Making philosophy and goals of play more clear
I think there are a different mindsets which one could have coming into the game (e.g. point-hunter, species-collector, fun-seeker) - so it feels difficult to specify "this is the correct way to play the game", but I do understand that some people may not immediately have a strong sense of "what am I trying to do here?"
Maybe part of tutorial / onboarding can be about 'what kind of player are you' - and perhaps they get different tutorial text / experience as a result (e.g. geared towards point-scoring, or geared towards word discovery)?