Bingo (Scrabble)

Bingo is a term used in Scrabble for a play in which a player puts seven tiles on the board in a single turn. Mattel, the game's manufacturer outside North America, uses the term bonus to describe such a word. In French, it is called a scrabble. A player who does this receives 50 points in addition to what the word would normally score.

Bingos are an important part of achieving high scores in Scrabble. While many beginners rarely play even one during a game, experts frequently score three or more. Much advanced strategy revolves around maximizing one's chance of playing of a bingo: blank tiles are kept, poor letter combinations such as BVW, LLNNN, or IIIUU are broken up, and flexible letter combinations such as AEINST (a six-letter "stem" that anagrams with 24 letters — all but Q and Y — to form nearly 70 bingos) are aimed for until a bingo is formed. This strategy is often at direct odds with that of placing high-value letters on premium squares.

A common misconception is that the 50-point bonus received for using all seven tiles is multiplied if a double word score (DWS) or triple word score (TWS) is used. This is not the case: for example, TRAINER(S) played at 1A (with the T on the TWS) without forming additional words scores ${\displaystyle 3\times (1+1+1+(2\times 1)+1+1+1+1)+50=77}$ points.