Y waste?

We like to share tips on making the most of the letters and spills you get in Spell the Beans. Just a quick one today on using Y, a letter that can sometimes become an afterthought in this game. Words we created are written here in bold.

Generally, Y doesn’t tend to lead to too many points. We often push it out to the edges and not in the middle of a word. Or on a side nub, similar to what we sometimes do with H. We like to stay flexible, leaving the door open for something ending in AY or OY, for example, or perhaps ITY, SSY or NDY. In this case, we’d recently played a game where we saw steddy was a word, so we tested the DD to see what else we could get.

Eddy and teddy of course were part of the bargain, but we made another good buddy in the process. This dude was no dud, bud. As we’ve said, we often put a U in the second-to-outermost spot in case we get a Q, but it turned out to be unnecessary here. And double consonants can be a waste, but this time it all worked out okay.

You might have guessed the A between the E and I came late when there was no other place to put it. We were hoping for another T instead for another teddy. The less waste, the better, especially with a juicy A. There are lots of tales of underused Ys, but maybe this lesson will let you steal a few extra points here and there. YMMV.

 strategy tips