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.