All tiles go into the bag; each player draws one to decide who plays first, and the player whose tile is nearest the beginning of the alphabet — with the blank preceding "A" — starts (Appendix 1); The exposed tiles are returned and the bag shaken to shuffle (Appendix 1); Each player then draws se...
Why people argue about this
People often think that after all tiles are put back into the bag for shuffling, they should be drawn individually again by each player to decide who goes first, but actually, once the bag is shaken, players draw one tile each to determine their starting letter and the order of play, not to reshuffle.
