Shoogle strategy
Everything below comes from the arithmetic of the game rather than general word-game advice. A board holds forty dice worth about 125 points in total, and there are thirty more points available in bonuses, so a perfect game is worth roughly 155.
Your score is the dice you spend, not the length of your words
This is the one idea that changes how the game feels. A word scores the sum of the dice it uses, and nothing else. There is no length bonus. Spending six dice as two three-letter words scores exactly what spending the same six dice as one six-letter word would.
So Shoogle is not a contest to find the longest word. It is a covering puzzle: the winner is whoever leaves the fewest dice behind. Chasing an impressive seven-letter word while three awkward consonants go unused is how good word-game players lose at this one.
Spend low before you shoogle
A shoogle refills the table back up to twelve dice. That makes the timing of it the biggest decision in the game.
Shoogle when nine dice are still sitting there and you draw three. Clear the table to nothing first and the same shoogle draws twelve. One of those is four times the game. Since the bag holds forty dice and you only get three shoogles, the only way to see all forty is to empty the table before each one.
Put plainly: a shoogle spent on a crowded table is mostly wasted.
The bonuses are worth about a fifth of a perfect game
Clearing the table pays five points every time, and clearing the final table pays fifteen. Empty the felt before each of your three shoogles and then clear the last table too, and that is thirty points, on top of roughly 125 for the dice themselves.
Thirty points is more than most single words will ever be worth. When you are choosing between a high-scoring word that strands two dice and a modest word that empties the table, take the empty table almost every time.
Watch the vowels
A board runs about seventeen vowels to twenty-three consonants, so vowels are the scarcer half. Almost every stranded die you will ever see is a consonant that ran out of vowels to pair with.
When you are down to your last few vowels, stop and plan the rest of the table as a set rather than playing the best word in front of you. A vowel spent carelessly early is a consonant stranded later.
Spend the expensive letters early
Dice are worth one to six points, and a die left on the table is subtracted from your score. That makes an expensive letter a double loss: you never scored it, and then it counts against you.
The costly consonants are also the hardest to place, which is exactly why they should go early, while you still have a full table of letters to combine them with. Leave the cheap ones for the endgame.
The gold die is free insurance
The gold die is wild and worth zero points. Because it scores nothing it costs nothing to leave behind, so it is the one die you never need to panic about. Its real value is as a rescue: hold it for the letter you cannot find, and let it complete the word that empties the table.
The reshuffle costs nothing
Press SHOOGLE on a full table and it does not spend a shoogle. It simply rearranges the dice you already have. Nothing changes about your letters, but a different arrangement genuinely does shake new words loose, and it is free every single time. Use it whenever you are staring at a board that has gone quiet.
Take the clue in the last act
Once no more dice can arrive, a gauge appears above the table. Tap it once for the shape of a path to zero, and again for the letters those words start with. There is no penalty for looking, and the difference between clearing the last table and leaving three dice on it is twenty points or more once the Clean Sweep is counted.
Practise without spending your day
Practice boards let you try an idea without touching your daily record. They are the place to learn how a table behaves when you empty it before shoogling, which is difficult to rehearse on the one board you get each day.
More: How to play and questions.