Word Chums Cheat

Word Chums is a free crossword-style tile game for phones from PeopleFun, the studio behind Wordscapes. You and an opponent take turns placing tiles on a board to form connected words and score points, much as in Scrabble or Words With Friends. Each player has a customisable cartoon avatar (your "chum"), you can look up what a played word means, and the game rewards progress with levels and in-game currency. Under the avatars and coins it plays like any rack-and-board word game, so knowing plenty of short words and placing them on premium squares still decides most matches.

Word Chums accepts a standard modern English word list similar to the ones used by other mobile word games. This page starts on our Words With Friends (ENABLE) list, which is the closest public match for mobile word games, and you can widen the search to All English words from the menu.

Points in the results use the Words With Friends tile values as a guide. Word Chums prints its own values on each tile, and they may differ for a few letters, so use the ranking to find strong candidates and confirm the exact score in the app. In every rack-based game, J, Q, X and Z are the big scorers, and getting them onto letter multipliers matters more than finding the longest word.

Extend words that are already on the board

Adding to an existing word, such as turning play into played or replay, scores the whole word again and often reaches a bonus square your opponent left open. Use Starts with or Ends with to find these extensions quickly. Our lists of words ending in ED and ER are full of ideas.

Short words for hard letters

A Q, X, J or Z doesn't need a long word. Quail and quilt are great when you also have a U. Without one, two- and three-letter words like ax, ox, jo and zax get an expensive tile onto a multiplier. Keep the two-letter and three-letter word lists handy.

Think about what you leave open

Every move opens new lanes on the board. Before you play, check whether your word sets up a triple-word square for your opponent. A slightly lower score that keeps the board tight can be the better move.

Use power-ups and hints wisely

Word Chums offers in-game boosts. They are most valuable late in a close game, when one big play decides the winner, rather than early, when the board is wide open anyway.

Results are grouped by word length, longest first, and sorted by points within each group. If a lane on the board only fits a certain size, tap that length above the list. Letters filled in by a blank are shown in grey and score nothing. If a word looks unfamiliar, tap it: you'll see its definition and which major game dictionaries accept it. If you are deciding between two similar scores, it's usually smarter to keep the word that leaves you a better mix of vowels and consonants for your next turn.

Look back at finished games: enter your old racks here and see which plays you missed. Over time you will start to recognise high-value patterns without help. If a word your opponent played looks suspicious, the word checker shows whether it appears in the main game dictionaries and what it means. Since Word Chums comes from the makers of Wordscapes, you may also like our Wordscapes helper.