101 Ways to Win at Scrabble: Top tips for Scrabble success
101 Ways to Win at Scrabble: Top tips for Scrabble success
Barry Grossman
Inside this little book one of Britain’s top Scrabble players reveals his top tips for all day, everyday Scrabble success.We all want to get one over on our friends and family on the Scrabble board. Most of us manage to win now and again but if you’re looking for a permanent performance boost, then this book is for you. Barry Grossman offers us some of his top tips for remembering high-scoring and unusual words along with those crafty tactics which will make all the difference.Beautifully produced, Collins Little Book of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble™ is a treasure in itself and makes a perfect gift for all word enthusiasts and aspiring Scrabble players the world over.Collins Little Book of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble™ is endorsed by Mattel.SCRABBLE™ is a registered trademark of J. W. Spear & Sons Ltd., a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc.© 2015 Mattel, Inc. All Rights ReservedBarry Grossman is one of the UK's best Scrabble players and a committee member of the Association of British Scrabble Players. He has also appeared on and won Countdown. Barry has written Collins Scrabble: Play to win! and contributed to Collins Scrabble A-Z.
Copyright (#ulink_44936ecc-6094-58c3-9c4c-f94e9b336e0f)
HarperCollins Publishers
Westerhill Road
Bishopbriggs
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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 (#ub0915904-206b-5c10-88af-973e5018e2b4)
Title Page (#ub73e5e64-7a74-5350-a4a1-c508f338153c)
Copyright (#ucc3c4a3e-ee5e-5689-b353-b68bc6578752)
Foreword (#ulink_f685220a-a5da-5141-b51d-2f8f2c05784f)
1. Think Positive (#ulink_6db6a7d9-b9d3-5c08-9917-f110575ac0bb)
2. Two-letter words (#ulink_c6bef780-13a7-58fa-a4c5-93c4566d4d7a)
3. Using the A-Team (#ulink_e0e402d2-2cbd-5e8e-b871-591dfceefa14)
4. Too Much of a Good Thing (#ulink_5b8f18f7-b27f-50fc-8ef2-c8b802d7ff99)
5. Three-Letter Words (#ulink_3f98b3d5-2cc8-5309-a939-75072d3d870e)
6. Three-dom! (#ulink_9b745139-57e3-5bce-a2ed-f6f908790c46)
7. Small but Powerful (#ulink_a6593c5e-242e-571c-b257-506dfdac617e)
8. Not the B All and End All (#ulink_0a7f5531-ba76-505b-b1b2-6c03a08b1080)
9. Queen Bs (#ulink_bd1925ee-c086-5c7f-95a3-050c40c77816)
10. B is for Bonus (#ulink_03a5bf44-1341-5392-9d54-6db88d81182a)
11. Four-Letter Words (#ulink_c1a05c93-1bbd-5415-839f-e528403b392f)
12. Four Play (#ulink_241712ba-dc63-5e04-a378-65878c6abd51)
13. More on All Fours (#ulink_dce1739a-fb52-5430-a856-b8f47b80bbf7)
14. The C (#ulink_3617d133-a215-56f0-b6c3-e2c3be02bc54)
15. Bonuses with a C (#ulink_899237e1-5014-5945-8653-d01a0c6ccee3)
16. Starting on the Sevens (#ulink_2d6ef5ae-4b3e-5b4d-afa0-830ca22718f0)
17. Seventh Heaven (#ulink_3a98b9f6-87cb-5ed7-9082-15e827f30d33)
18. Sizing Up the Eights (#ulink_461a9281-4c0b-50ef-aecf-90a8d82ed870)
19. Fantastic Fours (#ulink_bd025b6b-523c-5858-80ce-16847a3b71cf)
20. Evaluate Your Rack (#ulink_6c520b72-1c31-5a9b-9136-b6ae18f26c16)
21. The D (#ulink_8e9d3593-7b50-527d-ad7e-ba2d317ba9f5)
22. Short Ds (#ulink_b12e4b6a-837e-5475-a2cf-523cff76feee)
23. Making the Change (#ulink_90e73131-0c68-5e8e-935f-b9b9c32123d2)
24. Before We Leave Those Vowels … (#ulink_7312af40-a908-565c-90f4-edee3d906ab1)
25. Keep Scoring (#ulink_fd666c5f-63a9-53f2-8317-bfa26157b81f)
26. Play Parallel (#ulink_49f8dd84-28ce-5c99-887c-0de1a0acc4ad)
27. Ode to the E (#ulink_73e36dd7-2255-5748-b9a8-4d6dde28f53e)
28. Short Es (#ulink_e67aebbe-783f-5d88-ba6e-89fcca1bc109)
29. You Can Put an E After That? (#ulink_b53ade4d-d84a-550d-aafe-a985aa0fee02)
30. Six-Letter Stems (#ulink_d243ea36-701c-5f44-b5d4-ba470d0062c8)
31. Retain Those Good Letters (#ulink_cea7fddd-54cf-5ac0-ac4f-cf723ac28ef0)
32. Using the F (#ulink_2c5aafe7-e1b0-52c9-af35-7ad1591d8a30)
33. Bonuses with an F (#ulink_1bae15b9-bb12-5121-b8a3-49e04ad3b236)
34. Seven-Letter Stems (#ulink_c47ce7ae-b82c-5c2f-95d1-f9fab89a3cdc)
35. Q but no U (#ulink_ff1ece10-3742-5a3b-97f5-2b98130edcb8)
36. Don’t Forget the Americans (#ulink_dfba775d-a7a5-570c-b7ca-a503ef7c6e40)
37. The G (#litres_trial_promo)
38. Nuthin’ but a G Thang (#litres_trial_promo)
39. G8 Summit (#litres_trial_promo)
40. Retains is a STARNIE (#litres_trial_promo)
41. Teasing Anagrams (#litres_trial_promo)
42. The Angriest Words (#litres_trial_promo)
43. K-Obsessed Kiwis (#litres_trial_promo)
44. The H (#litres_trial_promo)
45. H-H-High Score (#litres_trial_promo)
46. Noun(s) (#litres_trial_promo)
47. Verbs (#litres_trial_promo)
48. Don’t Push a Verb too Far (#litres_trial_promo)
49. Tricky Adjectives (#litres_trial_promo)
50. The I (#litres_trial_promo)
51. Is on the Prize (#litres_trial_promo)
52. Captain Hook (#litres_trial_promo)
53. Compound your Chances (#litres_trial_promo)
54. Those Incorrigible Aussies (#litres_trial_promo)
55. Double Trouble (#litres_trial_promo)
56. Joy with J (#litres_trial_promo)
57. Wonders of India (#litres_trial_promo)
58. The Blank (#litres_trial_promo)
59. Don’t Forget Mnemonics (#litres_trial_promo)
60. Remember Retold (#litres_trial_promo)
61. Watch Where you Put Those Tiles (#litres_trial_promo)
62. The K (#litres_trial_promo)
63. Out of Africa (#litres_trial_promo)
64. Opening and Closing Time (#litres_trial_promo)
65. Premium Squares (#litres_trial_promo)
66. Benjamins (#litres_trial_promo)
67. Anagrams (#litres_trial_promo)
68. Which Anagrams are the Most Useful? (#litres_trial_promo)
69. How Do You Spell That? (#litres_trial_promo)
70. Calm Canadians (#litres_trial_promo)
71. Spoilt for Choice (#litres_trial_promo)
72. The L (#litres_trial_promo)
73. The M (#litres_trial_promo)
74. Bonuses with M (#litres_trial_promo)
75. You Don’t Get Two Goes in a Row (#litres_trial_promo)
76. Keep on the Right Track (#litres_trial_promo)
77. The N (#litres_trial_promo)
78. Challenge! (#litres_trial_promo)
79. The O (#litres_trial_promo)
80. The P (#litres_trial_promo)
81. Sneak Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
82. The Q (#litres_trial_promo)
83. The R (#litres_trial_promo)
84. Match an Opening with an Opening (#litres_trial_promo)
85. Words Can Begin and End with Anything (#litres_trial_promo)
86. The S (#litres_trial_promo)
87. Time for T (#litres_trial_promo)
88. Play to the Board (#litres_trial_promo)
89. Edge the Endgame (#litres_trial_promo)
90. How Many can Play? (#litres_trial_promo)
91. The U (#litres_trial_promo)
92. The V (#litres_trial_promo)
93. The W (#litres_trial_promo)
94. (Im)proper Nouns (#litres_trial_promo)
95. Serious Hooking (#litres_trial_promo)
96. The X Factor (#litres_trial_promo)
97. A Word to the Ys (#litres_trial_promo)
98. Y is that a Word? (#litres_trial_promo)
99. Last but not Least – The Z (#litres_trial_promo)
100. More Than Just a Name (#litres_trial_promo)
101. The Strangest Words (#litres_trial_promo)
The 124 two-letter words playable in Scrabble are … (#litres_trial_promo)
The three-letter words playable in Scrabble are … (#litres_trial_promo)
Further Resources (#litres_trial_promo)
What’s this about Clubs? (#litres_trial_promo)
And what about Tournaments? (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Foreword (#ulink_9f8cf827-5334-502a-9957-ecc0feaf2374)
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 (#ulink_f24e2fe0-ef60-5f40-9be6-18b87dbd7117)
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 (#ulink_0a55e846-f748-5320-9df8-62ef1b69fe72)
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 (#ulink_90bc8778-1093-5ad4-b5f5-6601cbff43b3)
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 (#ulink_07948fca-349b-5510-aa8b-a25ecbdc120e)
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 (#ulink_1914c16c-7894-55a0-bd80-ce17350384d3)
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! (#ulink_089ce420-7660-55ec-a9d4-62d2c118159e)
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 (#ulink_d3f3bb3d-37a9-58c0-8bf9-51ccdc8e6743)
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 (#ulink_0a5d3b28-0e6c-5e1b-9b9e-ab0a4379b2de)
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 (#ulink_8c6fb107-a3a4-58eb-aa15-cf2accc39f60)
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 (#ulink_e0a11037-9f60-5d62-82cf-82215302f985)
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 (#ulink_c8e5e937-6cf2-588a-90a3-c58d5189d61d)
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 (#ulink_7bb34545-4f9f-55a0-bbd6-1cfa8726a616)
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 (#ulink_a0289220-7633-563c-a84b-935d7a131dfe)
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 (#ulink_24ff824a-e943-5403-8b40-a089d9d5c2f7)
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 (#ulink_1a358554-aefc-5fa3-9aea-2cb89de9ddbc)
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 (#ulink_cee3afdc-91f1-5e0e-9ea8-bb54196e4170)
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 (#ulink_c7a8e4f3-a254-5cc7-b009-71f341673381)
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 (#ulink_58f0e197-6732-52f0-8090-c56b827ae6cf)
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 (#ulink_735ec305-b23a-5c03-9e31-8f7447c3791e)
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 (#ulink_9a27a990-81b8-541c-974a-d594ae5c3aba)
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 (#ulink_6d304260-9642-52a0-a7da-85c8a82b259d)
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 (#ulink_7f8b9f94-2ef9-52c8-a751-3ca488e7227c)
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 (#ulink_e8aa7fce-b5dd-5359-a332-f91044ed709d)
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 … (#ulink_1dfaa9cd-bf7c-5c30-ae4d-f5e7dc6964e7)
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 (#ulink_8798ecbd-2d40-546f-9897-9e262a9f6f8b)
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 (#ulink_52f8f830-caf9-5c36-acca-45bcbc68f0b1)
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 (#ulink_ff073be1-6e82-5e78-bf8b-13dd140b1a37)
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 (#ulink_f3e2434e-c469-5d7b-a83d-283e5b3641fe)
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? (#ulink_d22eceaf-cae9-5379-8393-43b2129e375c)
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 (#ulink_23d83123-824e-5d28-a21e-8541668cc8eb)
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 (#ulink_61fa9712-63b3-5929-a705-2751ca4b8931)
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.
32 Using the F (#ulink_4d84a74d-ba58-5f79-b6e2-c78c32896b25)
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 (#ulink_1657cfaa-4a74-59f9-88b0-5a0ace1a30f7)
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 (#ulink_bc8a259d-c496-5d8a-9b7f-e4f35a1893a0)
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:
35 Q but no U (#ulink_2b0bb027-6e22-5c86-acf9-7ea1228a5abf)
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 (#ulink_661f05f1-7386-54d4-96e2-fed8e4df6556)
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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Barry Grossman
Inside this little book one of Britain’s top Scrabble players reveals his top tips for all day, everyday Scrabble success.We all want to get one over on our friends and family on the Scrabble board. Most of us manage to win now and again but if you’re looking for a permanent performance boost, then this book is for you. Barry Grossman offers us some of his top tips for remembering high-scoring and unusual words along with those crafty tactics which will make all the difference.Beautifully produced, Collins Little Book of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble™ is a treasure in itself and makes a perfect gift for all word enthusiasts and aspiring Scrabble players the world over.Collins Little Book of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble™ is endorsed by Mattel.SCRABBLE™ is a registered trademark of J. W. Spear & Sons Ltd., a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc.© 2015 Mattel, Inc. All Rights ReservedBarry Grossman is one of the UK's best Scrabble players and a committee member of the Association of British Scrabble Players. He has also appeared on and won Countdown. Barry has written Collins Scrabble: Play to win! and contributed to Collins Scrabble A-Z.
Copyright (#ulink_44936ecc-6094-58c3-9c4c-f94e9b336e0f)
HarperCollins Publishers
Westerhill Road
Bishopbriggs
Glasgow
G64 2QT
First Edition 2013
Second Edition 2017
© HarperCollins Publishers 2017
eBook Edition © June 2017 ISBN 9780008104344
Version: 2017-06-23
Collins® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Scrabble® is a registered trademark of J.W Spear & Sons Ltd, a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. © 2017 Mattel, Inc.
All rights reserved.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Author: Barry Grossman
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Contents
Cover (#ub0915904-206b-5c10-88af-973e5018e2b4)
Title Page (#ub73e5e64-7a74-5350-a4a1-c508f338153c)
Copyright (#ucc3c4a3e-ee5e-5689-b353-b68bc6578752)
Foreword (#ulink_f685220a-a5da-5141-b51d-2f8f2c05784f)
1. Think Positive (#ulink_6db6a7d9-b9d3-5c08-9917-f110575ac0bb)
2. Two-letter words (#ulink_c6bef780-13a7-58fa-a4c5-93c4566d4d7a)
3. Using the A-Team (#ulink_e0e402d2-2cbd-5e8e-b871-591dfceefa14)
4. Too Much of a Good Thing (#ulink_5b8f18f7-b27f-50fc-8ef2-c8b802d7ff99)
5. Three-Letter Words (#ulink_3f98b3d5-2cc8-5309-a939-75072d3d870e)
6. Three-dom! (#ulink_9b745139-57e3-5bce-a2ed-f6f908790c46)
7. Small but Powerful (#ulink_a6593c5e-242e-571c-b257-506dfdac617e)
8. Not the B All and End All (#ulink_0a7f5531-ba76-505b-b1b2-6c03a08b1080)
9. Queen Bs (#ulink_bd1925ee-c086-5c7f-95a3-050c40c77816)
10. B is for Bonus (#ulink_03a5bf44-1341-5392-9d54-6db88d81182a)
11. Four-Letter Words (#ulink_c1a05c93-1bbd-5415-839f-e528403b392f)
12. Four Play (#ulink_241712ba-dc63-5e04-a378-65878c6abd51)
13. More on All Fours (#ulink_dce1739a-fb52-5430-a856-b8f47b80bbf7)
14. The C (#ulink_3617d133-a215-56f0-b6c3-e2c3be02bc54)
15. Bonuses with a C (#ulink_899237e1-5014-5945-8653-d01a0c6ccee3)
16. Starting on the Sevens (#ulink_2d6ef5ae-4b3e-5b4d-afa0-830ca22718f0)
17. Seventh Heaven (#ulink_3a98b9f6-87cb-5ed7-9082-15e827f30d33)
18. Sizing Up the Eights (#ulink_461a9281-4c0b-50ef-aecf-90a8d82ed870)
19. Fantastic Fours (#ulink_bd025b6b-523c-5858-80ce-16847a3b71cf)
20. Evaluate Your Rack (#ulink_6c520b72-1c31-5a9b-9136-b6ae18f26c16)
21. The D (#ulink_8e9d3593-7b50-527d-ad7e-ba2d317ba9f5)
22. Short Ds (#ulink_b12e4b6a-837e-5475-a2cf-523cff76feee)
23. Making the Change (#ulink_90e73131-0c68-5e8e-935f-b9b9c32123d2)
24. Before We Leave Those Vowels … (#ulink_7312af40-a908-565c-90f4-edee3d906ab1)
25. Keep Scoring (#ulink_fd666c5f-63a9-53f2-8317-bfa26157b81f)
26. Play Parallel (#ulink_49f8dd84-28ce-5c99-887c-0de1a0acc4ad)
27. Ode to the E (#ulink_73e36dd7-2255-5748-b9a8-4d6dde28f53e)
28. Short Es (#ulink_e67aebbe-783f-5d88-ba6e-89fcca1bc109)
29. You Can Put an E After That? (#ulink_b53ade4d-d84a-550d-aafe-a985aa0fee02)
30. Six-Letter Stems (#ulink_d243ea36-701c-5f44-b5d4-ba470d0062c8)
31. Retain Those Good Letters (#ulink_cea7fddd-54cf-5ac0-ac4f-cf723ac28ef0)
32. Using the F (#ulink_2c5aafe7-e1b0-52c9-af35-7ad1591d8a30)
33. Bonuses with an F (#ulink_1bae15b9-bb12-5121-b8a3-49e04ad3b236)
34. Seven-Letter Stems (#ulink_c47ce7ae-b82c-5c2f-95d1-f9fab89a3cdc)
35. Q but no U (#ulink_ff1ece10-3742-5a3b-97f5-2b98130edcb8)
36. Don’t Forget the Americans (#ulink_dfba775d-a7a5-570c-b7ca-a503ef7c6e40)
37. The G (#litres_trial_promo)
38. Nuthin’ but a G Thang (#litres_trial_promo)
39. G8 Summit (#litres_trial_promo)
40. Retains is a STARNIE (#litres_trial_promo)
41. Teasing Anagrams (#litres_trial_promo)
42. The Angriest Words (#litres_trial_promo)
43. K-Obsessed Kiwis (#litres_trial_promo)
44. The H (#litres_trial_promo)
45. H-H-High Score (#litres_trial_promo)
46. Noun(s) (#litres_trial_promo)
47. Verbs (#litres_trial_promo)
48. Don’t Push a Verb too Far (#litres_trial_promo)
49. Tricky Adjectives (#litres_trial_promo)
50. The I (#litres_trial_promo)
51. Is on the Prize (#litres_trial_promo)
52. Captain Hook (#litres_trial_promo)
53. Compound your Chances (#litres_trial_promo)
54. Those Incorrigible Aussies (#litres_trial_promo)
55. Double Trouble (#litres_trial_promo)
56. Joy with J (#litres_trial_promo)
57. Wonders of India (#litres_trial_promo)
58. The Blank (#litres_trial_promo)
59. Don’t Forget Mnemonics (#litres_trial_promo)
60. Remember Retold (#litres_trial_promo)
61. Watch Where you Put Those Tiles (#litres_trial_promo)
62. The K (#litres_trial_promo)
63. Out of Africa (#litres_trial_promo)
64. Opening and Closing Time (#litres_trial_promo)
65. Premium Squares (#litres_trial_promo)
66. Benjamins (#litres_trial_promo)
67. Anagrams (#litres_trial_promo)
68. Which Anagrams are the Most Useful? (#litres_trial_promo)
69. How Do You Spell That? (#litres_trial_promo)
70. Calm Canadians (#litres_trial_promo)
71. Spoilt for Choice (#litres_trial_promo)
72. The L (#litres_trial_promo)
73. The M (#litres_trial_promo)
74. Bonuses with M (#litres_trial_promo)
75. You Don’t Get Two Goes in a Row (#litres_trial_promo)
76. Keep on the Right Track (#litres_trial_promo)
77. The N (#litres_trial_promo)
78. Challenge! (#litres_trial_promo)
79. The O (#litres_trial_promo)
80. The P (#litres_trial_promo)
81. Sneak Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
82. The Q (#litres_trial_promo)
83. The R (#litres_trial_promo)
84. Match an Opening with an Opening (#litres_trial_promo)
85. Words Can Begin and End with Anything (#litres_trial_promo)
86. The S (#litres_trial_promo)
87. Time for T (#litres_trial_promo)
88. Play to the Board (#litres_trial_promo)
89. Edge the Endgame (#litres_trial_promo)
90. How Many can Play? (#litres_trial_promo)
91. The U (#litres_trial_promo)
92. The V (#litres_trial_promo)
93. The W (#litres_trial_promo)
94. (Im)proper Nouns (#litres_trial_promo)
95. Serious Hooking (#litres_trial_promo)
96. The X Factor (#litres_trial_promo)
97. A Word to the Ys (#litres_trial_promo)
98. Y is that a Word? (#litres_trial_promo)
99. Last but not Least – The Z (#litres_trial_promo)
100. More Than Just a Name (#litres_trial_promo)
101. The Strangest Words (#litres_trial_promo)
The 124 two-letter words playable in Scrabble are … (#litres_trial_promo)
The three-letter words playable in Scrabble are … (#litres_trial_promo)
Further Resources (#litres_trial_promo)
What’s this about Clubs? (#litres_trial_promo)
And what about Tournaments? (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Foreword (#ulink_9f8cf827-5334-502a-9957-ecc0feaf2374)
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 (#ulink_f24e2fe0-ef60-5f40-9be6-18b87dbd7117)
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 (#ulink_0a55e846-f748-5320-9df8-62ef1b69fe72)
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 (#ulink_90bc8778-1093-5ad4-b5f5-6601cbff43b3)
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 (#ulink_07948fca-349b-5510-aa8b-a25ecbdc120e)
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 (#ulink_1914c16c-7894-55a0-bd80-ce17350384d3)
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! (#ulink_089ce420-7660-55ec-a9d4-62d2c118159e)
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 (#ulink_d3f3bb3d-37a9-58c0-8bf9-51ccdc8e6743)
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 (#ulink_0a5d3b28-0e6c-5e1b-9b9e-ab0a4379b2de)
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 (#ulink_8c6fb107-a3a4-58eb-aa15-cf2accc39f60)
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 (#ulink_e0a11037-9f60-5d62-82cf-82215302f985)
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 (#ulink_c8e5e937-6cf2-588a-90a3-c58d5189d61d)
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 (#ulink_7bb34545-4f9f-55a0-bbd6-1cfa8726a616)
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 (#ulink_a0289220-7633-563c-a84b-935d7a131dfe)
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 (#ulink_24ff824a-e943-5403-8b40-a089d9d5c2f7)
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 (#ulink_1a358554-aefc-5fa3-9aea-2cb89de9ddbc)
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 (#ulink_cee3afdc-91f1-5e0e-9ea8-bb54196e4170)
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 (#ulink_c7a8e4f3-a254-5cc7-b009-71f341673381)
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 (#ulink_58f0e197-6732-52f0-8090-c56b827ae6cf)
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 (#ulink_735ec305-b23a-5c03-9e31-8f7447c3791e)
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 (#ulink_9a27a990-81b8-541c-974a-d594ae5c3aba)
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 (#ulink_6d304260-9642-52a0-a7da-85c8a82b259d)
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 (#ulink_7f8b9f94-2ef9-52c8-a751-3ca488e7227c)
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 (#ulink_e8aa7fce-b5dd-5359-a332-f91044ed709d)
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 … (#ulink_1dfaa9cd-bf7c-5c30-ae4d-f5e7dc6964e7)
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 (#ulink_8798ecbd-2d40-546f-9897-9e262a9f6f8b)
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 (#ulink_52f8f830-caf9-5c36-acca-45bcbc68f0b1)
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 (#ulink_ff073be1-6e82-5e78-bf8b-13dd140b1a37)
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 (#ulink_f3e2434e-c469-5d7b-a83d-283e5b3641fe)
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? (#ulink_d22eceaf-cae9-5379-8393-43b2129e375c)
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 (#ulink_23d83123-824e-5d28-a21e-8541668cc8eb)
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 (#ulink_61fa9712-63b3-5929-a705-2751ca4b8931)
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.
32 Using the F (#ulink_4d84a74d-ba58-5f79-b6e2-c78c32896b25)
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 (#ulink_1657cfaa-4a74-59f9-88b0-5a0ace1a30f7)
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 (#ulink_bc8a259d-c496-5d8a-9b7f-e4f35a1893a0)
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:
35 Q but no U (#ulink_2b0bb027-6e22-5c86-acf9-7ea1228a5abf)
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 (#ulink_661f05f1-7386-54d4-96e2-fed8e4df6556)
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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Barry Grossman
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Развлечения
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Inside this little book one of Britain’s top Scrabble players reveals his top tips for all day, everyday Scrabble success.We all want to get one over on our friends and family on the Scrabble board. Most of us manage to win now and again but if you’re looking for a permanent performance boost, then this book is for you. Barry Grossman offers us some of his top tips for remembering high-scoring and unusual words along with those crafty tactics which will make all the difference.Beautifully produced, Collins Little Book of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble™ is a treasure in itself and makes a perfect gift for all word enthusiasts and aspiring Scrabble players the world over.Collins Little Book of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble™ is endorsed by Mattel.SCRABBLE™ is a registered trademark of J. W. Spear & Sons Ltd., a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc.© 2015 Mattel, Inc. All Rights ReservedBarry Grossman is one of the UK′s best Scrabble players and a committee member of the Association of British Scrabble Players. He has also appeared on and won Countdown. Barry has written Collins Scrabble: Play to win! and contributed to Collins Scrabble A-Z.