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

VIVE long live

VIVO with vigour

VEXT same as VEXED

VIZY to look

WILI a spirit

CWMS plural of CWM, a Welsh valley

TSKS from TSK, to tut in irritation

20 Evaluate Your Rack

Good players can look at their rack at any given stage of the game and know what sort of move they should be trying to make. Most racks will fall into one of five categories; here’s what you should look to do for each type:

Too many vowels: Use one of the multi-vowel words or change.

Too many consonants: Use a multi-consonant word or change. There are lots of common five- and six-letter words which can help get rid of excess consonants: PRINT, TRUCK, CLAMP, FRONT, THRONG, etc.

Bonus-friendly: Good balance of vowels and consonants, mainly one-point tiles, no double letters (or one at most). Have a good look for a bonus word, either a seven or a playable eight. If you can’t find it, play off the least appealing letters to increase your chance of a bonus on the next turn. Don’t neglect to still get a reasonable score now if you possibly can.

High value: Two or more of the higher-scoring tiles (those scoring three or more) but with vowels to help you use them. Play the high-value tiles, making maximum use of premium squares. It helps if the high-value tiles go nicely with each other, like CHK, rather than being incompatible like GVW.

Just rubbish: Racks full of incompatible letters like IJUY, or low-value tiles that don’t look like they’re close to a bonus, like GLLNOOU. With this sort of rack you probably just have to play off as many as you can for as much as you can, or change.

21 The D

The D is one of only two letters worth two points (the other is the G), and this indicates its status as not being quite as common as the one-point consonants.

Its main use for bonuses is for forming past tenses and past participles of verbs – PLANTED, SPRAYED, INFLATED, REMAINED and thousands more. There are also lots of words with DE- at the beginning – DELOUSE, DEVELOP, DENATURE and so on. This does show the main weakness of the D which is that it needs an E to be most effective, although DIS- can also be a handy prefix, with words like DISPLAY, DISCORD, DISTRACT.

22 Short Ds

There are eight two-letter words with D:

AD an advertisement

ED an editor

ID term used in psychoanalysis; also a type of fish

OD hypothetical force or form of energy

DA a Burmese knife

DE of (found in place-names such as Ashby de la Zouch)

DI plural of deus, a god

DO

And here are some useful three- and four-letter words with D:

DSO, DZO, DZHO all alternative spellings of ZO

DOJO a room where martial arts are practised

JEDI a person who embraces the philosophy of the Jedi from the Star Wars films

DEXY a dextroamphetamine pill

DIXI interjection meaning “I have spoken”

DIXY a large pot for water

DOXY a religious opinion or doctrine

Not forgetting the ultra-useful QAID (a chief) and

QADI (a Muslim judge).

23 Making the Change

Nobody likes having to change letters, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. In most circumstances, if you can score at least twenty, maybe even fifteen, I would say make the move. The rack might just sort itself out – even IJUY might transform into JUICILY or JURYING. If not, you can always change next time.

If you do change, make sure you change enough to make a real difference. If you have AIIOUDP, don’t just change the U and one I. Especially if there are blanks or other good letters to come, change four vowels or all five, and maybe one or both consonants as well. Take a moment to count the number of consonants and vowels played, which will give you an idea of which you are likely to pick more of (there are 56 consonants and 42 vowels in the bag at the start of the game).

Above all, don’t go fishing. You might be holding COMPARV, leading you to think that if you change the V and pick an E, you will have COMPARE. Well, so you will. If you pick the E. Which you probably won’t. So score what you can with your high-scoring tiles and see what the bag brings you.

24 Before We Leave Those Vowels …

We’ve seen two-vowel two-letter words (like AE and OU), three-vowel threes (like AIA and EAU), three-vowel fours (like JIAO and QUAI), and that amazing four-vowel cry of Bacchic frenzy, EUOI. But we can raise the stakes higher still by giving you … an all-vowel six-letter word. Yes, if you’ve really got a rackful of vowels that you need to get rid of, the daddy of them all is – EUOUAE.

Wow! What? Yes! EUOUAE. It’s a word formerly used in Church music, taken from the vowels in the words Seculorum Amen. In those days, U and V were more or less interchangeable, so it was referred to as the more pronounceable EVOVAE (also a valid word). But EUOUAE held on as well, and it even has a plural EUOUAES.

EUOI and EUOUAE may help get you out of trouble, but they are unlikely to score you much and unless they enable you to play just what you want to get rid of, you may be better changing. EUOUAE does let you dump those two unpleasant Us (the least useful vowel) but you are also losing two nice Es, not something you want to do without careful consideration.

25 Keep Scoring

It can be useful to hold on to the one-point tiles AEIOU and LNRST as these are the commonest letters and therefore the ones which are most likely to form a bonus word.

But you must resist just blindly putting any of those letters to one side of your rack and holding on to them grimly, come what may. As you get more of them, you are playing with fewer and fewer tiles until you get your bonus, and almost certainly getting low scores.

So try to keep scoring at the same time as knocking your rack into shape. With, say, an A, an I, an N or an R, don’t be afraid to play it to help you get a decent score, especially if there are a few of them still to come. Even the better letters like E or S can be worth playing to keep your score moving along. Only the blank should definitely be kept for a bonus or other high-scoring move.

Early on and in the middle of the game, you should very seldom be scoring less than about ten for a move. Only a dire shortage of either vowels or consonants, or perhaps getting rid of real rack-spoilers like three of the same letter, should cause you to score so low. And unless it’s a move that lets you play more or less exactly the tiles you would want to get rid of, you may be better to change.

26 Play Parallel

From the second move of the game onwards, most players’ instinct is to play crosswise; that is, to play at right angles to a word already on the board, using a letter in that word.

It’s often better to look for a parallel play. If a word has been played horizontally on the board, try to play another horizontal word in the row above or below, using the two-letter words to do so. In a following move you might be able to do the same again, turning some of the two-letter words into threes.

This way, you score not just for the main word you make, but add in the score for the twos and threes as well. Of course if a word has been played vertically, you can do the same thing by playing in the columns to the left or right.

If you do this, the tiles end up looking like solid blocks on the board, which has the added benefit for both players of making better use of the board’s limited space. This helps prevent the game from becoming blocked, which allows you to play good words for longer and makes the game more fun.

27 Ode to the E

Ah, the E, lovely E. The best of the vowels, ranking perhaps equally with the S as the best letter of all. One of the most frustrating things for the Scrabble player is to go rack after rack without an E. Especially as the Scrabble set contains twelve of them, three more than any other letter.

It’s almost impossible to say what are the best ways to use an E – there are so many. Prefixes like DE- and RE-, suffixes like -ER, -EST, -ISE, -ATE, -IES, -ED and plenty more. It will fit with almost any promising looking six-letter combination to make a seven, and likewise with most reasonable sevens to make an eight. Even having two or more Es isn’t as bad as having duplicates of other letters. Indeed, it’s quite possible to use four Es in a seven- or eight-letter word. Here are a few interesting ones:

DEERWEED a plant

ENTETEE obsessed

EYETEETH

GREENEYE a small fish with green eyes

REPEREPE the elephant fish, a large fish with a trunklike snout

SLEEVEEN a sly, smooth-tongued person

SQUEEGEE

WEEWEES urinates

28 Short Es

In the unlikely event of having too many Es (and even that has a silver lining – you may be depriving your opponent of any), there are plenty of short words to help you get rid of the excess:

EE Scots for eye

CEE the letter C

DEE the letter D

JEE exclamation of surprise

MEE Malaysian noodle dish

NEE born

PEE the letter P

REE a walled enclosure

VEE the letter V

ZEE the letter Z (US)

EME South African word for uncle

ENE variant of even

EEK exclamation of mild fright

EEN plural of EE

29 You Can Put an E After That?

A more unexpected use of the E is that it goes after a lot of other words to form new words, or, in Scrabble jargon, it is a versatile ‘hook’ (because it hooks onto the word). The large number of these E hooks means you might be able to fit in a seven-letter word or other good play that might otherwise have had to go unplayed. Here are a few E end-hooks:

HEM becomes HEME

HET becomes HETE

TIG becomes TIGE

FORM becomes FORME

LENS becomes LENSE

LOWS becomes LOWSE

RARE becomes RAREE

COMIC becomes COMICE

CARPAL becomes CARPALE

PENSION becomes PENSIONE

Many of these words are just old or variant versions of the word without the E (as in ‘Ye Merrie Olde’). A TIGE is the trunk of an architectural column, a RAREE show was a carnival, and you might know the COMICE is a pear and a PENSIONE is a small Italian hotel.

30 Six-Letter Stems

The secret to playing the big bonus-scoring words is … you’ve got to know them! Obvious really, but you won’t always get a nice simple word like RETAINS or ENTAILS popping onto your rack. You might end up with a rack like ETESIAN (a Mediterranean wind), GENITOR (biological father, as in progenitor) or VENTILS (valve on a musical instrument). But if you don’t know it’s a word, you won’t be able to play it.

The trouble is there are over 33,000 seven-letter words to learn … A lot of players have embraced the concept of six-letter stems as a way of learning seven-letter words that are likely to come up. This means taking a combination of six letters which you are likely to get on your rack, and which combine with a lot of other letters to make a seven-letter word, and learning those sevens.

At the end of this book, you will find a few resources you can look into to help you make a list of seven-letter words using six common letters like RETAIN or SATIRE. There is a very useful book called Collins Scrabble Trainer, or for the more computerate there are computer programs that can help you.

31 Retain Those Good Letters

To take the best of the six-letter stems, RETAIN goes with every letter except A, Q, V, X, Y and Z to form at least one seven-letter word. Learn them all, and you will automatically have your seven if your rack reads RETAIN with any of the other twenty letters. Here are some of them – a definition is given for the more unusual anagrams.

+B: | ATEBRIN malaria drug
+C: | CERTAIN
| NACRITE mineral
+D: | TRAINED
| ANTIRED a colour of an antiquark
+E: | TRAINEE
| ARENITE type of rock
+F: | FAINTER
| FENITAR plant with spurred flowers
+G: | TANGIER
| GRATINE
+H: | HAIRNET
| THERIAN from Theria, a subclass of mammal
+I: | INERTIA
+J: | JANTIER
| NARTJIE tangerine
+K: | KERATIN
+L: | LATRINE
| TRENAIL peg used in carpentry
+M: | MINARET
| MERANTI Malaysian wood
+N: | ENTRAIN
| TRANNIE transistor radio
+O: | NOTAIRE
| OTARINE from otary, a type of seal
+P: | PAINTER
| PERTAIN
+R: | TRAINER
| TERRAIN
+S: | RETAINS
| ANESTRI
+T: | NATTIER
| INTREAT
+U: | URINATE
| TAURINE bull-like
+W: | TAWNIER
| TINWARE

32 Using the F

Not a favourite tile for most players, the best use of the F is often just to hunt for a handy vowel or Y which has a premium square beside it, and use that to play a two-letter word, preferably going both ways to double the value.

So if, say, an O has a triple-letter square to the right, you could put the F on it to score thirteen. Then play downwards if possible, even with another two-letter word, and your score is into the high twenties.

The two-letter words with F are:

FA, FE (Hebrew letter), FY (whimsically strange), EF, IF, OF

Useful threes with an F include:

FIZ, FEZ, WOF, FAW, FOU, FAP, AFF, EFF, IFF, OFF, FUB, FUD, AUF, OOF

A FAW is a gypsy woman, a WOF is a fool, a FOU is a bushel, and FAP means drunk. There are two wonderful fours which both come from the Muslim world – FIQH (law) and WAQF (charity). In the same vein you can also play FAQIR (Muslim who spurns worldly possessions).

33 Bonuses with an F

Your best chance of a bonus with an F may involve the prefix FORE-, such as FOREARM, FORELEG, FORENAME. The likeliest suffix is -IFY (RECTIFY, IDENTIFY, etc.). If you haven’t got the Y, see if -IFIED or -IFIES are any help. There aren’t so many seven-letter words with these endings but there are a few nice eights, like RATIFIED/RATIFIES and PACIFIED/PACIFIES.

With six one-point tiles and an F, you might have SEALIFT, FANSITE or INSOFAR. Or with another one-pointer on the board, you could come up with FILTRATE, FARINOSE (containing flour) or the rather wonderful OLEFIANT, an adjective meaning ‘oil-forming’.

34 Seven-Letter Stems

Just as you can use six-letter stems to help you remember lots of useful seven-letter words, you can take seven-letter stems and use them to find eight-letter words. About half of all bonus words played are eight-letter words – you can’t afford to neglect them.

Let’s take a rack like AEGILNR; you may be able to play one of the seven-letter words it makes – ALIGNER, ENGRAIL (decorate a coin), LAERING (from laer, make a circle with wagons), LEARING, NARGILE (another name for hookah), REALIGN, REGINAL (queenly). But if it’s the sort of board that’s more amenable to eight-letter bonuses, it’s good to be able to call on the likes of these:

+A: | GERANIAL used in (lemony) perfume
| REGALIAN regal
+B: | BLEARING
+C: | CLEARING
| RELACING
+D: | DANGLIER
| DEARLING darling
+E: | ALGERINE woollen cloth
+F: | FINAGLER one who finagles, achieves their ends via trickery
+G: | REGALING
| LAGERING the act of creating a lager
+H: | NARGHILE
| NARGILEH other words for hookah
+I: | GAINLIER
+J: | JANGLIER
+L: | ALLERGIN
+M: | MALINGER
| GERMINAL
+N: | LEARNING
+O: | REGIONAL
| GERANIOL used in (rosy) perfumes
+P: | GRAPLINE
| PEARLING
+R: | GNARLIER
+S: | REALIGNS
| SALERING enclosure for livestock at market
+T: | ALERTING
| TERAGLIN Australian fish
+V: | RAVELING
+X: | RELAXING
+Y: | RELAYING
| YEARLING

35 Q but no U

For most casual players, the letter that fills them with more dread than any other is the Q. Needing a U to be able to use it with any ‘normal’ word, it can leave you effectively playing with six tiles (removing any chance of a bonus, of course) or force a change and miss a go. So thank QI there are words with Q but no U, and as they are so crucial to getting rid of this rather unwanted letter, we should take a look at some of the most useful:

FAQIR worldly-posession-spurning Muslim

FIQH Islamic jurisprudence

INQILAB revolution (in India, Pakistan)

MBAQANGA South African pop music

NIQAB, NIQAAB veil worn by some Muslims

QABALA, QABALAH, QABALISM, QABALIST ancient

Jewish mystical tradition QADI Muslim judge

QAID Arabic chief

QALAMDAN writing case

QANAT irrigation channel

QASIDA Arabic verse form

QAT African shrub

QAWWAL from QAWWALI

QAWWALI Islamic song

QI life force

QIBLA direction of Mecca

QIGONG exercise regime

QIN Chinese instrument

QINDAR, QINDARKA, QINTAR, QINTARKA Albanian coin

QOPH Hebrew letter

QORMA same as KORMA

QWERTY

SHEQALIM plural of SHEQEL

SHEQEL Monetary unit of Israel

TALAQ Muslim form of divorce

TRANQ

TSADDIQ, TZADDIQ Hasidic Jewish leader

WAQF endowment in Muslim law

YAQONA Polynesian shrub

All of these can have an S added to them except

QINDARKA, QINTARKA and SHEQALIM, and

QWERTY can have the plural QWERTIES or

QWERTYS.

The big one is, paradoxically, the smallest one – QI. With an I on your rack, or usable on the board, the Q should no longer be a major problem to get rid of.

36 Don’t Forget the Americans

Scrabble has always allowed American spellings – more than ever since we incorporated their word list into ours a few years ago. So have no fear about playing COLOR or TRAVELED (as against the British TRAVELLED). Americans are also keen on prefixes like ANTI-, giving words like ANTICOLD, ANTIMAN and ANTIRIOT, and CO-, whence we get COWRITE, CODRIVE and COMANAGE.

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