The Void(s)

I dread blank spaces in SpellTower.  I'd often rather get a J that requires a 6-letter word than a blank.  There are far too many of them and they often come in bunches (are you listening, Zach Gage?).

The only effective way to deal with these is to get rid of them, whenever possible.  If I can play a 5-letter word that gets rid of blank spaces, I'll opt for that rather than a word with more letters.  It's a vendetta, but I have to avenge myself.

My advice is too keep a close watch on these pernicious blanks because, once they pile up, you'll shortly be starting a new game.

The Big Four

The Z, Q, J, and X tiles are the trickiest ones to use in SpellTower.  To begin with, they have the least amount of playable combinations.  This is where is helps to know as many words as possible that include these letters.  Here are a few that have gotten me out of trouble: qanat, hijra, zori, xyst.  Once again, playing Scrabble is the best way to learn, unless you prefer rote memorization of word lists.  I'd rather watch paint dry that do that, but to each his or her own.

The advantage of playing any one of these 4 letters is that they each eliminate an entire row.  That's a good thing, especially when that row contains other difficult letters or blank spaces.  However, since it just substitutes that row for the next one, you're often not reducing the number of tiles in the grid.  It can be extremely tempting to play the first word you see with one of The Big Four (for example, Z-A-G), but losing a row can also reduce your changes of playing other words.  Try holding off on playing one of these letter until you've reviewed all of your other options.

I wish I could explain the scoring in SpellTower, but it seems to be fully known only by Zach Gage (one guy has made a valiant attempt, but you'll need to be a developer to get anywhere with it).  It's obvious that playing one or more of The Big Four in a word with 6 letters or more is the way to rack up big points, but I find I can't accurately guess how many points any single word will generate.  My current high is for quaints, which yielded 666 points.  

Mind The Gap

Actually, "ledge" would be more appropriate when referring to the outermost columns of the grid.  This is where most games are lost because you have have less room to be creative.  My usual strategy is to alternate between both sides and only to play words in the middle when I don't have options on either side.

Sometimes, if I have a decent word (5 letters or more) on the side, I'll try to chip away at the rest of the grid and leave that rewarding play for later.  This is also true when I have a blue letter (X, Z, Q, J) in a word that I can play later.

One of the quickest ways to lose in SpellTower is to let the blank spaces (i.e., the black boxes) build up on the edges.  Those blocks can severely limit your options, so get rid of them whet

U's please, we're British

Bringing up Scrabble again.  One thing good players learn is that the British sometimes spell the same words differently than Americans.  Bonus: both versions are valid in Scrabble and in SpellTower.  The most common is the -or vs. -our ending:  color/colour, valor/valour, favor/favour, etc.  In this case, I'm going to side with Albion, since their words have an extra letter and, hence, produce more points.

Some other British words that differ from American ones are curb/kerb and jail/gaol.  There are certainly others, but I'm going by a faulty memory here.  Any other suggestions?  [Update on 29-Apr]: I forgot about the -er vs. -re endings: center/centre, liter/liter, etc.  These are often lifesavers in SpellTower.

Finally, a very clever poem by G.K. Chesterton that deflated the notion that Americans are terser than their UK counterparts: A Ballad Of Abbreviations.

Not Yielding To Temptation

It's understandable to want to play the first word you see in the grid, especially when it's more than 4 letters.  However, this is when I put on the proverbial brakes, because I want to see if there's another play that will help me more.  If not, I can always come back to that word.

Another common act of overexuberance is to play a word without first checking if one of its letters is adjacent to the word. For example, maybe you see "T-A-B-L-E-S" and think, "that's my play!".  It may be, but before you drag your finger, check if any of those same letters are next to your word.  If there are 2 playable "S" tiles, does one of them have a higher minimum letter play (4, 5 or 6)?  If so, opt for using that one, since the other "S" will be easier to play.

A feature of SpellTower that can be aggravating is the one-use-per-board rule.  In other words, if you've already played a word, you can't use it again.  I get burned by this constantly.  The best strategy here is to see if there's a less common word that can use some or all other letters.  For example, if I see "M-A-X", I won't play it until I check if I can turn that into "M-A-X-I" (or maxim, climax, or any other word that include "-max-").  There are many spellings of the word we usually refer to as "genie":  JIN, JINN, DJINN, and others.  "J-I-N" is an easy play; try seeing if you can tack on other letters to it.

Vocabulary Lessons

There's no substitute for having a good vocabulary when playing SpellTower.  In particular, knowing as many valid 5-letter and 6-letter words as you can will help you score higher and play longer.  This isn't to discount shorter words, which can often get you out of trouble, but the sweetspots are the the words that get the most letters off the grid.

I've got some chops in this area after years of playing Scrabble, although I still learn new words all the time.  If you have the EA Scrabble app on your smartphone, playing versus the computer at the "hard" level is a great way to learn new words.  My all-time (least) favorite play by the computer was anablept, which elicited a huge curse from me when he/she used it to go out.  It's a fish, and I will always maintain it's a ridiculous word.

Here are some words I've recently played in SpellTower: codens, sirras, availe, diktat, barrie, teened, tedier, patten, coloni, fousty, tirred, tinded, cortin, marris, jobing (yes, one "b"), botties, carnie, and toited.  [I see that Chrome has flagged almost all of these as misspelled - wrong, Mr. Google!].  Since this game forgives experimenting, it's sometimes worth trying a few letter combinations before you play a word.  Of course, one look at my list and you may understand why so many people dislike word games, including Zach Gage himself, i.e., it sometimes looks like any combination of letters will work.