Before I had to swap my Storm for a new one, I had about 30,000, as I recall. I'm currently back up to 19,321.
Those who are having trouble getting past 10,000, the tips here are good ones. I have a few of my own.
1. When you get up to the higher levels, it's more difficult, but not as hard as you might think. If you try to consistently use words of at least 6 characters or better (press the "Statistics" button at the end of each season to see your average length), the water can will fill very often and you'll get more vegetable bonus letters.
2. When you see the vegetable bonus letters, use them. If you can, use as many as possible, but don't wait. It's actually better to do 3 and 4-letter words with these rather than lose them.
3. Watch also for the water bonus letters - once again, use these right away, even if you have to do a 3 or 4-letter word.
4. Also watch for other bonuses -- the time and point bonus letters. If you're running behind on a level, the time bonuses can make a huge difference, adding up to an extra minute. Once again, even a short word is better than letting these go away.
5. As others have suggested here, use the practice level to see what is and isn't in the dictionary. (Yes, it's weird -- it doesn't know what a "pontiff" is, but it's heard of a "****!") <<-- and adding to the hilarity is that the forum's software deleted that word!!!
Create short words that can be expanded; that way, you can always fall back to the shorter word, rather than lose an important bonus letter or waste too much time.
6. Remember that each additional letter makes a big difference in the score. For example,
DELI - 8 points.
DELIGHT and DELIVER - 37 points (just by adding 3 more letters!)
DELIGHTFUL - 88 points
DELICIOUSLY - 108 points
... and so on. INTER can become INTERPLAY, INTERACTION, INTERNATIONALLY (which is worth a LOT of points!).
I do have a suggestion for Blackberry: there have been news reports about people having to swap their Storms because of a worn keyboard. It might help if you'd modify Word Mole for another type of play -- instead of being time-limited (which causes the player to whack the keys frantically, trying to beat the clock), have a game mode where the goal is to find the single largest word on a given screen. Or, to play a single screen until no further words can be found, at which the game is over. Remove the element of time and you'll swap a lot fewer Storms under Warranty .. .. .