In our last article about 7-letter Scrabble bingos, we focused on game time tips to raise your odds of scoring *bingos when playing Scrabble. We offered some helpful wordlists at the end of the article, but the tips we gave will work whether you spend time memorizing lists or not. That said, if you’re semi-serious about dominating family and friends at the Scrabble board, then lists are the way to go.
*NOTE: In Scrabble parlance, a bingo is a 7-letter word that scores you an extra 50-point premium. You need to use all 7 tiles in one turn to claim a bingo.
Bedazzling, high scoring bingos are in your grasp!
If you’re chasing bingo-glory, then you’ll want to study bingo lists. And today’s your lucky day: We’re going to serve up the holy grail of bingo lists. Couple the tips from our last article with the words in our lists, and you’ll soon be blowing up your Scrabble board with bedazzling, high scoring bingos.
Our system for bingo-glory in a nutshell:
Manage your rack carefully (see Score Big at Scrabble With a Bingo Bonanza), and have an arsenal of likely 7-letter words at the ready (that’s where the lists come in handy).
Use alpha order to cut through the chaos.
There’s a reason why bingo lists present words in alpha-anagram form, followed by the actual spelling of the corresponding bingos. For example, in any respectable bingo list, AEILNRT would be presented right before its list of corresponding bingos:
- AEILNRT
- LATRINE
- RATLINE
- RETINAL
- RELIANT
- TRENAIL
And here’s the reason: It’s all about efficiency.
There are 5,040 ways to arrange 7 scrabble tiles with 7 different letters, and depending on how they land on your scrabble rack, you might not immediately recognize if there’s a bingo to be had. In fact, even if there are several bingo possibilities, unless you’re great at anagrams, you might not spot any of them.
To the uninitiated, AEILNRT might not look like anything special, but to a Scrabble aficionado, that combination of letters means bingo-gold. Now back to efficiency, if you train yourself to recognize the hot bingo combos in alpha-anagram form, and you always rack your scrabble tiles in alpha order during play, you’re much more likely to spot all your bingo opportunities.
Need a convenient dictionary?
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) mentioned in our last article is a good bet. Our lists will work well with any comprehensive list of bingos, including the OSPD. As noted last time around, “it was designed for Scrabble-play, it’s free, and it works well for the casual to semi-serious player who needs a resource for solving game-time disputes.” It’s basically a cleaned-up version of the tournament dictionary; offensive words have been scrubbed. It’s the perfect dictionary to use when hustling friends and family at the Scrabble table.
Time to blow past Mr. Joe-Average-Player.
One quick disclaimer. Our system is not designed for the serious player looking to rank high in tournament play. There’s another, rarefied level of study that kind of player would need to pursue. Our system is designed to quickly get you head-and-shoulders past the casual player by putting those coveted bingos, and their accompanying 50-point premiums, within your grasp. Just what you need to dominate over the holidays.
We did the math to curate the overall, top one hundred most likely bingos you can draw, based on a factory packed set of Scrabble tiles. Of interest, you’ll note that many of the top 100 bingo candidates have 4 or 5 vowels. See our last article for an explanation of 5-vowel bingos. Much of that explanation holds true for 4-vowel bingos.
We’re also throwing in a list of the top five hundred most likely bingos that include the sweet spot combo of 2 or 3 vowels, as highlighted in our last article.
Keep in mind that no two games are the same, and the probability of drawing any one bingo changes dynamically based on the random draw of tiles as a game rolls on. In the early part of a game, while the tile distribution is still relatively pristine, our probability calculations are more likely to hold. Because of that, bingos with higher vowel counts are more likely to show up in the earlier part of a game.
Now go kick some Scrabble butt.
Now for the lists! Check out our top 100 most-likely-bingos overall, and top 500 most-likely-bingos with 2 or 3 vowels. Start studying now, and you’ll be all set to kick some Scrabble butt over the holidays!
