101 Ways to Win at Scrabble: Top tips for Scrabble success

Copyright

HarperCollins Publishers

Westerhill Road

Bishopbriggs

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G64 2QT

First Edition 2013

Second Edition 2017

© HarperCollins Publishers 2017

eBook Edition © June 2017 ISBN 9780008104344

Version: 2017-06-23

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Scrabble® is a registered trademark of J.W Spear & Sons Ltd, a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. © 2017 Mattel, Inc.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Author: Barry Grossman

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

1. Think Positive

2. Two-letter words

3. Using the A-Team

4. Too Much of a Good Thing

5. Three-Letter Words

6. Three-dom!

7. Small but Powerful

8. Not the B All and End All

9. Queen Bs

10. B is for Bonus

11. Four-Letter Words

12. Four Play

13. More on All Fours

14. The C

15. Bonuses with a C

16. Starting on the Sevens

17. Seventh Heaven

18. Sizing Up the Eights

19. Fantastic Fours

20. Evaluate Your Rack

21. The D

22. Short Ds

23. Making the Change

24. Before We Leave Those Vowels …

25. Keep Scoring

26. Play Parallel

27. Ode to the E

28. Short Es

29. You Can Put an E After That?

30. Six-Letter Stems

31. Retain Those Good Letters

32. Using the F

33. Bonuses with an F

34. Seven-Letter Stems

35. Q but no U

36. Don’t Forget the Americans

37. The G

38. Nuthin’ but a G Thang

39. G8 Summit

40. Retains is a STARNIE

41. Teasing Anagrams

42. The Angriest Words

43. K-Obsessed Kiwis

44. The H

45. H-H-High Score

46. Noun(s)

47. Verbs

48. Don’t Push a Verb too Far

49. Tricky Adjectives

50. The I

51. Is on the Prize

52. Captain Hook

53. Compound your Chances

54. Those Incorrigible Aussies

55. Double Trouble

56. Joy with J

57. Wonders of India

58. The Blank

59. Don’t Forget Mnemonics

60. Remember Retold

61. Watch Where you Put Those Tiles

62. The K

63. Out of Africa

64. Opening and Closing Time

65. Premium Squares

66. Benjamins

67. Anagrams

68. Which Anagrams are the Most Useful?

69. How Do You Spell That?

70. Calm Canadians

71. Spoilt for Choice

72. The L

73. The M

74. Bonuses with M

75. You Don’t Get Two Goes in a Row

76. Keep on the Right Track

77. The N

78. Challenge!

79. The O

80. The P

81. Sneak Preview

82. The Q

83. The R

84. Match an Opening with an Opening

85. Words Can Begin and End with Anything

86. The S

87. Time for T

88. Play to the Board

89. Edge the Endgame

90. How Many can Play?

91. The U

92. The V

93. The W

94. (Im)proper Nouns

95. Serious Hooking

96. The X Factor

97. A Word to the Ys

98. Y is that a Word?

99. Last but not Least – The Z

100. More Than Just a Name

101. The Strangest Words

The 124 two-letter words playable in Scrabble are …

The three-letter words playable in Scrabble are …

Further Resources

What’s this about Clubs?

And what about Tournaments?

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Foreword

It’s played by millions worldwide. Half of the households in Britain have a set. It’s the board game of choice everywhere from Buckingham Palace to prisons.

But are you getting the most fun you can out of Scrabble? Do you run out of inspiration, find you always have awkward racks, or just keep losing?

This book gives you 101 tips to improve your play and help you enjoy the game. There are useful words (along with helpful definitions for the unusual ones), cunning tactics, and a handy tip for each letter. A two-letter word with a Q, a six-letter word composed entirely of vowels, and the crucial difference between MELINITE and GMELINITE – they’re all part of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble.

After the 101 tips, you will find a list of the vital two-letter and three-letter words that make the game so much easier by allowing you to fit other words in. There’s also information on Scrabble resources, clubs, and tournaments to allow you to take your game further. So whether you want to play like a champion, or just avoid getting stuck with three Is and two As, 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble is your key to Scrabble enjoyment and success.

1 Think Positive

One comment you may often find yourself making in Scrabble as you stare at your rack or play a really low-scoring move is “I just can’t do anything”.

This is the wrong way to think. You can always do something. You may not necessarily have a great-scoring move on that shot, but you can do something to improve your rack and give yourself a better chance next time.

Too many vowels? Too many consonants? A lovely word on your rack but it doesn’t fit on the board? There are ways of dealing with all these problems, so read on, but the first tip has to be “Think positive!”

2 Two-Letter Words

Two-letter words are the most useful words in Scrabble. And the most useful two-letter words are … all of them. There are 124 in total. (You’ll find them in a handy list at the back of this book.)

The ones that contain what we call the power tiles (J, Q, X and Z) are perhaps first among equals but there is really no substitute for knowing the lot. Some of them are very common, like IN, AT and DO, while others will be familiar to you but you may not be used to thinking of them as words, such as AD (an advertisement), EX (an ex-partner or the letter X), or sounds like ER and HM. A good few, such as GU (a violin in the Shetlands), LI (a Chinese unit of distance) and ZO (a cross between a yak and a cow) will probably be completely unfamiliar to you. It will really help your game if you can learn as many as you can.

3 Using the A-Team

The A is usually a useful letter to have, though you don’t particularly want more than one of them. It will fit nicely into lots of good seven- and eight-letter bonus words.

To help you find them, remember some of the prefixes and suffixes that A is a part of. There’s AB- and AD-: loads of words begin with both of these, such as ABJURES (renounces on oath), ABSTAIN, ADRENAL and ADHESIVE.

ANTI-, being made up of four of the one-point tiles, starts a lot of useful words too. Here are a few handy

ANTIs, along with their definitions:

ANTIFAT of a drug, etc., tending to remove fat

ANTIFUR opposed to the wearing of fur

ANTIJAM preventing jamming

ANTILOG mathematical term

ANTIMAN opposed to men

ANTISAG preventing sagging

ANTICOLD preventing the common cold

ANTIDRUG opposed to illegal drugs

ANTILOCK designed to prevent overbraking

ANTIPOLE the opposite pole

ANTIRUST treated so as not to rust

The A is in suffixes too, like -ABLE, -ATE, -ANT, -IAL and -IAN.

4 Too Much of a Good Thing

With too many As, there are plenty of short words to help get you out of trouble:

AA a type of volcanic lava

AAH exclamation of surprise, pleasure, etc.

AAL an Asian shrub or tree

AAS plural of AA

ABA type of cloth made from goat or camel hair

AGA Muslim ruler

AHA exclamation of triumph or surprise

AIA a female servant

AKA a type of vine

ALA a wing

AMA a vessel for water

ANA a collection (e.g. Victoriana)

AUA yellow-eye mullet

AVA a Polynesian shrub

AWA away

BAA sound made by a sheep

CAA Scots for call

FAA Scots for fall

MAA sound made by a goat

5 Three-Letter Words

The three-letter words are almost as useful as the twos because there are so many ways of adding a letter to a two-letter word to make a three-letter one. That helps you place words on the board and get a higher score by playing more words in one move.

There are 1,341 valid three-letter words so it will take you a while to get to know all of them. It can be done – you can absorb them partly by learning and partly (and more enjoyably) by playing. The more you play, especially against better players, the more you will see these words and the more you will find you remember them.

To get things rolling …

6 Three-dom!

Here are some of the best three-letter words to start you off:

All vowels:

AIA a female servant in India or South Africa

AUA a mullet (the fish, not the hairstyle beloved of 1980s footballers)

AUE a Māori exclamation

EAU a river

All consonants:

BRR expressing cold

CWM Welsh for valley

HMM expressing doubt or hesitation

NTH of an unspecified number

PHT expressing irritation

PST attracting attention

SHH requesting silence

TSK expressing annoyance

TWP Welsh word meaning stupid

The all-consonant words exclude those containing Y, which acts as a vowel in words like DRY, and one other rather ridiculous word which we will come to later. You shouldn’t worry about it because, believe me, you will never play it.

7 Small but Powerful

Using a three-letter word can be a great way to use the high-scoring tiles J, Q, X and Z, especially by getting the power tile on a double- or triple-letter square. Here are some that might help you:

J first: JUD a block of coal

J second: GJU that Shetland violin again, an alternative spelling to GU.

J third: there are three, HAJ, RAJ and TAJ, all of Indian origin.

Q first: QAT an intoxicating drug

Q third: SUQ an Arab market-place

X first: XIS plural of XI, a Greek letter – the only three starting with X

X second: OXO containing oxygen

X third: TEX a unit of weight of yarn

Z first: ZOL a cannabis cigarette

Z second: AZO a term used in chemistry

Z third: WIZ short for wizard

There are even some three-letter words with two power tiles: JIZ (a wig), ZAX (saxophone) and ZEX (a tool for cutting slates). There are no three-letter words with Q in the middle.

8 Not the B All and End All

The B is not one of the most useful letters. It’s most often used in shorter words, preferably on a premium square to increase its value, and preferably to help you get rid of your other less useful letters. Good B-words for this are:

BEZ an antler on a deer’s horn

BIZ colloquial for business

JAB

JIB

JOB

WAB dialect form of web

CAB

BAC the baccalaureate, a French exam (and now being introduced in the UK)

FAB

FIB

FOB

FUB to cheat

BAH

BOO

BOA

9 Queen Bs

Here are some B-eautiful words that use unusual letter combinations:

BOOAI thoroughly lost

BRAAI South African barbecue

OBEAH type of witchcraft once supposedly used in the West Indies

BRAAI and OBEAH can also be verbs, so as well as BRAAIS and OBEAHS, you can also have BRAAIED, BRAAIING, OBEAHED and OBEAHING.

There are some U-less (but far from useless) words that contain B with Q:

NIQAB, NIQAAB Muslim veil

QIBLA direction of Mecca, to which Muslims turn when praying

10 B is for Bonus

The most likely way of using B in a bonus word is probably something beginning with BE- or BI-. The -ABLE suffix is also worth remembering (NOTABLE, OPENABLE) and quite a few with an optional E in the middle: LIV(E)ABLE, LOV(E)-ABLE, NAM(E)ABLE, MAK(E)ABLE, TAK(E)ABLE.

If you are holding on to the common AEIOU and LNRST letters to look for bonus words, you could use a B to make:

ATEBRIN an anti-malarial drug

BANTIES bantams

BASINET mediaeval helmet

BESAINT to make into a saint

BESTAIN

BAITERS people who use bait

BARITES plural of barite, a mineral

REBAITS

TERBIAS plural of terbia, a white powder

BANISTER

SEABLITE plant of the goosefoot family

INSTABLE

BARONIES lands owned by a baron

SEAROBIN an American fish

11 Four-Letter Words

With well over 5,000 to choose from, getting a grip on the four-letter words is quite a job. Once again, you can make your life easier by concentrating on the most useful ones; they are the words with excess vowels or excess consonants, words that use J, Q, X and Z, and words that help you get rid of awkward letter combinations.

The most memorable of the four-letter words (though conversely, one you can easily misspell) is EUOI. It is one of various ways to spell “an expression of Bacchic frenzy”. (None of the other ways of spelling it is an all-vowel word.) As Bacchus was the Roman god of wine, what we are basically saying here is it’s what Romans shouted when they were drunk.

Knowing this meaning, you could form a little phrase to remember the tricky spelling. Try:

Excessive Units Of Intoxication

Not only do you remember how to spell the word, you now have an idea what to do when you’re finished playing Scrabble.

12 Four Play

But there’s, perhaps sadly, more to life than Bacchic frenzy. There are quite a few fours with three vowels – in fact, every consonant except F and Y is part of at least one three-vowel four. Here is one for every possible combination of three different vowels:

AEI gives IDEA

AEO gives ODEA

AEU gives BEAU

AIO gives IOTA

AIU gives AITU

AOU gives AUTO

EIO gives ONIE

EIU gives LIEU

EOU gives ROUE

IOU – none – except that cry of Bacchic frenzy EUOI

Again, you can see there are a few familiar ones mixed in with some exotica. ODEA, for instance, were Greek or Roman buildings for entertainment, the plural of odeum or the more familiar odeon. An AITU is a half-human, half-divine being, like some of the incredibly good players I try to beat on the tournament Scrabble circuit. A ROUE is a man given to immoral living (some of them on the circuit too), while, more prosaically, ONIE is a Scots version of any.

13 More on All Fours

There are a few four-letter words with no vowels, not even a Y:

BRRR, GRRL, PFFT, PSST

You know three of those, even if you have never thought of them as words in a Scrabble context – BRRR is what you say when you’re cold, PSST is for surreptitiously attracting someone’s attention, and PFFT is one of those words that everyone knows but is rather hard to define – a sound to indicate deflating, diminishing or disappearing. A GRRL is a young woman who enjoys aggressively feminist rock music, just the type you are likely to meet at your local Scrabble club.

Incidentally both BRRR and GRRL can have either two or three Rs – BRR, BRRR, GRRL and GRRRL, depending, presumably, on exactly how cold you are and exactly how aggressive the girl is.

14 The C

The C can be a very useful letter to have. It combines well with other high-scoring letters H and K to give you the chance of a high score for just a four- or five-letter word. If you can play something like CHUNK or FLICK, with the K on a triple-letter square and the whole thing on a double-word square, you score 48 for that alone.

One drawback is the lack of those ever useful two-letter words: C only appears in one, the odd-looking CH, an obsolete South West of England pronoun meaning ‘I’.

High-scoring three- and four-letter words with a C include:

CAZ casual

COZ old form of cousin

COZE to chat

COX

COXA the hipbone

BACH to live the life of a bachelor

CHIB a knife; to stab with a knife

CHIV same as CHIB

CHAV (derogatory) working-class person who wears casual sports clothes

ZACK an Australian five-cent coin

EXEC an executive

15 Bonuses with a C

Another drawback of the C is that it is not a hugely productive source of prefixes and suffixes, with CON-, -IC, -ANCE and –ENCE being about the best.

Words which combine a C with those common one-point tiles AEIOU and LNRST include CERTAIN, CISTERN, CINEAST (a film enthusiast), CANISTER and CLARINET.

Our American friends are fond of putting CO- before a word to signify something done in partnership: COEDITOR, COWRITE, CODRIVE and so on, along with all their derivatives like COWRITER, CODRIVER and CODRIVEN. These are all valid words. Don’t concern yourself with hyphens. The Yanks rarely bother with them and if they allow the word, so do we.

Definitions of CO- words are usually quite self-explanatory. COWRITE is not a religious ceremony involving cows, a CODRIVER is not a river full of cod, and a COINMATE is not a friend who helps you count your money.

16 Starting on the Sevens

Some top-drawer Scrabble players know all the two-, three- and four-letter words. But nobody knows all the sevens. Well, maybe a tiny handful of dedicated word-study fanatics with photographic memories and lots of spare time, and even they must get the odd twinge of doubt over the correct spelling of HRYVNYA.

At the same time, seven-letter words are crucial to scoring big in Scrabble because if you can play one then you get that most wonderful of things, a fifty-point bonus. In the early days of serious Scrabble, players obsessed about learning as many sevens as they could because of this. It probably wasn’t the best approach to take and must have led to a lot of frustration as they waited, endlessly, to play ZYZZYVA (an American weevil). The secret is to confine yourself to the most useful ones, e.g. the sevens that are most likely to come up in play. These are those that consist solely of the one-point tiles LNRST and AEIOU – the commonest letters in the Scrabble bag.

17 Seventh Heaven

Here are some of the high-probability seven-letter words to remember as you search for a bonus-score:

NATURES

NEROLIS oil used in making perfume

NEUTRAL

OILNUTS

RETAINS

RITUALS

SALUTER

TAILORS

TRISULA trident symbol of Hindu god

Nearly all of these have at least one anagram (one has ten – can you guess which?). If you can get into the habit of being able to look at your rack and say, “Ah yes, AILRSTU, that makes RITUALS”, you will soon automatically also see the anagram, TRISULA, and you can then play whichever one fits on the board, scores more, or is otherwise the better move.

(The mighty ten-anagrammer is RETAINS, making eleven anagrams including RETAINS itself.)

18 Sizing Up the Eights

In the exact same way as it makes sense to concentrate on the sevens, which contain the commonest letters (AEIOU and LNRST), the eight-letter words with those same common letters are the ones that will pay the biggest dividends. Here are a few likely suspects:

LATRINES

LUNARIST one who believes the moon influences weather

NEUTRALS

NOTARIES

ORIENTAL

RETINOLS plural of retinol, a name for vitamin A

TENURIAL pertaining to a tenure

TONSILAR pertaining to a tonsil

TURNSOLE a plant with flowers said to turn towards the sun

Again, many of these have anagrams, and it’s a good idea to learn a few as it is often harder to place an eight-letter word on the board. For instance, ORIENTAL is an anagram of RELATION, but the third anagram TAILERON may be the only one that fits.

19 Fantastic Fours

Here are some fantastic fours to help you get rid of awkward consonants:

JIAO Chinese unit of currency

JEUX plural of JEU, a game

EAUX plural of EUA, a river

QUAI same as QUAY

QUEP expression of derision

QUOP to throb

QAID Arabic chief

QADI a Muslim judge

FIQH Islamic jurisprudence

WAQF Islamic charity

DZHO another spelling of ZO, our old friend the yak-cow cross

ZOOT as in zoot suit, a once fashionable man’s suit

VIVA to give a candidate an oral exam