Strategy Guide

Picking Letters

Most people don't think about the pick. They just alternate consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. That's fine. But the split matters more than the order.

Go 4 vowels, 5 consonants

This is the bread and butter. English words are about 40% vowels, and 4/9 is close to that. Three vowels often leaves you staring at BRTGHD wondering where the words went. Five vowels and you end up with AAIOUEE and not enough consonants to build anything useful.

3 vowels can work

If your first few consonants are the good ones (R, S, T, N, L) you can get away with just 3 vowels. These consonants play nicely together. STRONG, STRAND, PRINTS: none of those need many vowels. But if you've drawn B, G, K early on, pick that fourth vowel.

The consonants that matter

The pool is weighted by English frequency, so you'll see R, S, T, N, L, D a lot. These are what you want. They slot into almost everything. A board with R, S, T, N, L is a playground: RENTALS, ANTLERS, STERNLY.

Q, X, Z, J are rare but annoying when they show up. Q needs U and that burns two of your nine letters on a single pair. X and Z barely combine with anything beyond short words. If you get stuck with one, just treat it as a dead tile and work with the other eight.

Spotting Words

The clock is ticking. You've got 30 seconds. Don't stare at the letters left to right hoping a word appears. That's how you end up submitting CAT.

Hunt for endings first

Glance at the board and look for common word endings. If you can see I, N, G sitting there, that's -ING. Now every 4+ letter word ending in -ING is on the table and you just need to find the front half. Same goes for -TION, -MENT, -NESS, -ABLE, -ATED, -STER, -LING.

Or beginnings

UN-, RE-, OUT-, MIS-, PRE-. If you spot one of these in your letters, you can often bolt a shorter word onto it. SORT becomes RESORT. TAKE becomes MISTAKE. LINE becomes OUTLINE.

Build up from short words

See a 3 or 4-letter word? Good. Now stretch it. RENT → RENTS → RENTAL → RENTALS. PART → PARTS → PARTING. Every extra letter is another point, and going from 8 to 9 doubles the score.

Rearrange in your head

The letters are displayed in the order they were picked, which is basically random. That messes with your pattern recognition. Try mentally grouping the vowels together and the consonants together. You'll see different combinations.

Words that come up a lot

Some 7-letter words are built entirely from common letters. If you memorise a handful of these, you'll spot them faster when they appear:

Picking Numbers

You pick 6 numbers. Large ones are 25, 50, 75, 100 (each appears once). Small ones are 1 to 10 (each appears twice in the pool, so you can get two 3s etc).

2 large, 4 small

This is the default pick for a reason. Two large numbers get you into the right ballpark quickly (75 + 100 = 175, 75 * 4 = 300, that sort of thing). Four small numbers give you enough to fine-tune the last 10 or 20.

1 large, 5 small

Lots of small numbers to play with, but reaching anything above 500 gets hard. You basically need to multiply your one large number by something you build from the smalls. Doable if you're quick with arithmetic, painful if you're not.

3 or 4 large

Going heavy on large numbers is a gamble. You can hit any multiple of 25 almost trivially (100 + 75 + 50 = 225, done), but if the target is, say, 413, you've only got 2 or 3 small numbers to bridge the gap. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes you're stuck.

Hitting the Target

The target is between 101 and 999. You need to get there (or close) using your 6 numbers and +, -, *, /. Division has to be clean, no remainders.

Start from the target, not your numbers

Don't try to randomly combine numbers and hope you land on the target. Look at the target and break it down. Target is 437? That's near 450 (so 450 - 13). It's also near 7 × 62, or 400 + 37. See which decomposition matches the numbers you actually have.

Multiply to get close, then adjust

Most targets between 200 and 700 are reachable by multiplying a large number by something, then adding or subtracting to fine-tune. This is the workhorse method.

Check for factors

Before you do anything else, check: is the target divisible by 25? By 50? By 75? Target 450? That's 75 × 6. Done in two numbers. Target 576? That's 8 × 72. Can you make 72 from your remaining numbers? This won't work every time, but when it does, it's instant.

Don't sleep on 1

People ignore 1 because multiplying by 1 does nothing. But adding 1 to a multiplier is huge: (6 + 1) × 75 = 525, versus 6 × 75 = 450. That's a 75-point swing from a single 1.

Quick mental arithmetic tricks

• × 25: divide by 4, then × 100. So 25 × 7: do 7/4... no, easier: 25 × 4 = 100, so 25 × 7 = 175. Just count in 25s.
• × 75: think of it as × 3 × 25. 75 × 8 = 3 × 25 × 8 = 3 × 200 = 600.
• Odd targets: all four large numbers are multiples of 25 (i.e. even). If your target is odd, you need an odd small number in an addition or subtraction somewhere. Keep that in mind so you don't burn all your odd numbers on a multiplication.

When to Submit

This is where most people mess up. You can only submit once. No changes after that. And if the timer runs out before you submit, you get nothing.

The 9-letter gamble

A 9-letter word scores 18 points. An 8-letter word scores 8. That's a massive gap. But a wrong 9-letter word scores 0. If you're 90% sure it's a word, go for it. If you're guessing, take the safe 7 or 8.

The numbers cliff

Within 10 = 5 points. 11 away = 0 points. That's a cliff edge. If you've got something within 10, submit it. You can't change it afterward, so only hold off if you genuinely think you can do better and there's enough time left to work it out and type it in.

The clock

Think of it in thirds. First third: find something decent, a 5-letter word or a number within 10. Second third: try to improve it. Final third: if you haven't submitted yet, do it now. The timer doesn't care that you were “about to find” a 9-letter word.

Playing to Win

• The default game is 4 letter rounds and 2 number rounds. Letters are weighted heavier. If you're better at numbers, host with 3 and 3 (or even 2 and 4) to play to your strength.
• When you're the picker in letter rounds, you control the board. If you're good with consonant-heavy hands, go 3 vowels 6 consonants. Your opponents might struggle with a board they're not used to.
• Scoring 5 or 6 points every round beats scoring 8 in one round and 0 in the next. Submit something every round. Never time out.
• Learn a few obscure-but-common words. SALTIER, NASTIER, RETAINS, SARDINE. They're all built from the most common letters in the pool and they come up more often than you'd think.
• In number rounds, don't waste time trying to use all 6 numbers. You don't have to. If 3 numbers get you to the target, that's 10 points. Using all 6 doesn't score any extra.