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.  

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.