Sidebar: 5 tips for boosting your Wordament score

The world’s best Wordament players swipe in nearly a word a second. How? These tips, culled from the pros on the Wordament blog, provide some clues and will have you inching up the leaderboard in no time.

• Hunt for patterns, not words. Practice looking for common letter combinations and roots, which can help you quickly rack up points. A nugget like EAD, for example, can lead to BEAD, DEAD, HEAD, LEAD, MEAD, and READ.
• Pay attention to prefixes and suffixes. Wherever you find common prefixes (DE, DIS, RE, and UN) or common suffixes (AL, ED, ER, ES, ING, LY, S) juicy words usually aren’t far behind.
• Mind your Vs and Qs. Focus on high-scoring tiles such as Q, Qu, K, Z, V, which help you pile on the points even with short 3-letter words.
• Don’t forget the past. One common beginner’s mistake is forgetting to swipe in plural and tense variations of a word. In Wordament, JUMP, JUMPS, JUMPING, and JUMPED are all legal plays.
• Know your anagrams. If you see a word like EAT, remember to swipe in anagrams like ATE, TEA, ETA, and TAE (obscure but legal).

Finally, remember that all the tiles on the board are playable at least once. So if you haven’t touched a tile, it means you’re not seeing a word. For inspiration, check out this video of “Wicketewok,” one of the world’s best Wordament players. And don’t miss my fascinating Q&A with Wordament’s creators!