;ajar&#8217; is worth 11 points. And, as a bonus, if you&#8217;ve got a bunch of random A&#8217;s in your hand, this gets rid of some of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"5\">\n<li><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rd.com\/list\/best-scrabble-words\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Quickly<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a full 7 letters, so it&#8217;s definitely a bit of a challenge for beginners to play, but that doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not possible. With a high-value Q, this word is worth a full 25 points in Scrabble &#8212; and if you use up all your tiles, you get a bonus of 50 points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"6\">\n<li><em><strong>Queenly<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>This word offers another great option if you&#8217;ve got a Q in your hand, while also not containing any other strange letters that might be hard to obtain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"7\">\n<li><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/words-at-play\/top-10-secrets-of-scrabble-masters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Za<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>You want to a slice of &#8216;za&#8217;? In Scrabble, you might. While this isn&#8217;t exactly a commonly used word, it&#8217;s one of the most often-played terms in Scrabble, since it&#8217;s a great way to get rid of a Z, and is worth 11 points for only two letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"8\">\n<li><em><strong>Phony<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>This word may read &#8216;phony&#8217; but we&#8217;re not joking about how valuable it is. It can help you get rid of a bunch of letters if you&#8217;re short on vowels &#8212; just find an O on the board you can build off of. And, as a bonus, it&#8217;s worth a full 13 points, making it a solid play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"9\">\n<li><em><strong>Gyoza<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a lot of disagreements the world over on how to properly spell gyoza, a type of Asian dumpling. Wherever you fall on the scale, gyoza is a valid Scrabble word, and is worth a full 18 points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"10\">\n<li><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/wordfinder.yourdictionary.com\/blog\/25-high-scoring-scrabble-words-youll-actually-play\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Qi<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>If you only learn one word from this list, it should be &#8216;qi.&#8217; This short word is a fantastic way to use up a stubborn Q if you don&#8217;t have a U on your hand or the board. All you need is an i on the board to build off of, and you&#8217;ll get 11 points for almost no effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you a new Scrabbler looking for a way to improve your skills? Welcome to our blog, where you can&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scrabble"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}