Scrabble score sheet

A line per turn with the word written beside what it made, so a challenge an hour later has something to look at. The calculator applies the squares in the right order, scores a blank at nothing wherever it lands, and adds fifty when all seven tiles go down.

Scrabble is a trademark of its owner. This sheet is an independent one made for people who play the game; it is not published, licensed or endorsed by the trademark owner, and the name is used only to say which game it is for.

A worked example

One word scored three ways: as it lies, with a blank standing in for the last letter, and across a double-word square using all seven tiles.

Writing the word down, not just the number

Recording only the totals throws away the interesting half of the game and makes every dispute unresolvable. Two narrow columns per player — the word, then the points — cost almost nothing in width and turn the pad into a record of the game rather than a receipt. Tournament players have kept sheets like this forever, and it is worth doing at home for the same reason.

It also catches arithmetic errors, since a word written down can be rescored later and a bare number cannot. The most common mistake found this way is a double-word square applied to the wrong word when a turn made two of them at once.

The order the squares apply in

A letter square multiplies its own tile before anything else happens. Once every letter has its value, a word square multiplies the whole word. Cover two word squares in one turn and both apply, so a word across two doubles is quadrupled. The fifty for laying all seven tiles comes last and is never multiplied by anything.

Doing it in a different order is the classic way to overscore a big turn, usually by multiplying the seven-tile bonus. The calculator here applies the sequence properly and shows the intermediate figure, which makes an inflated claim obvious rather than merely suspicious.

A blank scores nothing, wherever you put it

A blank stands in for a letter but carries no value, and it does not acquire one by sitting on a premium letter square. Playing a blank as a Z on a triple-letter square scores zero for that tile, and the temptation to count it anyway is enormous because the tile looks so expensive.

Type the letter in lower case in the calculator and it is treated as a blank. The premium word squares still apply to the rest of the word, and a blank still counts as one of the seven for the all-tiles bonus — both of which are genuinely worth knowing when a blank is the tile standing between you and fifty extra points.

Common questions

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