A Cardinal Scrabble Rule

Tonight I broke a cardinal Scrabble rule and deserved to lose, even though I squeezed out a win.

Among my tiles, I had the letters Z I P and, on seeing the chance to use these on a double word score by playing the P on YA for "YAP", I went ahead and played, scoring 36 points.

Stupid me -- my opponent then played LIP at the top of the board with the P playing in two directions on the triple-word score. The letters "OOH" had been below the triple, so he played POOH and LIP. Had I played ZIP up top, I'd have scored 69 points without a BINGO.

This takes us back to the old rule that, once you have a good play ... LOOK FOR A BETTER ONE. You don't have to spend forever looking for extra plays, especially when under a time limit. But take a look around and hopefully you won't lose the 33 points that I did in a single turn!