Once you’ve gotten the hang of how to play QatQi, you may wonder how to improve your score. This post highlights some of the basic strategy to bump up your points.

Do Undo

The Undo button in QatQi is the first key to success. QatQi was designed to be a game where you can play with letters and explore word space. You can try out a word, see what letters you get, and then back up and try a new tack. This exploration not only will help you get better, but will also make playing QatQi much more enjoyable.

Here’s a nice little secret about undoing.  At any point in QatQi, if two people play the same puzzle identically, they will get the same next letter.  That is, the next letter at any point is partially determined by what you’ve done so far.  You can use this to your advantage when undoing your turns.  If you back up in search of a better word, and realize that your first path was better, you can get back to where you were because you will get the same letters!

Spread Out

When you begin a puzzle, try to start with one or two longer words of 5 letters or more.  This will leave you with openings for better words.

Length is Strength

QatQi greatly rewards good strategic moves. If you play Scrabble, you know the satisfaction of getting a “bingo” when you use all seven letters. QatQi takes this to the next level. You earn 50 points when you make a six letter word. From there, each extra letter adds another 50 points to the bonus. So a seven letter word earns 100 points, eight letter word 150, and so forth.

Furthermore, the bonus is earned even if you are adding onto an existing word.

Let’s go through an example:

NATION = 6 letters, 50 pt bonus.

Now you add to the beginning of NATION. You keep the 50 pt bonus and then earn the bonus for the longer word. For example:

TERMINATION = 11 letters, 300 pt bonus.

Then you add DE to the beginning of TERMINATION:

DETERMINATION = 13 letters, 400 pt bonus.

The sum of the long word bonuses for making DETERMINATION this way is 50 + 300 + 400 = 750 points!

Go Forth and Multiply

Next, pay attention to the value of your letters and the dots on the board. Letters each have a standard value, so Z always starts off as 10 points. The dots that you see at some locations multiply that value by the number of dots.

Scrabble players will be familiar with this concept, as the dots are equivalent to a double or triple letter score. There are a couple of differences though. First, the letter multipliers go all the way up to 9 dots. So it is really worth exploring the board to find these bigger multipliers. A second difference from Scrabble is that QatQi lets you keep the multiplier for each subsequent turn. So, once you put a Z on a 5X spot, it is worth 50 points in any word you use it in from then on. You rack up a lot of points if you reuse a multiplier several times.

Go for the Gold

Gold coins are even more valuable. They multiply the letter by 10 and then add an additional 50 points. So a Z on a gold coin is worth 150 points!

If you’ve played any of the harder levels (past Monday), you may have noticed that each puzzle is composed of “rooms” connected by “corridors”.

If you can play all the gold coins in a room at least once you earn additional bonuses. Tap on the gold coin at the top of the screen if you need to review which coins you have already collected. The bonuses on the longer games get really big, so it’s very rewarding to earn all those coins.

Wait for it…

Finally, be patient! When you see a good opening for a word, be sure to keep it open so that later on when you get the prefix or suffix for the word you will have room to make it. There’s no rush!

What’s Next

You’re going to find that QatQi strategy gets even more interesting as you play harder games.  Feel free to ask us questions about how QatQi works, and we’ll start a strategy FAQ page.