are these the same rules as scrabble?

Mostly the same vocabulary, deliberately different numbers. WordSalvo uses a 15×15 board, 7-tile rack, and 104 English tiles. The bingo bonus is 45 rather than 50, and there is no manual challenge because every move is validated server-side.

what is the difference between a bingo and just a big word?

A bingo specifically means playing all seven rack tiles in one turn, earning the +45 bonus. A big word scored by crossing two premium squares is not a bingo unless you also emptied your rack in the same play.

why does the blank tile score zero?

Because its value is flexibility, not letters. A blank can stand in for any letter, including a high-value one like Q or Z, and it can complete a bingo your rack otherwise could not. The zero score is the price you pay for that flexibility.

is there a hook dictionary i can study?

Not as a standalone feature. WordSalvo's dictionary does drive every hook decision, and the post-game Word Book records the words each game produced, so over time you accumulate a personal hook library rooted in games you actually played.

what happens if the tile bag runs out?

The endgame begins. Players keep taking turns with whatever tiles remain on their rack until one player plays their last tile — that ends the game. Tiles left on other players' racks are subtracted from their scores and added to the winner's.

can i look up a word mid-game?

Yes, where definitions are available in the current build. English and Dutch dictionary behavior should be described exactly as shipped.

Word game glossary

The vocabulary you meet on a 15×15 board, defined without jargon.

Last updated April 17, 2026 · By Kurt Bijl

In short: Plain-language definitions for the vocabulary of 15×15 word games: board mechanics (rack, bag, premium square), turn actions (pass, swap, challenge), post-game analysis (brilliancy, turning point), and the systems underneath (Glicko-2, DAWG, SOWPODS). Each entry defines the term first, then notes how WordSalvo handles it.

Abstract lattice of interlocking wooden-feel tiles on cream paper, with soft navy premium-square tints under a few cells and one tile slightly lifted.

Bingo

Playing all seven tiles from your rack in a single turn. The bonus is on top of the normal word score. Different games set the bonus differently: WordSalvo adds 45 points, Scrabble adds 50, and Wordfeud adds 40.

In WordSalvo, the bingo bonus is credited before any premium squares are applied to the word as a whole — so a bingo landing on a Double Word square still doubles the letter total, then +45 on top.

Hook

A single letter that extends an existing word on the board — adding S to CAT to make CATS, or H to EAR to make HEAR. Good hooks score the hooked letter and the new word you build alongside it.

Hook availability varies by dictionary. WordSalvo validates hooks against the same DAWG it uses for main words, so an obscure but listed hook (like RE- or -ED endings) will be accepted without a manual challenge.

Blank

A wildcard tile worth zero points. You assign it a letter when you play it, and it keeps that letter for the rest of the game. Blanks are valuable because they unblock bingos and fill awkward rack vowel/consonant ratios.

In WordSalvo, tapping a blank as you place it opens a letter picker. The picker accepts the full alphabet of the active language — including accented letters where the language distribution defines them.

Rack

The seven tiles you hold at any one time. After each turn you draw back up to seven from the bag, or as many as remain. At the end of the game, tiles still on your rack are subtracted from your score.

WordSalvo keeps the rack client-side during a turn; the server only sees the move you submit. That means your opponent cannot see your rack, and a disconnect mid-turn does not leak it.

Premium square

A marked cell that multiplies either a letter or a whole word. The standard four: Double Letter (DL), Triple Letter (TL), Double Word (DW), and Triple Word (TW). They only activate when a newly placed tile sits on them — covering an already-used premium does nothing.

Word multipliers stack. Hitting two DW squares on one play multiplies the whole word by 4×. WordSalvo ships a fixed "Classic" premium layout and a "Random" layout with the same multiplier counts arranged with diagonal symmetry and no adjacent premiums.

Bag

The pool of undrawn tiles. WordSalvo uses language-specific tile bags; English uses 104 tiles, and each launch dictionary keeps its own distribution. The bag depletes as you draw, and the game enters its endgame once it is empty.

WordSalvo draws from the end of the bag for constant-time removal, then applies the language's letter distribution. The live bag lives on the game notifier and is not serialized into Firestore with the rest of the game state.

Pass

Skip your turn without placing or swapping. It scores zero and the turn passes to the next player. Passing is sometimes strategic — late in the game, holding a high-value tile can outweigh the points you give up.

WordSalvo ends the game if every player passes twice in a row — the standard all-pass stalemate rule. Unplayed tiles still count against final scores.

Swap

Trade one or more rack tiles back into the bag and draw replacements. The turn then ends with zero points scored. Swapping is only allowed while the bag has at least seven tiles left, so you cannot swap in the endgame.

In WordSalvo, swapping opens a tile picker — tap the tiles you want to trade, confirm, and the server reshuffles them back into the bag before redraw.

Challenge

In traditional Scrabble, a mechanic for disputing an opponent's word. If the challenge succeeds, the word comes off the board; if it fails, the challenger loses a turn. See the official rules for the full penalty structure.

WordSalvo does not have a manual challenge. Every move is validated server-side against the language's dictionary before it is committed, so an invalid word is rejected at submission — no dispute is possible, and no turn is ever lost to a failed challenge.

Brilliancy

A WordSalvo-specific post-game score. After the match, the engine recomputes the best possible play each turn and compares it to what you actually did. Your Brilliancy Score is the share of optimal points you captured across the game.

A perfect 100 is unusual — it requires matching or tying the engine's top move every turn. See post-game analysis for how the score is computed and where it appears in your replay.

Turning point

Also WordSalvo-specific. The turning point is the single move that shifted win probability furthest toward the player who made it. One player's turning point is usually the other player's worst missed opportunity.

Turning points are surfaced in the Analysis Replay screen next to the move itself, with a short coach note explaining why the engine rates the shift so highly.

Glicko-2

The rating system WordSalvo uses. Glicko-2 is Mark Glickman's public successor to Elo; it tracks not just your rating but also how confident the system is in it. See the Glicko-2 paper for the math.

Every WordSalvo player starts at 1500. Ten named tiers map the range: Novice (0–1149), Apprentice, Scholar, Adept, Virtuoso, Savant, Maestro, Sage, Grandmaster, and Laureate (2300+). Full breakdown on rating tiers.

DAWG

Directed Acyclic Word Graph — a compressed data structure that stores an entire dictionary as a graph of shared prefixes and suffixes. It makes word lookup extremely fast and shrinks the dictionary on disk. The technique was popularised by Appel and Jacobson's 1988 Scrabble engine paper.

WordSalvo ships one pre-compiled DAWG per language. The client loads it in constant time on first use, and the server uses an identical copy for move validation — so your device and the server always agree on which words are valid.

SOWPODS

The international competitive-Scrabble word list, published as Collins Scrabble Words. It is the union of the American TWL and the British SOWPODS traditions, and the reference most English-language word games cite.

WordSalvo's English wordlist is SOWPODS-derived — the baseline is SOWPODS, then curated to remove a small number of entries that did not meet the review bar. Other languages use their own national wordlists (OpenTaal for Dutch, and so on).

Coffeehousing

Competitive-Scrabble slang for deliberate table talk meant to distract or mislead an opponent during their turn. Defined in the NASPA glossary. It is frowned on in tournament play but harmless in casual games.

WordSalvo has in-game chat with preset quick replies and a toxicity filter, which is enough friction that coffeehousing in the classic sense is basically absent — you cannot whisper across a physical table online.

Frequently asked questions

are these the same rules as scrabble?: Mostly the same vocabulary, deliberately different numbers. WordSalvo uses a 15×15 board, 7-tile rack, and 104 English tiles. The bingo bonus is 45 rather than 50, and there is no manual challenge because every move is validated server-side.
what is the difference between a bingo and just a big word?: A bingo specifically means playing all seven rack tiles in one turn, earning the +45 bonus. A big word scored by crossing two premium squares is not a bingo unless you also emptied your rack in the same play.
why does the blank tile score zero?: Because its value is flexibility, not letters. A blank can stand in for any letter, including a high-value one like Q or Z, and it can complete a bingo your rack otherwise could not. The zero score is the price you pay for that flexibility.
is there a hook dictionary i can study?: Not as a standalone feature. WordSalvo's dictionary does drive every hook decision, and the post-game Word Book records the words each game produced, so over time you accumulate a personal hook library rooted in games you actually played.
what happens if the tile bag runs out?: The endgame begins. Players keep taking turns with whatever tiles remain on their rack until one player plays their last tile — that ends the game. Tiles left on other players' racks are subtracted from their scores and added to the winner's.
can i look up a word mid-game?: Yes, where definitions are available in the current build. English and Dutch dictionary behavior should be described exactly as shipped.