9 Letter Words Starting With O

9-Letter Word Game Tips

Board vision matters more than vocabulary. Knowing 50,000 nine-letter words is useless if you can't spot the lane to play them in. Train yourself to scan the Scrabble board for long open rows and columns before looking at your rack. The best 9-letter opportunity is worthless if you play a 7-letter bingo instead and block the lane.

Learn the -TIONS and -SIONS families. An enormous percentage of 9-letter words end in these suffixes (EDUCATIONS, EXPANSION, VERSIONS with prefixes). If you see -TION or -SION on the board, check your rack for letters that extend it to 9 letters — these are the most common long-word hooks in competitive play.

Plurals and verb forms are free points. Many 9-letter words are just 8-letter words plus S, or 7-letter verbs in past tense plus additional letters. Before memorizing exotic vocabulary, make sure you know the inflected forms of every 7 and 8-letter word you already play — that's thousands of 9-letter words for zero additional study.

For Words With Friends, the more open board means 9-letter plays are slightly more achievable than in Scrabble. The 35-point bingo bonus still applies when you play all 7 rack tiles (using 2 board letters), so a 9-letter word through 2 existing tiles with all 7 from your rack is the ultimate WWF play.