Scrabble letter distributions

Many editions of the word board game Scrabble vary in the letter distribution of the tiles, because the frequency of each letter of the alphabet is different for every language. As a general rule, the rarer the letter the more points it is worth.

Contents

1 English 2 German 3 French 4 Romanian 5 Catalan

English

English language editions of the game contain 100 letter tiles, in the following distribution:

• 2 "blank" tiles (scoring 0 points)
• 1 point: E (12), A (9), I (9), O (8), R (6), N (6), T (6), L (4), S (4) U (4)
• 2 points: D (4), G (3)
• 3 points: B (2), C (2), M (2), P (2)
• 4 points: F (2), H (2), V (2), W (2), Y (2)
• 5 points: K (1)
• 8 points: J (1), X (1)
• 10 points: Q (1), Z (1)

It is interesting to note that the distribution of letters has not changed since Alfred Mosher Butts invented the game in 1938. Note that only four S's exist, even though S is a common letter in English. This was done to reduce opportunities of forming plurals.

German

• 2 blanks (scoring zero points)
• 1 point: E (15), N (9), S (7), I (6), R (6), T (6), U (6), A (5), D (4)
• 2 points: H (4), G (3), L (3), O (3)
• 3 points: M (4), B (2), W (1), Z (1)
• 4 points: C (2), F (2), K (2), P (1)
• 6 points: Ä (1), J (1), Ü (1), V (1)
• 8 points: Ö (1), X (1)
• 10 points: Q (1), Y (1)

French

The French version has 102 tiles, instead of the usual 100, because initially the two blanks were omitted from French-language Scrabble sets.

• 2 blanks (scoring zero points)
• 1 point: E (15), A (9), I (8), N (6), O (6), R (6), S (6), T (6), U (6), L (5)
• 2 points: D (3), G (2)
• 3 points: B (2), C (2), M (3), P (2)
• 4 points: F (2), H (2), V (2)
• 8 points: J (1), Q (1)
• 10 points: K (1), W (1), X (1), Y (1), Z (1)

Romanian

Diacritical marks are ignored in the Romanian version, i.e. Ă and  are played as A, Î as I, Ş as S and Ţ as T, even though the letters bearing diacriticals are technically letters in their own right.

• 2 blanks (a.k.a. jokers - zero points)
• 1 point: A (11), I (10), E (9), R (7), T (7), N(6), U (6), C (5), O (5), S (5), L (4)
• 2 points: D (4), P (4)
• 4 points: M (3)
• 8 points: F (2), V (2)
• 9 points: B (2), G (2)
• 10 points: H (1), J (1), X (1), Z (1)

Catalan

Tildes and umlauts are ignored in the Catalan version, that is "À" is played as "A", "É" and "È" as "E", "Í" and "Ï" as "I", "Ó" and "Ò" as "O" and "Ú" and "Ü" as "U". Nevertheless, there are special tiles for other Catalan letters, such as "Ç" (ce trencada) and "L·L" (ela geminada), as well as the digraph "NY". "Q" is often used as "QU", as the letter "Q" never occurs alone, except for a few foreign words, as qatarià.

• 2 blanks (a.k.a. jokers - zero points)
• 1 point: A (12), E (13), I (8), L (4), N (6), O (5), R (8), S (8), T (5), U (4)
• 2 points: C (3), D (3), M (3)
• 3 points: B (2), G (2), P(2)
• 4 points: F (1), V (1)
• 8 points: H (1), J (1), Q (1), Z (1)
• 10 points: Ç (1), L·L (1), NY (1), X (1)