A Newbie's Guide To

Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Tips and strategies
  3. Introduction to ladders
  4. How rankings work
  5. Tournaments

1. Introduction

Hello!

Welcome to Word Yacht. This page is meant for beginning players who'd like to find out more about ladders, tournaments, and what the heck we talk about all the time in the lobby. Oh yeah, you might also want a pointer or two about how to take your game to the next level.

The basic rules of the game are simple. Roll the dice; get ten letters; form words from those letters and type them in as fast as you can; click on a category on your scorecard to mark; repeat until your scorecard is full.

Now that you know that, let's talk about how to improve your game, get you registered, and start you off playing in ladder matches and tournaments.

2. Beating The Letter Fairy: How To Win At Word Yacht

Learning the categories

There are eight categories in the game of Word Yacht (plus the Bonus line). These are:

Seven of these categories can be divided into groups as follows:

Within each group, the categories are arranged roughly from hardest to easiest. The key rule is: always mark the toughest category in which you can get the maximum score. This will often mean passing up a higher-scoring category in favor of a lower-scoring one. If you have your choice of scoring a 45 in Starter or a 75 in Yacht, take the Starter. You can always get the Yacht later.

Note that I ranked Slam as being harder than 3/4's. You will rarely get a rack so abysmally bad that it does not contain at least 15 three or four-letter words, but all it takes to screw up a Slam is a Q with no U (and no "escape" words like "qat" or "qoph").

There are two exceptions to this rule. First, try not to leave Yacht until your last turn. It's an easy category to get for a skilled player, but at 75 points it's an important one. If you leave it until the very end, you risk getting one of those fluke bad rolls and having to take a zero. Also, keep in mind that Yacht is much tougher when playing at faster speeds. If you are playing a game with a 35 or 40-second timer it can be as difficult as 5/6's or Starter, and since it's worth much more than those categories you should mark it as soon as possible.

The other exception is Sevens. If it's getting late in the game and you get a rack that has two 7-letter words in it (worth 50 points instead of the maximum 70 for three words), you may want to take it, even if other options are available. Getting a rack with three 7-letter words is difficult, so if you hold out for the extra 20 points, you could end up with nothing at all.

What about Scorer?

Scorer is a special category, because there is no maximum amount of points you can earn. You are limited only by your typing speed and the strength of your rack. Many Comp Room games end with both players getting the maximum scores in all seven of the other categories, so getting a high Scorer can make or break your game.

I typically try not to mark Scorer unless I have at least one point for every second of the game timer. If I'm playing a game with a 60-second timer, I try to get a scorer of at least 60 points. Obviously this guideline is adjustable depending on your skill level. If you're just starting to play regularly, your Scorers won't be too high at first. Don't get discouraged. As you keep playing, they'll go up. Especially once you've mastered the Word Yachter's secret weapon...

The No Clear and the S Method

If you click the "Options" button while playing a game, you'll see a box on the "Personal" tab that says "Clear Words After Entering". Like me, you probably started out playing with this box checked, letting the game automatically clear your words after you enter them. That way you don't have to press Escape every time you enter a word. Saves time and keystrokes, right?

Wrong.

See, here's the secret: many words can be extended into other words by adding a letter or two at the end. Any rack containing an S is sure to be a gold mine for plurals. If you uncheck the "Clear Words" box -- using what Comp Room players refer to as the No Clear option -- you can type a word, hit Enter, and then get a second word from the plural by just hitting S and Enter instead of typing the whole word over again. If it's a verb, you might get even a third word by hitting Backspace to erase the S, adding a D, and hitting Enter again (such as ERASE - ERASES - ERASED).

The No Clear is especially useful when dealing with letters that can be grouped into patterns. Look at the word TAPERS. The first three letters form another word. So do the first four and the first five. With the No Clear, you can hit T-A-P-enter-E-enter-R-enter-S-enter and have four words worth 6 points on your Scorer in only a few seconds.

Learning to master the No Clear requires patience. The first few times you use it, you will be tempted to give it up as pointless. Trust me. Stick with it and your Scorers will skyrocket. After that, pressing Escape won't seem like such a big deal.

If the No Clear isn't your thing, an alternative is the S Method. Even with the "Clear Words" box checked, the game will still give you a fraction of a second after you hit Enter before it actually posts and clears the word -- not a lot of time, but enough to hit S-Enter and get credit for the plural without retyping the whole word.

Other advice

Earlier, I said that the object of the game is to "make as many words as you can." That's really not true. The object is to make words that fall into categories you can mark. Try to decide within the first few seconds after you roll the dice which category you're going to aim for. If you see letters like I-N-G that can be used to form common word endings, focus on finding longer words so you can mark 5/6's, Sevens, or Starter. Don't sacrifice a chance to get a tougher category out of the way by spending your time typing in every 3-letter word you can find. Be especially on the lookout for words of 8 letters and longer that earn 50-point bonuses, even if you have to spend a few seconds staring at your screen looking for them.

Okay, now that you're an expert player, let's talk about getting you signed up on the ladder system.