The endgame: counting tiles when the bag is empty

The bag is empty. You can hear it when you shake it: nothing. From this moment the game changes character, because the board in front of you is no longer the whole game. The rest of it is sitting in your opponent's rack, and you can work out more of it than you'd think.

In the standard hundred-tile set, every tile is somewhere: played, in your rack, or in theirs. Near the end you hold seven or fewer, the board holds the rest of the played ones, and whatever's left is theirs. Count carefully and the unseen pile is small enough to reason about. That's not a trick. It's bookkeeping, and it's the last skill most players bother to learn.

Counting what you can't see

Start with the letters that matter rather than all of them. The blanks, the S's, the high tiles, and the letters your planned plays need. If both blanks are on the board already, nobody's hiding one. If three S's are played and the fourth isn't in your rack, your opponent has it, and every word they play might end in a hook you should think about before you open one.

Then work the other direction. What can they not hold? If the Q, the Z, and both blanks are accounted for, their rack is ordinary tiles, and the worst play coming at you is a solid one, not a disaster. Endgame defence is mostly this: knowing whether the rack across the table is loaded or plain.

Keep the count as you go rather than building it at the end. A tally kept turn by turn, even a rough one in the margin of the score sheet, beats a heroic reconstruction with three tiles left in the bag.

The two scores every play has

Early in a game, a play is worth its points. Late, a play is worth its points plus what it stops. The square you're about to leave open, the lane your word creates, the hook your final letter offers: in the endgame these aren't side effects, they're half the decision.

So before you commit, ask the plain question: what's their best reply to this? If your eighteen-point play opens a triple-word square they can reach with the tiles they're likely holding, it might be a four-point play wearing a costume. A smaller play that blocks the square, or that uses the square yourself at a discount, can be the better score once both turns are counted.

This is also where going out gets priced. Emptying your rack ends the game and pays you the value of whatever's left on their rack, while that same value comes off their score. A tile worth ten points stuck with them at the end isn't a ten-point event. It's a twenty-point swing, ten off them and ten onto you. Which brings us to the letter that decides more close endgames than any other.

The stuck-with-Q problem

The Q is worth ten points and, in most racks, it's a stone. Without a U, or one of the short words that let it travel alone, it doesn't play; it waits. And waiting is exactly what the endgame punishes.

Run the maths on a close finish. You're up by twelve. Your opponent plays out. You're holding the Q and a tile worth two. Twelve points come off your score and land on theirs: a twenty-four point swing in a game you led by twelve. You lose by twelve, holding the highest-scoring tile in the set.

The lessons aren't subtle. If you're holding the Q late, spend real effort and real points to place it while there's still board to place it on; a cheap Q play two turns earlier is worth far more than its face value. Count the U's with the same care you count the blanks, because a U still unseen is either your rescue or the reason they can't rescue theirs. And if the count tells you the Q is in their rack and they have nowhere obvious to put it, don't hurry the game to its end. Let the stone sit there. Every turn it sits, it costs them a playable tile.

Guessing their rack with the finder

Here's the practical trick this guide exists for. As the bag empties, keep a list of every letter you've seen: played, or in your own rack. Then open the Pangramist word finder and set its exclusion filter to those seen letters. What survives is the vocabulary of the unseen tiles: the words that can still be played against you, built only from letters nobody has shown.

Scan that list before your last few plays. If nothing in it reaches the square you're about to open, open it in peace. If something in it lands hard, you found the block you needed while it was still cheap. The finder works from our list, ENABLE, which is a public domain list and not the official NASPA or Collins tournament list. For a kitchen-table endgame it's the right tool. For rated play, check the official list.