Word Chums Board Solver : Play the Bonus Squares
Enter your rack letters and recreate the board to find the highest-scoring Word Chums plays.
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The Word Chums Board Solver finds your highest-scoring play, not just your longest word. Enter your rack, the letters already on the board, and the bonus squares around your spot, and the tool ranks moves by the points they would actually score in that position. For a quick rack-only lookup, use the Word Chums Cheat instead.
Jump to: How it works ↓ · How scoring works ↓ · Strategy ↓ · FAQ ↓
How the Word Chums Board Solver Works
Enter the letters on your rack, using a question mark for any blank tile. Then enter the letters already on the board near where you want to play, and mark the bonus squares around that spot: double letter, triple letter, double word, triple word. Click Go, and the solver ranks every legal play by the score it would earn in that exact position.
This matters because the longest word rarely scores the most. A five-letter word laid across a triple-word square often beats a seven-letter word played on plain tiles. The solver does that arithmetic for you and puts the highest-scoring move at the top. If you just want to know which words your rack can make, the Word Chums Cheat handles the rack-only lookup.
How Word Chums scoring works
Word Chums uses a 15x15 board, and the first word of every game must cross the center star. Each tile carries a point value, and the board adds premium squares that multiply a letter's value or a whole word's value. Your turn score is the value of every new word you form, with letter and word multipliers applied, plus the standard bonus for using all your tiles at once. It is the same premium-square scoring model that has defined Scrabble since the 1930s, which is why position, not just word length, decides the winner.
Word Chums board strategy
A few placement habits raise your average turn. First, aim your rare tiles (Q, X, Z, J) at letter-bonus squares so their high values get multiplied. Second, set up two-way plays that form a word in both directions across a word-bonus square. Third, play defensively: avoid opening a triple-word square next to a vowel, which hands your opponent an easy high-scoring reply. The solver surfaces the scoring options; these habits help you choose between them and protect your next turn.
About Word Chums
Word Chums is a turn-based multiplayer word game published by PeopleFun, the studio behind Wordscapes, whose founders previously built the Age of Empires real-time strategy series at Ensemble Studios. Its board and bonus squares work like Scrabble and Words With Friends, but it uses its own Scrabble-style dictionary and its own tile values, so plays and scores differ from those games. That is why this solver uses Word Chums values rather than borrowing another game's board.
If you play the other tile games, TWF's Words With Friends Cheat and Scrabble Word Finder run on the same engine, tuned to each game's own board and dictionary. And if you are curious about the history of Word Chums and what sets it apart from Scrabble and Words With Friends, you can read more in our blog post.
Frequently Asked Questions
It finds your highest-scoring play by accounting for the bonus squares on your board. You enter your rack, the surrounding board letters, and the nearby double- and triple-letter and word squares, and it ranks moves by the points they would score in that position.
The Word Chums Cheat works from your rack alone and ranks words by their base score. The board solver also takes the board and its bonus squares into account, so it ranks plays by what they would actually score where you place them. Use the cheat for a fast rack check and the board solver when you are chasing a specific high-scoring placement.
Mark each premium square near your play as double letter, triple letter, double word, or triple word, matching what you see on your board. The solver applies those multipliers when it scores each possible move.
No. Enter the letters and bonus squares around the spot you want to play. You do not need to reproduce the entire 15x15 grid for the solver to rank your best move in that area.
Type a question mark (?) for each blank tile in your rack. The solver treats it as any letter and scores it at the blank's value (zero points) in the result.
Because bonus squares multiply scores. A short word placed across a triple-word square, or with a high-value tile on a triple-letter square, can outscore a longer word on plain tiles. Ranking by board score rather than word length is the whole point of the solver.
Yes. The solver checks plays against a Word Chums word list and scores them with Word Chums tile values and board layout, which differ from Scrabble and Words With Friends.
There is no barrier to using one, and many players use solvers to study scoring and improve. Treat it as a practice aid; whether to use it in a friendly competitive game is a courtesy call between you and your opponent.
Explore More Word Game Solvers
The Word Chums Solver is part of The Word Finder’s collection of board solvers designed to help players solve and analyze word games.
Check out our other board solvers:
Scrabble
US & UK
Crossplay
New York Times
Words With Friends
Classic
Words With Friends
Fast Play
Wordfeud
Classic
Word Chums
ClassicEach solver is designed specifically for the rules, board layouts, and scoring mechanics of its respective game.