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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
