The easiest technique for playing bingos is to form words that end with certain common endings like -ING, -INGS, -IER, -IES, -IEST, -TION, and so on. For example, the simple word "PLAY" becomes the bingo "PLAYING" by adding -ING.
Many words that end in -Y can be turned into bingos by replacing the "Y" with "IER" or "IEST". For example, "EARLY" becomes "EARLIER" or "EARLIEST".
For this reason, it can be advantageous to keep in your rack the letters that form common bingo endings. In particular, you might want to hold onto "I", "N", and "G" (or two of these letters plus a blank). You should also scan the board for places to "hook onto" these letters. If you have "I" and "N" but no "G", there might be a "G" on the board that you can build onto.
Below we list the most common 3-letter endings for the 2000 most commonly played bingo words under the OWL2 word list. As always, the list starts with the most prevalent ending ("IER") and proceeds downwards towards less prevalent endings:
1. ier - 15
2. ted - 11
3. ing - 8
4. ine - 8
5. ate - 8
6. ion - 7
7. ers - 7
8. ite - 6
9. ies - 6
10. tes - 5
11. red - 4
12. ned - 4
13. zed - 4
14. ter - 4
15. led - 3
Note that if the entire OWL2 word list had been considered (instead of just the 2000 most commonly played bingos) then -ING would by far be the most common ending for bingos.
The number in red after each ending gives some idea of the relative prevalence of that ending. For instance, the ending -IER occurs in roughly 5 times as many of the top 2000 bingo words as the ending -LED does (because 15 is 5 times 3).
As with "ING", you might want to hold onto any of the 3-letter combinations shown in the list above with the hope of being able to form a bingo. More importantly, when looking for a good word to play you should consider trying to form bingos with any of these endings.
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The next step towards increasing your ability to play bingo words is to start memorizing the most commonly played bingos. Since you will already be holding onto letter combinations like -ING that can be used to form bingos, as well as constantly looking for bingos to form with these endings, it makes sense to memorize the most commonly played bingos that end in one of the endings shown in the list above.
For this purpose, we provide a series of lists of the most commonly played bingos with the following endings (click on the ending to go to the list):
the most common bingos ending in -IER, -TED, -ING, -INE, -ATE, and -ION
Memorizing the words in these lists represent an efficient way to increase your bingo vocabulary since you are more likely to be in a position to play these bingos than other bingos.
The information in this article is original research from ScrabbleGuru.com. Come visit us for more!