A bingo is a play that uses all seven tiles on your rack. It earns a 50-point bonus on top of the word's own score, which is more than most whole turns are worth. Strong players find several bingos a game, and it is the single biggest difference between a casual score and a club score. This guide shows where bingos come from and how to train yourself to see them.
The good news is that bingos are not rare. Our lists hold 33,788 seven-letter words and 41,364 eight-letter words. The question is never whether a bingo exists, but whether you can spot it.
Why bingos win games
The maths is simple. A common seven-letter word scores about 11.5 points on plain squares, so with the bonus a bingo is worth roughly 61 points before any premium square. A common four-letter word scores about 7.3. One bingo is worth five or six ordinary turns, and a player who bingos twice a game will beat a player who never does almost every time, even if the second player makes better small plays.
Bingos also empty your rack, which means seven fresh tiles. That gives you another chance at the blanks and the S tiles still in the bag, and it gets rid of any awkward letters at the same time.
The letters bingos are made of
Some letters turn up in seven-letter words far more than others. The chart shows the share of all seven-letter words that contain each letter.
E appears in 65% of seven-letter words, and S, I, A, R, N and T are not far behind. These are the letters to keep on your rack. Letters at the bottom of the chart, like Q, J, X and Z, rarely fit into a bingo, so play them off for points when you can.
Vowels: the two-to-three rule
Almost every bingo has two or three vowels. Racks with too many vowels or too few are the main reason players miss out.
90% of seven-letter words have exactly two or three vowels. If your rack has five vowels, a bingo is close to impossible, so swap some out with a short play. If it has none, do the same in reverse.
Spotting a bingo: a method
Most missed bingos are not hard words. They are ordinary words the player did not see, because seven tiles in a random order are hard to read. A routine helps:
- Put the tiles in a helpful order. Some players sort them alphabetically; others put vowels on one side and consonants on the other. Either way, the same rack always looks the same, which makes it easier to recognise.
- Pull out an ending. Look for -ING, -ED, -ER, -EST or -IER and set those tiles aside. What is left is a much shorter word to find.
- Look for a beginning. RE-, UN-, DE- and IN- work the same way at the front.
- Look for a known stem. If six of your tiles are a stem you know, run through its list of seventh letters.
- Check the board. If nothing fits on your rack alone, look for an open letter you could play through for an eight-letter word.
Give yourself a few seconds on every rack, even when a bingo seems unlikely. The habit matters more than any one word.
Learn the stems
A stem is a group of six letters that makes a seven-letter word with many different seventh tiles. If you hold a stem, almost any draw gives you a bingo. These are the classic stems, ranked by how many of the 26 letters complete them:
| Stem | Letters that work | For example |
|---|---|---|
| TISANE | 24 | +A TAENIAS, +B BASINET, +C ACETINS, +D INSTEAD |
| SATINE | 24 | +A TAENIAS, +B BASINET, +C ACETINS, +D INSTEAD |
| SATIRE | 20 | +A ATRESIA, +B BAITERS, +C STEARIC, +D ASTRIDE |
| RETAIN | 20 | +B ATEBRIN, +C CERTAIN, +D TRAINED, +E TRAINEE |
| SENIOR | 18 | +A ERASION, +C CRONIES, +D ORDINES, +G REGIONS |
| ARISEN | 17 | +C ARSENIC, +D SARDINE, +F SERAFIN, +G ERASING |
You do not need to memorise every word. Learning which letters work for one or two stems is enough to start spotting bingos you would have missed.
Seven letters, many words
Some seven-letter racks make several different words. The letters A, E, I, N, R, S and T alone rearrange into 11 words, including RETAINS, NASTIER, RETINAS, STAINER, RETSINA.
Notice how similar these racks are: E, S, R, T, A, I and N appear again and again. That is the practical lesson. Keep those letters, and bingos come to you.
Endings and beginnings
Long words are often a short word plus a common ending or beginning. If you can see the ending, the rest of the word often falls into place.
-ED, -ER and -ING are the big three. If you hold I, N and G, set them aside and look for a four-letter word in the other tiles. With E and D, look for a five-letter verb. RE- and UN- work the same way at the front of the word.
Other common patterns
Beyond the big endings, a few more patterns turn up again and again in seven-letter words: 109 end in -ION, 48 end in -NESS, 109 end in -ISM and 127 end in -FUL. When you hold the letters of one of these, try it as the end of the word first. The same goes for double letters: a rack with two S tiles often makes a word ending in -NESS or -LESS.
Some racks are bingo-friendly without any pattern at all. Racks built from the letters in the chart above, with two or three vowels and no duplicates, make a word more often than not. If your rack looks like that and you cannot find the word, it is worth a closer look or a check afterwards in the unscrambler.
Eight-letter bingos through a tile on the board
If your seven tiles do not make a word, the board may help. An eight-letter word that uses one tile already on the board still earns the 50-point bonus. Add one letter to RETAINS and 21 different letters make an eight-letter word, from A (ARTESIAN), B (BANISTER), C (CANISTER), D (STRAINED). Scan the board for open letters you could build through.
When the rack is hopeless
Some racks will never bingo: five vowels, three of the same letter, or a Q with no U and no friendly letters. Recognise these quickly and stop looking. The aim of the turn changes from finding a bingo to setting one up, so play off the worst tiles for whatever score you can get and keep the best three or four. If even that is impossible, exchanging tiles costs you a turn but gives you a fresh start, which is often worth more than two or three weak plays in a row.
Finding a lane on the board
A bingo needs space: seven tiles in a row, all touching at least one tile already on the board, without forming any invalid words along the way. Lanes are easiest to find early in the game, when the board is open. Look for a row or column with an open letter at one end, or for a spot where your word can run alongside an existing word and form valid two-letter words with it.
If you hold a strong rack but the board is closed, you have two choices. You can open a lane with a small play and hope your opponent does not use it first, or you can keep the rack and wait. When you are ahead, it is usually better to keep the board closed and score steadily.
Word lists that help most
You do not need to know every seven-letter word to bingo often. A few short lists do most of the work. The two-letter words help you place a bingo alongside another word. The most common seven- and eight-letter words, which sit at the top of our seven-letter list, cover the bingos you are most likely to draw. And the stems above give you a way to turn almost any good rack into a word.
Learn little and often. Ten new words a day, reviewed the next day and again a week later, adds up to thousands of words in a year, which is far more than most players ever learn.
Phoney bingos and challenges
A phoney is a word that looks real but is not in the dictionary. Bingos are where phoneys do the most damage, because a challenged bingo costs you the whole turn and gives your opponent a free look at your tiles. If you are not sure a long word is valid, ask yourself how much you lose if it is challenged off, compared with the safer play.
The flip side is that you should check your opponent's bingos too. A word you have never seen is worth a challenge if you are behind and the rules in your game are kind to a failed challenge.
Bingos in Words With Friends
Words With Friends gives 35 points for using all seven tiles instead of 50, and its tile values differ from Scrabble's. The same habits still apply: keep good letters, balance vowels and consonants, and look for endings. Our Words With Friends helper scores words with that game's values.
Managing your rack
- Keep the good letters. S, a blank, E, R, T, N, A and I are worth more on your rack than their face value.
- Play off duplicates. Two U tiles or three I tiles almost never make a bingo. Use them in short plays.
- Balance vowels and consonants. Aim to keep two or three vowels after each turn.
- Exchange when it is hopeless. Losing a turn to swap seven bad tiles is often better than three turns of small plays.
A practice routine
- After each game, type your racks into the Scrabble word finder and see which bingos you missed.
- Learn the seventh letters for one stem a week, starting with TISANE.
- Practise with the unscrambler: draw seven random letters and find the bingo before you check.
- Study the seven-letter word list, starting with the common words at the top.
When you see a possible bingo, check the board first. A bingo needs a place to go, and a lane for seven tiles is rarer than the word.