Scrabble Bingo – Use All Of Your Rack Letters

If you are looking to score your best ever points total in Scrabble, you will need to start incorporating Bingos into your game. In this article, we take a look at how to score points with a Bingo, examples of their usage and some interesting facts and records about them.

A Bingo in Scrabble is awarded when a player uses all of their available rack letters in one turn.
When achieving a Bingo, the player will score an additional 50 points for the word they play after the rest of the word has already been scored.
Outside of North America it is known as a Bonus, while in France it is referred to as a Scrabble.
Beginners are usually not expected to be able to score one Bingo per game.
In contrast, advanced players are typically able to score at least 3 Bingos in a game, which would amount to an additional 150+ points.
To maximize the chances of achieving a Bingo, the best Scrabble players will keep their blank tiles, retain flexible letters and try to remove poor letter combinations from their rack.
Furthermore, players should also look to hold on to the letter “S” to help pluralize words and lengthen their letter counts.

What is a Bingo in Scrabble?

A Bingo is scored in Scrabble when a player successfully uses all of the 7-letters in their rack within one turn. If the player has less than 7-letters on their rack (later in the game) but still uses all of their letters, it will not be classed as a Bingo.

Because of the word length needed, it can be difficult to score a Bingo in Scrabble. Players who manage to do so are awarded a 50 point bonus for achieving a Bingo, making it a particularly beneficial way of using up low scoring letter tiles.

There are two possible ways to create a Bingo in Scrabble, by only using the letters in your rack or by using the letters in your rack in combination with letters already played on the board.

Bingo from the rack only

This type of bingo uses 7-letters and can only be used on the first turn, with one of its letters placed upon the star square in the middle of the board.

Example:

[H][A][C][K][E][R][S]

This should be the simplest type of Bingo as it only requires a word of 7-letters in length. In each game of Scrabble, just one player will have the opportunity to play a Bingo of this type.

Bingo from the rack plus the board

The other type of playable Bingo uses at least 8-letters and must combine all of the letters from the rack with some of the letters already placed on the board.

Example 1:

[C]

[H]

[A][T][H][L][E][T][E][S]

[L]

[K]

A previously played word, “CHALK” has been added to the board. Using this, the player is able to add the characters “THLETES” to form a new 8-letter word.

Example 2:

[R][A][C][E] → [R][A][C][E][C][O][U][R][S][E][S]

In this example, the word “RACE” was already played on the board. The player adds the 7-letter word “COURSES” to the end of the existing word to form a new 11-letter word, gaining a Bingo.

Example 3:

[K][I][L][L] → [P][A][I][N][K][I][L][L][E]R][S]

Here, the player inserts the word “PAIN” and the word ending “ERS” around the existing word on the board, “KILL”. Again, the user has used a total of 7 letters from their rack, gaining a Bingo.

Tips to create a Scrabble Bingo

A number of different techniques are used by players to achieve Bingos in each game. However, players should be aware that strategies when playing for a Bingo in Scrabble may be at odds with other strategies that other players typically look to employ.

Go fishing – Fishing refers to moments when a player opts to play just one or two tiles in order to maximize their chances for a Bingo in their next turn. If you spot that you have five or six letters that can contribute towards a Bingo but one or two letters are preventing you from doing so, try to play the undesired letters on your current turn to keep your best tiles together for the next turn.

Pay attention to your leave – Any letters that are left behind after playing each turn but before taking new letters from the bag are referred to as a player’s leave. It is a good idea to make sure your leave doesn’t contain more than two of any letter or contain combinations that don’t mix to increase your odds of achieving a Bingo in upcoming turns.

Balanced rack – In similar fashion, it is extremely useful to make sure your rack has a good balance between vowels and consonants. Having a rack that is unbalanced will make it difficult to make words of average lengths, let alone those that need to feature at least seven letters.

Keep low point tiles – Low point tiles are more common and as such combine more frequently with other tiles. Therefore it can be better to combine common letters together by holding onto tiles that score low, sacrificing high points for individual letters in order to earn a fruitful Bingo.

Prefixes and suffixes – Finding these on your rack can make it much easier to form Bingos, especially if the prefix/suffix used contains a greater number of letters. The longer the prefix/suffix you can identify, the fewer letters you will have to combine them with to create a Bingo.

“S” and blank tiles – Although it can be tempting to use “S” and blank tiles on existing words on the board, remember that the potential score gained from a Bingo is likely to far exceed those scored on other turns. If you can hang on to them, they can provide an easy way to extend the length of most words you can create, especially when it comes to pluralizing words.

Scrabble Bingo facts and records

Scrabble records are maintained by various organizations in order to track a range of achievements possible in the game. Understandably, Bingos are a hot topic and recording these can provide enthusiasts with ambitious targets to aim for in their matches.

In 1982, Karl Khoshnaw scored the highest-scoring Bingo ever recorded in an official Scrabble tournament in Manchester with the word “CAZIQUES”.
To earn this record, he achieved a total of 392 points for the word which would normally score just 78 points without the use of premium squares.
For Bingos of 7-letters only, the highest scoring word would be “MUZJIKS” which can score a maximum of 128 points.
When looking at Bingos of 8-letters, two different highest scoring words are given which depend upon the Scrabble dictionary being used:
- Collins dictionary – “QUIZZIFY” can score a total of 419 points.
- TWL dictionary – “QUINZHEE” can score a total of 401 points.
Theoretically, the 15-letter Bingo word “OXYPHENBUTAZONE” could earn a player 1785 points if played across three triple word score squares.
The lowest score possible through a Bingo is 56 points, which can be achieved in two ways:
- 8-letter word with six one-point tiles and two blank tiles.
- 2-letter word (both blank) connected to a 7-letter word which has six one-point tiles.
The most Bingos in a tournament game using the NWL dictionary is 7, achieved by both Nigel Peltier and Joel Sherman.
However, for tournaments that use the CSW dictionary, Alistair Richards and Carl Durdan have both achieved 8 Bingos in a game.

Scrabble Bingo stems

In Scrabble, a Bingo stem is a grouping of letters that can be combined with an additional letter or letters to form words that will make a Bingo. We have included a list of 6-letter stems to look out for below which can be combined with other rack/board letters, helping you gain that elusive 50 point bonus.

#	Stem	Playable 7-letter words for first turn	Playable 8-letter words for later turns
1	ADEINR	35	132
2	ADEIRS	63	193
3	AEERST	62	270
4	AEILNR	39	140
5	AEILNS	44	212
6	AEILRS	46	245
7	AEINRS	54	308
8	AEINRT	71	259
9	AEINST	96	334
10	AEIRST	98	366
11	AENORS	28	146
12	AENRST	76	289
13	AEORST	42	235
14	EILNOS	38	131
15	EILOST	37	149
16	EINORS	54	218
17	EINOST	40	192
18	EINRST	63	321
19	EIORST	71	260
20	ENORST	50	179