Scrabble tile distribution and letter values

How to read the distribution

A set holds 100 tiles: 98 letters plus 2 blanks that score nothing but can stand in for any letter. The counts are not arbitrary. Alfred Butts set them by counting letter frequencies in printed English, which is why E gets twelve tiles and Q and Z get one apiece.

Two columns matter more than the point value when you are actually playing. "Tiles in the bag" tells you how likely a letter is to come back, and "share of the bag" turns that into a percentage you can hold in your head: the five vowels together are 42 of the 100 tiles, so a rack that is running dry of vowels will usually refill itself.

The last column is where the scoring sits. A single Q is worth ten points, but the twelve E tiles carry twelve points between them, so the letters that decide a game are rarely the expensive ones. Face value across the whole bag comes to 187 points before a single premium square is counted.

What the table does not tell you

Face value is the floor, not the score. Double and triple letter squares multiply a single tile, double and triple word squares multiply the whole play, and playing all seven tiles in one turn adds a fifty-point bingo bonus on top. A ten-point Z on a triple letter square inside a double word play is worth sixty, which is why cheap tiles that reach a premium square often beat expensive tiles that do not.

The distribution is also language-specific. French, German, Spanish, Italian and every other licensed edition ships a different bag, because the letter frequencies of those languages differ. Nothing on this page applies to a non-English set.

Legality is decided by a word list, not by the tiles. TWL is used in North America and Collins in most of the rest of the world, and the two disagree on thousands of words, so a play that scores in one can be challenged off the board in the other.

Using the numbers while you play

Tile tracking is the practical use. Once the bag is low, subtracting what you can see on the board and on your rack from the counts in this table tells you exactly what your opponent can be holding. It is the single technique that separates club play from kitchen-table play, and it needs nothing more than the second column.

Rack balance is the other use. Aim for roughly three vowels and four consonants, because that is close to the ratio in the bag, and a rack that drifts far from it stops producing playable words. If you are holding five vowels, dumping two of them for a modest score is usually better than passing.

For a rack you are actually stuck on, the solver on this site will show you every word your letters can make along with what each one scores, which is faster than working the table by hand.

How many tiles are in a Scrabble set?

100: 98 letter tiles and 2 blank tiles. That is the English-language set; other languages ship different counts.

What is the total point value of all Scrabble tiles?

187 points. Multiply each letter's value by how many of that letter are in the bag and add the results, which is the fourth column of the table above. The blanks contribute nothing.

Which Scrabble letters are worth the most?

Q and Z at ten points each, then J and X at eight, then K at five. There is exactly one of each of those tiles, so a game gives you at most one shot at each.

How many vowels are in a Scrabble set?

42 of the 100 tiles are A, E, I, O or U. Y is a consonant tile for distribution purposes even though it plays as a vowel in plenty of words.

How many blank tiles are there and what are they worth?

2, and they score 0. A blank can stand for any letter, and once it is played the letter it represents is fixed for the rest of the game. Holding one is usually worth more than the points you give up by not playing it immediately.

Can I reuse this table on my own site?

Yes. It is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), so you can copy, adapt and republish it, including commercially, as long as you credit Unscrambly, https://unscrambly.net. There is a ready-made embed on this page if you would rather link than copy.