Scrabble Word Score Calculator

Tile Values and Letter Frequency Scrabble tile values track letter frequency in English. Common letters score less, rare letters score more. A, E, I, L, N, O, R, S, T and U are 1 point. D and G are 2. B, C, M and P are 3. F, H, V, W and Y are 4. K is 5. J and X are 8. Q and Z are 10. A blank is worth nothing at all, which matters more than it sounds like it should.

Standard Tile Distribution The standard English set is 100 tiles: 12 Es, 9 As, 9 Is, 8 Os, matching how often those letters turn up in ordinary English. There is exactly one Q, one Z, one X and two Js. Two blanks complete the set. Alfred Mosher Butts worked the distribution out in the late 1930s by counting letters on the front page of The New York Times, which is why the values feel arbitrary until you see the frequency table behind them.

Premium Squares and Their Order of Application Double Letter Score (DLS) doubles one tile before it joins the word total. Triple Letter Score (TLS) triples one tile. Double Word Score (DWS) doubles the whole word after the tile multipliers are in. Triple Word Score (TWS) triples it.

Word multipliers stack when a play covers more than one. Two double-word squares give ×4, a double crossing a triple gives ×6, and the famous triple-triple, one word reaching both red squares along an edge, is ×9. The two dropdowns below let you say how many of each you covered, so all four combinations are reachable.

A premium square only counts on the turn a tile is first placed on it. Play through a triple-word square on a later turn and it is just a square.

The Bingo Bonus Using all 7 tiles from your rack in one play earns 50 points on top of the word score. North America calls it a bingo, the UK calls it a bonus. It is the single biggest lever in the game: 50 points every few turns beats any amount of clever premium-square hunting.

Note that a bingo needs seven tiles from your rack, not a seven-letter word. Extending an existing word with all seven of your tiles counts, and a seven-letter word where two letters were already on the board does not.

Competitive Scrabble Strategy Tournament players memorize the whole two-letter word list, which runs to well over a hundred entries and differs between the two official dictionaries. QI, ZA, XU, AA and OX are on it. So is the set of Q-without-U words: QI, QOPH, QADI, QAID, QANAT, QIGONG, QINTAR.

Two scores worth knowing. MUZJIKS is the best possible opening play at 128: the seven tiles come to 29, the Z lands on a double letter to make it 39, the center star doubles the word to 78, and the bingo adds 50. And the highest single word ever reported in real competitive play is CAZIQUES at 392, from a 1982 tournament game.

North America plays from the NASPA word list, the rest of the world from Collins. They disagree on thousands of words, so a “valid” word depends on which room you are sitting in.

Score Calculation Order Order matters and this calculator follows the real one: apply the letter multipliers to individual tiles first, sum the tiles, then apply the word multipliers, then add the bingo.

The mistake people actually make is folding the bingo in before the word multiplier. On a triple-word bingo that turns a 50-point bonus into 150 and hands you 100 points you never earned.