SCRABBLE® Secrets

Copyright

HarperCollins Publishers

Westerhill Road

Bishopbriggs

Glasgow

G64 2QT

Fourth edition 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Written by: Mark Nyman

E-book Edition © 09 2020

ISBN 9780008395841

Version: 2020-08-06

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

1 Two’s Company

2 Less Is More

3 Starters

4 Meaning-less?

5 Pardon Me

6 No Rush

7 Hello Hello Hello

8 Irritable Vowel Syndrome

9 A Fine Mess

10 E by Gum

11 For Your Is Only

12 O My Word

13 U-seless

14 Vocabulary

15 Size Matters

16 Some Real Corkers

17 Time for a Change

18 Hold on to Your Retsina

19 Chuck ’Em In

20 To the Max

21 Leave No Stone Unturned

22 Take the Rough with the Smooth

23 In-consonants

24 Not In-consonants

25 Licence to Thrill

26 Tasty Twosomes

27 Americanisms

28 Monkey Business

29 Slanguage

30 Feathered Friends

31 Abbreviations and Acronyms

32 The Blank

33 Bonus Play

34 Another Retsina

35 Anties in your Panties

36 Seating Room Only

37 Man-alive

38 De-stress

39 Wood You Believe It?

40 Against All Odds

41 Cheats Never Prosper

42 Poker Face

43 Know Your Ologies

44 Suffixes

45 Ess-ential

46 Non-words

47 Play to the Board

48 Blocking and Opening

49 Set-ups

50 By Hook or by Crook

51 Off the hook

52 More Vowel Trouble

53 Sub-mission

54 It’s Only a Game

55 Skulduggery

56 Like-ability

57 Je Ne Regrette Rien

58 Have You Got What It Takes?

59 Juicy J-words

60 Jinn and Tonic

61 Q without a U

62 X-pertise

63 Zo Far Zo Good

64 Enjoy the Moment

65 South African Words

66 More Hooks

67 A Young Man’s Game?

68 More Corkers

69 Hard of Herring

70 Tile Tracking

71 Check Your Averages

72 UK OK

73 Māori Words

74 More Māori

75 Type-cast

76 Never Say Never

77 Off the Record

78 Special Sixes

79 Magnificent Sevens

80 Great Eights

81 Even More Hooks

82 Even More Vowel Trouble

83 Triple Tactics

84 Handy Hindi

85 More Handy Hindi

86 Rising to the Challenge

87 Vanquish the V

88 U Don’t Want to Be with a W

89 Super Words

90 Angry Words

91 Wise Words

92 Fatherly Advice

93 ZZZS

94 Hook, Line, and Sinker

95 Superstitions

96 Do You Feel Lucky?

97 New Additions

98 Eliminate the Page

99 Consonant Dumps

100 It’s Even Colder Outside

101 Think Positive

102 Four Nights in Bangkok

103 Over…..

104 And Out

105 And So to Zed

106 Spiritual Scrabble

107 Play Them at Their Own Game

108 Aspirations

109 ‘Out of the Box’ Thinking

110 You Cannot be Serious

111 The Penultimate is the Ultimate

112 Modesty Forbids

The Two-Letter Words Playable in Scrabble are …

The Three-Letter Words Playable in Scrabble are …

Essential Scrabble Glossary

Worth a Play, Read and Watch

Taking It Further

About the Publisher

Foreword

Mark Nyman is the antithesis of a Scrabble geek! He is a man from the real world who happens to be one of the greatest Scrabble players of all time. In this gem of a book utilising a mixture of mischievousness, wit and masterful expertise he is able to showcase the game as interesting, enjoyable and enormous fun.

I met Mark in 1992 when awestruck by his word game abilities in an international tournament in Bangkok. I will always remember his kindness in addressing my newbie questions at length. He helped to inspire me to devote myself to learning the game and just two years later we faced each other in a professional game in the USA. He won!

Though aimed at the beginner, there is something for everyone in this updated edition of Scrabble Secrets from what to do with too many vowels, and what prefixes and suffixes to look for, to pertinent advice about those valuable tiles the ‘S’ and the blank.

Mark’s skill extends well beyond vocabulary and strategy, however, to such subjects as handling winning and losing, maintaining a poker-face, skulduggery and even the question of cheating. We also find out why he hangs around the bathroom in between important games …

Scrabble Secrets and its 100 plus top tips will delight you and hopefully encourage even the most casual player to consider taking the game more seriously by joining a club or entering a competitive tournament.

Gerry Carter

1998 Asia Pacific Scrabble Champion

Gerry Carter is the originator of the Facebook Forum ‘Scrabble International’

1 Two’s Company

Scrabble study always starts with the two-letter words. The most useful of these are the ones with the highest-scoring letters, i.e. the Q and Z. So let’s begin with the four most useful words in Scrabble:

So if an I, A, E or O is directly below or to the right of a triple-letter square, you could place the Q or Z on it and, if you can go across/down with the same word, a potential 62 points can be picked up, much to the consternation of your opponent!

2 Less Is More

A common myth amongst Scrabble beginners is that the longer the word, the higher the score – this is not necessarily true at all.

You may AGONIZE for as little as 17 if you don’t make good use of the premium squares, whereas as in secret 1 a simple ZA, ZE or ZO might get you 62 on the same turn – be economical with your tiles.

3 Starters

S, C and P respectively are the most common starting letters and together comprise over a quarter of the words in the dictionary. So when moving your rack around it’s a good idea to put them at the beginning – a profusion of words arise from such useful prefixes as:

SEMI-, SUB-

CH-, CO-

POLY-, PRE-

4 Meaning-less?

Whether or not to insist on knowing the meanings of words played is a controversial topic and can lead to lots of arguments.

The official rule is that you don’t have to know them, but some people still think it’s just not right. If you are playing at home and insist on knowing the meanings it can lead to trouble because it’s a moot point how close you have to get to the exact definition. For example, you may play ZLOTY knowing it’s a type of currency, but your opponent may insist on you explaining from which country it originates. If you don’t know, will they let you have the word?

These inconsistencies can cause a fallout, so far better to stick to the ‘not having to know’ rule for peace’s sake. It’s great to find out the meanings, but when there are 162,500 Scrabble words with 9 letters or less, it would take an incredible mind to know every meaning as well as every word.

Personally, I would rather learn a new word than a meaning of an existing word I know (shock horror), but I do enjoy picking up some of the meanings along the way. Former World Champion Pakorn Nemitrmansuk from Thailand struggles with fluent English and doesn’t bother with the meanings of the more outlandish words.

On the other hand, Scrabble is a great learning tool for improving vocabulary, so at the end of the day it’s whatever floats your boat. Just don’t sneer at your opponent if they don’t know a definition unless you think they’d do the same to you.

5 Pardon Me

The six-letter combination PARDON goes with every vowel to make an unusual seven-letter word and thereby give a possible 50-point bonus:

By the way PARDON ME is an anagram of POMANDER and I PARDON ME is an anagram of MEROPIDAN – a bird of the bee-eater family – and PROMENADE ap-piers to be an anagram of PARDON MEE.

6 No Rush

Use all of your twenty-five minutes when you play to a clock. Don’t rush into playing the first move you think of – there’s usually a better move you haven’t spotted yet.

It’s also worth giving yourself a couple of extra seconds after placing your move on the board and before hitting the clock to make sure you’re happy with it.

7 Hello Hello Hello

There are no less than thirteen different variations of the word HELLO:

HALLO

HALLALOO

HALLOA

HALLOO

HILLO

HILLOA

HOLLA

HOLLO

HOLLOA

HOLLOO

HULLO

HULLOA

HULLOO

They are all verbs (apart from HALLALOO) and HALLOES, HELLOES, HILLOES, HOLLOES and HULLOES are also okay, so there are forty-five derivatives altogether.

8 Irritable Vowel Syndrome

Too many vowels on your rack can lead to disaster. Generally, the ideal ratio of consonants to vowels is 4:3. So having four vowels is a slight overload but fairly easily remedied – five or more and the alarm bells start ringing.

In this case, it can take two or three turns to restore the balance, and the worst of it is you are unlikely to score well in the meantime since the vowels are worth only one point at face value.

Here are some examples of lovely vowelly words to get you out of trouble quickly:

It’s amazing how often EUOI especially comes up – those followers of Bacchus had some fun didn’t they?

9 A Fine Mess

You can easily get out of a sticky situation with multiple As if you know some of these:

10 E by Gum

E is the most common letter and the best vowel to hold. You can really struggle with a dearth of Es in the game – they are its lifeblood – but on the flip side, you don’t really want more than a couple on your rack at any one time. Because there are twelve in the set, you can quite often find yourself with three or four Es – here are a few words to Es the problem:

Do, however, try and keep one E back on your rack unless the score with it is too good to miss.

11 For Your Is Only

It’s amazing how regularly you can get stuck with two or three Is on your rack and, if you’re not careful, the problem can persist. To dig you out of the I-hole sooner rather than later, try playing the following:

12 O My Word

A surfeit of Os is relatively easy to alleviate, but here’s a soupçon of gems to make it even simpler:

13 U-seless

The U is by far the least useful of the vowels, unless of course accompanied by the Q. More than one U can really cramp your style and flow, but there are a few unusual multiple U-words that can help:

14 Vocabulary

A player’s vocabulary is their ammunition in the game. It’s not the ‘be all and end all’ but the more words you know, the more you should improve. An average person’s vocabulary is between 10–15,000 words, i.e. about 10% of all the words useful to Scrabble, so there’s plenty of scope for improvement.

Don’t be put off at the thought of having to learn 100,000 new words. If you’re willing to give it a go, you can be economical with your study as some words are a lot more ‘Scrabble-friendly’ than others. The best players probably know about half of them and there are only a handful of people close to knowing the lot – and they definitely need to get out more …

15 Size Matters

The two-letter words are the bread and butter of Scrabble, and learning them is by no means an insurmountable task. There are just 127 twos of which about a third are everyday words anyway, so learning two or three a day will crack them all in the space of a month.

Next come the 1347 three-letter words. Only the top players know all these, but it’s surprising how many you will pick up with practice.

The more weird and wonderful 4s and 5s are reserved for the serious player – if you’re starting out on the competitive road, it’s best to kick off by learning those with the high-scoring letters.

The 6s aren’t as important as you might think and probably come last in a study regime. However, there are some fabulous six-letter blockers worth knowing.

The high-probability 7s and 8s are really useful in the search for that treasured 50-point bonus. There are about 34,000 seven-letter words in all and 42,000 eights, but don’t let that deter you. Knowledge of the most likely 250 of each will improve your game immensely.

Nine-letter (or longer) words come up very rarely, though it’s incredibly satisfying when they do. In terms of Scrabble study don’t worry about them – that saves you looking at half the dictionary.

16 Some Real Corkers

Here’s an A to Z of some of my favourite 7s and 8s: