The Official Scrabble Puzzle Book

Calling all players, beginners and experts alike! Here are the plays you can't afford to miss: 800 puzzles to sharpen your thinking and hone your crossword skills, specially designed and selected by SCRABBLE superstar Joe Edley, the only two-time winner of the National SCRABBLER Championship and coauthor of Everything SCRABBLER.

Learn how to:

• "Read the board" and see where you can score the most points -- and where you can't.
• Increase your word game skills with 97 must-know two-letter words
• Build knockout numbers with bonus squares, two-letter words and parallel plays
• Score with the high-point tiles: J, Q, X, and Z
• Balance your rack by playing off weak three-, four-, and five-tile combinations
• Find the key to success with bingos and seven-letter plays
• Find the Ideal Play -- eight questions to ask yourself, plus the Ideal Play on computer
• Win at SCRABBLE -- six key factors
• Find the best play in real game action -- fifty actual games re-created in this book, complete with the author's analysis and computer simulation results.

National champion Joe Edley aims to enhance your SCRABBLE-playing skills. Discover tips, shortcuts, and special plays in actual game situations, and a battery of increasingly complex puzzles as you learn to play with the pros.

Joe Edley is the coauthor of Everything SCRABBLER the Definitive Book on SCRABBLE!, the only two-time national champion in SCRABBLE history, and the associate director for games and tournaments at the National SCRABBLE Association. He was born in 1947 and raised in Detroit, and earned a B.A. in mathematics and philosophy from Wayne State University where he was the campus chess champion. In 1978 he took up playing SCRABBLE with the intent of becoming an expert. He won the 1980 National SCRABBLER Championship and continued to play and promote SCRABBLE by directing the San Francisco SCRABBLE Club. In 1988 he was hired by Williams & Company in Greenport, New York, to help promote the game. Ile organized and directed the 1988, 1989, and 1990 National SCRABBLER Championships. He returned to championship play to win the 1992 National SCRABBLER Championship.

Mr. Edley married in October 1993; his daughter, Amber, was born in April 1995. Among his hobbies are creating and solving puzzles and playing a variety of games including backgammon, chess, and pool. He also likes to bike, in-line skate, jump rope, meditate doing tai chi chuan, watch movies, and read science fiction.