Missing a turn

by Amanda Niciak
(Sydney, Australia)

My sister and I play Scrabble each year on holidays. This year, she said to me that she would miss a go... I then played my tiles....she didn't throw her tiles out but just sat there....after my go...she then got a seven letter word based on my last go and got one big score.

Is that legal? Or is it just poor play?

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Hi there Amanda. I'm afraid your sister was perfectly within her rights to miss a turn - the rules certainly permit it.

Since it worked out quite nicely for her, I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'poor play'. Do you mean that it seems a bit 'unsporting' perhaps?

Expert players certainly don't consider it 'bad form' to take full advantage of the rules to increase their chances of winning, and this is one move (well, non-move really!) that they'll do from time to time.

Strategically, it isn't often considered to be a good move because a strong opponent will usually guess what you're up to and therefore play a move that is as unhelpful to you as possible.

More often, an expert will exchange one or more of their tiles instead of playing a move, in order to increase the chance of playing a bingo next move.

I hope that helps,