★ Firstly, I try and avoid buying vowels as much as possible. The price
of each vowel rises each time you buy one and it's easy to end up with
your score going backwards at around seven thousand if you buy vowels
too freely. I might buy one or two if I have less than five consonants
left on the board so that I can clear it.. otherwise, I avoid them as
much as possible.
★ When you clear the board, you'll receive a 250 point bonus. Provided
that your time meter isn't too low, it's generally worth waiting for
tiles to drop instead of rushing in and buying vowels to clear the board.
That said, if you do spend a few points clearing, you'll very probably
make them back with the 250 bonus and whatever you're able to score
with the next pyramid. The more often you do this though, the less it
will be worth each time.
★ Note that this game has no pause feature, but it will wait for you to press a 'continue' button between levels, so if you want to run and get a drink or anything (I've played for 3† hours per game), between levels is the time to be doing it!
★ There are special words which will give you a higher score - it's very
much worth going out of your way to find them and to set them up (by
clearing other tiles so that the tiles you need for a special word fall
nearer to one another - something which you'll find easier the more
you play). These words are related to Neopets and Neopia.. be they pet
names (lenny, bruce, chomby, kau, etc.. for some reason not koi though),
petpet names (warf, meepit, slorg, etc), evil characters' names (sloth,
etc) or names of things which pop up often around the site, such as
nova, juppie and dung. It's worth becoming familiar with pet and petpet
names if you aren't already.
★ Long words with few vowels are good to be in the habit to look out
for - eg: thrown, shrugs, etc, as longer words score higher than shorter
ones and vowels are at a premium. It's worth seeing if you can tack
an 's' onto a word, though a fair few plurals aren't accepted. It's
also handy to keep an eye out for two of the same letter near one another
to see whether you can add an -ing suffix to them. Keep in mind that
there's an eight letter limit on words though.
★ Getting rid of annoying less-frequently used letters quickly (eg: q,
z, x - the high scorers in Scrabble) whenever you can is a good strategy,
as when they're cleared, you're more likely to be able to form longer
words without worrying about having them left over or getting in the
way. The letter 'v' is an exception, as it can be used in both 'java'
and 'nova', two high scoring words. If you have an 'a' or an 'o' in
close proximity to a 'v', it's best to leave it nearby to help form
these words.
★ H can be tricky at times, though it can be used in conjunction with
an s, c or t to bulk out a word and make it a letter longer (for example,
tin becomes thin).
★ Finally, the letter 'y' is a very good vowel replacement - my, wry,
why, cry, dry, sly, shy, etc. I generally use it for three letter words
instead of tacking it onto the end of something else (aside from lenny,
another high scorer), as it's good for getting rid of slightly trickier
consonants without using up precious vowels.
