How to Play Schmabble

Tap New Game to create a game. It sits in Forming state until you invite at least one player and they accept. You can add more players any time before you hit Start Game.

Type a name or email in the search box. If the person already has a theholts.net account, they'll appear in the results and you can add them directly. If they don't have an account, just type their email address and invite them anyway — they'll get an email with a one-click accept link and can create an account when they join. On mobile, the contacts button lets you pull directly from your device contacts.

Press Invite to send invites. This will bring up the Game Settings dialog where you choose how you want to play. Three presets are available:

• Fun — laid-back and forgiving; perfect for a friendly game where the words flow freely and nobody goes home angry
• Advanced — for players who know their words and want the full competitive experience with challenges and a clock
• Tournament — no mercy; time runs out and your turn is gone — sharpen your skills before the real thing

Any preset can be tweaked by pressing Customize. See the Settings section below for a full description of every option.

Press Invite BoB to add BoB, the computer opponent, to your game. BoB accepts instantly — no waiting. He plays a full game just like a human player, drawing tiles and taking turns in order. BoB starts with 7 tiles instead of 9 (no discard needed on his first turn). You can play against BoB solo or mix him in with human players.

BoB's vocabulary matches the game's preset: about 10,000 common words on Fun, roughly 107,000 on Advanced, and about 173,000 — the largest and most obscure list, shared with this site's Word Hunt Expert mode — on Tournament. Whatever words he knows, BoB always plays the single highest-scoring legal move he can find in that list, so a tougher preset makes him harder to beat simply by knowing more (and rarer) words, not by playing any more cleverly.

The Start Game button activates once at least one invitee has accepted. Each player draws 9 tiles to start — two more than the normal rack of 7. Before the first player can place a word, they must discard 2 tiles back to the bag using Discard. This gives everyone a better chance at a strong opening word.

If anyone invited still hasn't accepted or declined when you press Start Game, you'll get a warning naming who's still pending — starting anyway leaves them out of the game.

The lobby organizes your games into: Forming (not started), Your Turn, Waiting (opponent's turn), Accepted / Waiting to Start, and Completed. Each card shows scores, player presence, and your current rack. On mobile, completed games are tucked under the History button at the top of the lobby.

A colored dot next to each player's name shows when they were last active:

Each card also tells you whose turn it is: It's Your Turn! in green when it's actively your move, or a muted Albert Holt's turn when it's someone else's move — including while the game is paused, so you always know who needs to act before it can resume.

On a Your Turn card for a timed game, a countdown ring shows how much time you have left — right from the lobby, no need to open the game just to check your clock.

Check Play game on 1 device using Play and Pass in the Game Settings (Customize) dialog when you create the game. It's locked in once the game starts, like every other setting.

Since it's all happening on one device, every player you invite is seated immediately — no pending invites, no waiting on anyone to accept.

Whenever it becomes a new player's turn, a full-screen Pass the device to [Name] gate appears before their rack is shown. Hand the device over, and they tap I'm [Name] — show my rack to reveal their tiles and take their turn. This happens every time control changes hands, so nobody sees a rack that isn't theirs.

Since anyone could be holding the device when the final play lands, the result always names the actual winner by name rather than a personalized "You Won" — so it reads correctly no matter whose hands the device is in at that moment.

Drag tiles from your rack onto the board. On desktop you can also click a tile to select it, then click a board cell to place it. Tiles snap into place and the score bubble updates as you build your word. Drag a tile back to the rack to retrieve it, or use Retrieve All . Shuffle your rack anytime with .

Drops are forgiving — if you release a tile just past the edge of an occupied cell, it lands on the nearest open neighbor instead of bouncing back, so a slightly imprecise drop on a small screen still works. Rearranging tiles within your rack is remembered, too — your chosen order sticks even after the game refreshes.

A score bubble floats near your last-placed tile showing the running point total. When word-indicator mode is on, it turns green for a valid word and red for an invalid one before you commit.

A blank tile scores zero but can represent any letter. When you place one, the letter picker appears. The chosen letter shows on the board in italics with a dashed border so everyone can tell it's a blank.

Instead of playing a word, you have two options from the Pass/Swap dialog:

Pass — forfeit your turn without changing your tiles. The game moves to the next player.

Swap — select some or all of your tiles to return to the bag, then draw the same number of replacements, forfeiting your turn. Only available while tiles remain in the bag.

If challenges are enabled, press Challenge to contest your opponent's most recent play.

You win the challenge — the word was invalid. The opponent's play is removed from the board, they lose those points, and you receive them instead.

You lose the challenge — the word was valid. The points from that play are subtracted from your score. Use sparingly.

BoB never challenges human plays — but humans can challenge BoB. Since BoB always plays valid words, a challenge against him will always fail.

When challenges are on and BoB is up next, he waits about 20 seconds before playing his turn — giving you a fair window to challenge the play before him.

Each game has its own message thread. Trash talk and compliments equally welcome.

These buttons appear on both desktop and mobile:

Return to lobby

How to Play

Settings

Chat

Play word

Shuffle rack

Retrieve all

Desktop also keeps a text Return to Lobby button in the sidebar alongside the icon version. If another one of your games is waiting on your turn while you're off playing this one, Return to Lobby pulses with a green border as a reminder — on both desktop and mobile.

A timed game pauses automatically whenever no players are detected as active (present). This prevents time from draining while someone is away from their device.

The game creator can also pause manually using the Pause button on the active game card in the lobby. A paused game shows a Resume button in the same spot — only the game creator can resume it, and only once every player's dot is green or orange (see Presence dots above). If anyone is still grey, Resume stays disabled with a tooltip explaining why until they show back up. BoB, the computer player, is always treated as present and never blocks a resume.

When the timer expires in Warning only mode the active player receives a visual alert but keeps their turn — no tiles are forfeited and play continues normally. Use this when you want a gentle reminder without strict enforcement.

When the timer expires in Lose turn mode the active player's turn passes automatically — their tiles are returned to the rack and the next player's turn begins. The game pauses (rather than forfeiting) if the active player has left the game entirely.

Default is 100 tiles. Check Set bag size to use a smaller bag for a faster game. The minimum depends on the number of players — everyone needs enough tiles to play.

Displays the current bag count on the bag icon during play. Off by default.

Awards a bonus (default 20 points) to the first player to play all their tiles. Adds a strategic incentive to race to the finish.

When Disallow invalid words on Play is checked, the Play button refuses to submit an invalid word and the score bubble turns green or red as you build — so you always know before you commit. When unchecked, anything can be played and the bubble shows points only, no color hint.

Enables the Challenge button so players can contest an opponent's last play. Not available when Disallow invalid words is on (it would be redundant).

Set a time limit (10–600 seconds) per turn. On timeout choose the consequence: Lose turn (strict — turn passes automatically) or Warning only (just a visual nudge, no penalty).

Check Play game on 1 device using Play and Pass when everyone's playing together on one shared phone or laptop instead of their own accounts. See the Play and Pass section above for how it changes the flow of a turn.

Toggles the board square color key for TW / DW / TL / DL / WC squares on or off. Saved per device.

Has no effect if the game has no turn timer. When a timer is in use, enabling this hides the countdown for most of your turn — it only appears once approximately 25% of your time remains, so you're not watching the clock the whole time.

When enabled, pressing Play shows a Yes/No confirmation with the word and its point value before the play is submitted, so an accidental tap doesn't cost you a turn. On by default.

When enabled, an email goes out the moment it becomes your turn — but only once every condition below is met, so you're never emailed while you're already looking at the game:

• The game does not use a turn timer (timer games never send email).
• Your presence dot is not green — a green dot means you're actively on the site right now.
• Your presence matches the threshold you picked: Orange sends as soon as you're idle (dot orange or gray); Gray waits until you're fully offline (dot gray only).

On by default, with the threshold set to Gray.

The game ends when the bag is empty and one player has played all their tiles, or when all players pass consecutively. Remaining tiles in hand are subtracted from your score. Highest score wins.

Completed games move to the History section. The game creator can press Archive to tuck a game out of the way, or Delete Game to remove it permanently. Completed games that have not been archived are automatically deleted after one week — archive anything you want to keep.