The Guardian plays Stephen Malkmus in Scrabble and gets clobbered. I don't know much about music, but I do know a little something about Scrabble, and I have to take issue with one of Stephen Malkmus's Scrabble tips.
1. "Save your X and Zs so you get at least 70 or 80 points when you use them."This is wrong for precisely the reason that #2—"Don't waste your wildcards (blanks) because they're really precious—is right. Scrabble, while I enjoy it quite a bit, is a tremendously unbalanced game because the bonus for using all your letters is so high. (In a 300 point game, the bingo bonus alone is worth 1/6 of the winner's total score.) The best strategy therefore is to always be working towards a bingo, even if it puts you temporarily down. With a blank, you're pretty much guaranteed to eventually get a bingo as long as you hold onto Es, Rs, and Ss (or if you already have I, N, and G)—and even without a blank you have a pretty good shot at it just by holding onto the right letters.
This is why, contra Malkmus, you should actually get rid of Qs, Zs, and Xs as quickly as you can: because every turn you have one of those letters is a turn in which you're quite unlikely to drop a bingo. They're worth a lot, so you don't want to just throw them away—but trying to hold onto them until you can get more than 50 points is a complete waste.
With QI, QAT, ZA, AX, EX, OX, XI, and XU in your bank, you can almost always lay down a Q, Z, or X on a bonus tile in two directions, netting a quick 40 within a few turns. Wait too long, though, and you strangle your precious bingo in the cradle...
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