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Written by HG

Category: Wordplay

Published: 03 June 2017

Hits: 3701

From time to time you may find your rack contains rather a lot of consonants, and you may need to play a few of them off to keep a balanced rack. This is relatively straightforward if you have a 'Y' on the rack (hint : that's the next quiz). But what if you have no Y ?

So what are the three letter words containing no vowels or Y ? Answers below. (A small hint, two of them require a blank).

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BRR

CWM

GRR

HMM

MMM

NTH

PHT

PST

PWN

SHH

TSK

TWP

ZZZ

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Written by HG

Category: Wordplay

Published: 09 May 2017

Hits: 3849

The letter X is commonly used in the middle or end of a word, but how many 2, 3, 4 and 5 letter words do you know that start with 'X' ?

Here are the answers...

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2s : XI   XU

3s : XED XIS   (note no XUS !!!)

4s : XRAY XYST

5s: XEBEC   XENIA   XENIC   XENON 

     XERIC    XEROX  XERUS  XOANA

     XRAYS   XYLAN  XYLEM   XYLIC

     XYLOL   XYLYL   XYSTI    XYSTS

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Written by HG

Category: Wordplay

Published: 07 April 2017

Hits: 3791

Over the last few articles we have shown different methods for learning new words, but probably the method most people use is to learn from others.

Most Scrabble games contain at least one or two challenges. Use these words as the building blocks for learning new words. Last night for instance the words GOOG and SCORIAE were challenged.

GOOG is clearly a back hook for GOO, but what are the others ?

Does SCORIAE anagram to anything else ? What if the C was substituted for a blank – what bonuses can be made ?

It is important to remember that everyone comes with their own history of words.

A gardener would know SEQUOIA, but may not know the medical ILIA. Neither may know a statistician’s word, MEDIANS.

So if these words are challenged.. what associated lists can we make ?

SEQUOIA contains all 5 vowels. Are there any other 7 letter words that do this ?

ILIA contains three vowels including two Is. Are there others ? Are there any useful hooks to ILIA ?

MEDIANS has several anagrams, and contains the letters SANDIE. This is a relatively useful six letter stem, as you can make 38 words if you had SANDIE + a blank.

Reading books and listening/watching radio/TV are useful source of words. If a novel is set in a foreign country, it is likely that indigenous words are used. Think of the song “Waltzing Matilda” and SWAGMAN and BILLABONG immediately spring to mind.

Word learning may sometimes seem to be a random process:  learning words by accident as they played against you.

Sometimes words can be learnt by rote, or by using mnemonics, stories or word families.

Find the method which works best for you… and enjoy your learning!

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Written by HG

Category: Wordplay

Published: 05 April 2017

Hits: 3383

An often under-rated method of learning new words is that of ‘word families’.

Here a base word is chosen and then explored in detail. In Allan Simmons “Scrabble Trainer” he explores several 2 letter words. To show the principle, here is a ‘word family’ for the three letter OCH.

To the left of the picture we see all the four letter words that end in -OCH, to the right we see the 4 letter words (in this case one), that start OCH-.

These four letter words are then expanded into 5 letter words by front and back hooking. The diagram has been structured so that either the top line/furthest left line is a front hook, and the bottom/more right is a back hook. If no words exist then the line terminates with a dot.

So we can learn quite quickly the 4 front hooks to OCH, and the 7 hooks to those four letter words. We can see that OCH cannot be pluralised, but it has one back hook, which forms the basis for 4 five letter words.

The word family could also include anagrams and if it did we would learn :

There are no hard and fast rules to creating a ‘word family’, it is just a means of collecting together similar words. Another family might be to take a 7 letter word, remove each letter in turn and substitute it with a blank and see what other bonuses are ‘close by’ in the family.

Here we see the word GROCKLE.

There are seven lines coming out, one for each of the removed letters. We can see GROCKLE without an E, but with a  blank makes nothing, and that GROCKLE without a G but with a blank is the most productive member of this family.

Next time you challenge a word, why not make a family yourself ?