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 ?