101 Ways to Win at Scrabble: Top tips for Scrabble success
Copyright
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
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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
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
1. Think Positive
2. Two-letter words
3. Using the A-Team
4. Too Much of a Good Thing
5. Three-Letter Words
6. Three-dom!
7. Small but Powerful
8. Not the B All and End All
9. Queen Bs
10. B is for Bonus
11. Four-Letter Words
12. Four Play
13. More on All Fours
14. The C
15. Bonuses with a C
16. Starting on the Sevens
17. Seventh Heaven
18. Sizing Up the Eights
19. Fantastic Fours
20. Evaluate Your Rack
21. The D
22. Short Ds
23. Making the Change
24. Before We Leave Those Vowels …
25. Keep Scoring
26. Play Parallel
27. Ode to the E
28. Short Es
29. You Can Put an E After That?
30. Six-Letter Stems
31. Retain Those Good Letters
32. Using the F
33. Bonuses with an F
34. Seven-Letter Stems
35. Q but no U
36. Don’t Forget the Americans
37. The G
38. Nuthin’ but a G Thang
39. G8 Summit
40. Retains is a STARNIE
41. Teasing Anagrams
42. The Angriest Words
43. K-Obsessed Kiwis
44. The H
45. H-H-High Score
46. Noun(s)
47. Verbs
48. Don’t Push a Verb too Far
49. Tricky Adjectives
50. The I
51. Is on the Prize
52. Captain Hook
53. Compound your Chances
54. Those Incorrigible Aussies
55. Double Trouble
56. Joy with J
57. Wonders of India
58. The Blank
59. Don’t Forget Mnemonics
60. Remember Retold
61. Watch Where you Put Those Tiles
62. The K
63. Out of Africa
64. Opening and Closing Time
65. Premium Squares
66. Benjamins
67. Anagrams
68. Which Anagrams are the Most Useful?
69. How Do You Spell That?
70. Calm Canadians
71. Spoilt for Choice
72. The L
73. The M
74. Bonuses with M
75. You Don’t Get Two Goes in a Row
76. Keep on the Right Track
77. The N
78. Challenge!
79. The O
80. The P
81. Sneak Preview
82. The Q
83. The R
84. Match an Opening with an Opening
85. Words Can Begin and End with Anything
86. The S
87. Time for T
88. Play to the Board
89. Edge the Endgame
90. How Many can Play?
91. The U
92. The V
93. The W
94. (Im)proper Nouns
95. Serious Hooking
96. The X Factor
97. A Word to the Ys
98. Y is that a Word?
99. Last but not Least – The Z
100. More Than Just a Name
101. The Strangest Words
The 124 two-letter words playable in Scrabble are …
The three-letter words playable in Scrabble are …
Further Resources
What’s this about Clubs?
And what about Tournaments?
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Foreword
It’s played by millions worldwide. Half of the households in Britain have a set. It’s the board game of choice everywhere from Buckingham Palace to prisons.
But are you getting the most fun you can out of Scrabble? Do you run out of inspiration, find you always have awkward racks, or just keep losing?
This book gives you 101 tips to improve your play and help you enjoy the game. There are useful words (along with helpful definitions for the unusual ones), cunning tactics, and a handy tip for each letter. A two-letter word with a Q, a six-letter word composed entirely of vowels, and the crucial difference between MELINITE and GMELINITE – they’re all part of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble.
After the 101 tips, you will find a list of the vital two-letter and three-letter words that make the game so much easier by allowing you to fit other words in. There’s also information on Scrabble resources, clubs, and tournaments to allow you to take your game further. So whether you want to play like a champion, or just avoid getting stuck with three Is and two As, 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble is your key to Scrabble enjoyment and success.
1 Think Positive
One comment you may often find yourself making in Scrabble as you stare at your rack or play a really low-scoring move is “I just can’t do anything”.
This is the wrong way to think. You can always do something. You may not necessarily have a great-scoring move on that shot, but you can do something to improve your rack and give yourself a better chance next time.
Too many vowels? Too many consonants? A lovely word on your rack but it doesn’t fit on the board? There are ways of dealing with all these problems, so read on, but the first tip has to be “Think positive!”
2 Two-Letter Words
Two-letter words are the most useful words in Scrabble. And the most useful two-letter words are … all of them. There are 124 in total. (You’ll find them in a handy list at the back of this book.)
The ones that contain what we call the power tiles (J, Q, X and Z) are perhaps first among equals but there is really no substitute for knowing the lot. Some of them are very common, like IN, AT and DO, while others will be familiar to you but you may not be used to thinking of them as words, such as AD (an advertisement), EX (an ex-partner or the letter X), or sounds like ER and HM. A good few, such as GU (a violin in the Shetlands), LI (a Chinese unit of distance) and ZO (a cross between a yak and a cow) will probably be completely unfamiliar to you. It will really help your game if you can learn as many as you can.
3 Using the A-Team
The A is usually a useful letter to have, though you don’t particularly want more than one of them. It will fit nicely into lots of good seven- and eight-letter bonus words.
To help you find them, remember some of the prefixes and suffixes that A is a part of. There’s AB- and AD-: loads of words begin with both of these, such as ABJURES (renounces on oath), ABSTAIN, ADRENAL and ADHESIVE.
ANTI-, being made up of four of the one-point tiles, starts a lot of useful words too. Here are a few handy
ANTIs, along with their definitions:
ANTIFAT of a drug, etc., tending to remove fat
ANTIFUR opposed to the wearing of fur
ANTIJAM preventing jamming
ANTILOG mathematical term
ANTIMAN opposed to men
ANTISAG preventing sagging
ANTICOLD preventing the common cold
ANTIDRUG opposed to illegal drugs
ANTILOCK designed to prevent overbraking
ANTIPOLE the opposite pole
ANTIRUST treated so as not to rust
The A is in suffixes too, like -ABLE, -ATE, -ANT, -IAL and -IAN.
4 Too Much of a Good Thing
With too many As, there are plenty of short words to help get you out of trouble:
AA a type of volcanic lava
AAH exclamation of surprise, pleasure, etc.
AAL an Asian shrub or tree
AAS plural of AA
ABA type of cloth made from goat or camel hair
AGA Muslim ruler
AHA exclamation of triumph or surprise
AIA a female servant
AKA a type of vine
ALA a wing
AMA a vessel for water
ANA a collection (e.g. Victoriana)
AUA yellow-eye mullet
AVA a Polynesian shrub
AWA away
BAA sound made by a sheep
CAA Scots for call
FAA Scots for fall
MAA sound made by a goat
5 Three-Letter Words
The three-letter words are almost as useful as the twos because there are so many ways of adding a letter to a two-letter word to make a three-letter one. That helps you place words on the board and get a higher score by playing more words in one move.
There are 1,341 valid three-letter words so it will take you a while to get to know all of them. It can be done – you can absorb them partly by learning and partly (and more enjoyably) by playing. The more you play, especially against better players, the more you will see these words and the more you will find you remember them.
To get things rolling …
6 Three-dom!
Here are some of the best three-letter words to start you off:
All vowels:
AIA a female servant in India or South Africa
AUA a mullet (the fish, not the hairstyle beloved of 1980s footballers)
AUE a Māori exclamation
EAU a river
All consonants:
BRR expressing cold
CWM Welsh for valley
HMM expressing doubt or hesitation
NTH of an unspecified number
PHT expressing irritation
PST attracting attention
SHH requesting silence
TSK expressing annoyance
TWP Welsh word meaning stupid
The all-consonant words exclude those containing Y, which acts as a vowel in words like DRY, and one other rather ridiculous word which we will come to later. You shouldn’t worry about it because, believe me, you will never play it.
7 Small but Powerful
Using a three-letter word can be a great way to use the high-scoring tiles J, Q, X and Z, especially by getting the power tile on a double- or triple-letter square. Here are some that might help you:
J first: JUD a block of coal
J second: GJU that Shetland violin again, an alternative spelling to GU.
J third: there are three, HAJ, RAJ and TAJ, all of Indian origin.
Q first: QAT an intoxicating drug
Q third: SUQ an Arab market-place
X first: XIS plural of XI, a Greek letter – the only three starting with X
X second: OXO containing oxygen
X third: TEX a unit of weight of yarn
Z first: ZOL a cannabis cigarette
Z second: AZO a term used in chemistry
Z third: WIZ short for wizard
There are even some three-letter words with two power tiles: JIZ (a wig), ZAX (saxophone) and ZEX (a tool for cutting slates). There are no three-letter words with Q in the middle.
8 Not the B All and End All
The B is not one of the most useful letters. It’s most often used in shorter words, preferably on a premium square to increase its value, and preferably to help you get rid of your other less useful letters. Good B-words for this are:
BEZ an antler on a deer’s horn
BIZ colloquial for business
JAB
JIB
JOB
WAB dialect form of web
CAB
BAC the baccalaureate, a French exam (and now being introduced in the UK)
FAB
FIB
FOB
FUB to cheat
BAH
BOO
BOA
9 Queen Bs
Here are some B-eautiful words that use unusual letter combinations:
BOOAI thoroughly lost
BRAAI South African barbecue
OBEAH type of witchcraft once supposedly used in the West Indies
BRAAI and OBEAH can also be verbs, so as well as BRAAIS and OBEAHS, you can also have BRAAIED, BRAAIING, OBEAHED and OBEAHING.
There are some U-less (but far from useless) words that contain B with Q:
NIQAB, NIQAAB Muslim veil
QIBLA direction of Mecca, to which Muslims turn when praying
10 B is for Bonus
The most likely way of using B in a bonus word is probably something beginning with BE- or BI-. The -ABLE suffix is also worth remembering (NOTABLE, OPENABLE) and quite a few with an optional E in the middle: LIV(E)ABLE, LOV(E)-ABLE, NAM(E)ABLE, MAK(E)ABLE, TAK(E)ABLE.
If you are holding on to the common AEIOU and LNRST letters to look for bonus words, you could use a B to make:
ATEBRIN an anti-malarial drug
BANTIES bantams
BASINET mediaeval helmet
BESAINT to make into a saint
BESTAIN
BAITERS people who use bait
BARITES plural of barite, a mineral
REBAITS
TERBIAS plural of terbia, a white powder
BANISTER
SEABLITE plant of the goosefoot family
INSTABLE
BARONIES lands owned by a baron
SEAROBIN an American fish
11 Four-Letter Words
With well over 5,000 to choose from, getting a grip on the four-letter words is quite a job. Once again, you can make your life easier by concentrating on the most useful ones; they are the words with excess vowels or excess consonants, words that use J, Q, X and Z, and words that help you get rid of awkward letter combinations.
The most memorable of the four-letter words (though conversely, one you can easily misspell) is EUOI. It is one of various ways to spell “an expression of Bacchic frenzy”. (None of the other ways of spelling it is an all-vowel word.) As Bacchus was the Roman god of wine, what we are basically saying here is it’s what Romans shouted when they were drunk.
Knowing this meaning, you could form a little phrase to remember the tricky spelling. Try:
Excessive Units Of Intoxication
Not only do you remember how to spell the word, you now have an idea what to do when you’re finished playing Scrabble.
12 Four Play
But there’s, perhaps sadly, more to life than Bacchic frenzy. There are quite a few fours with three vowels – in fact, every consonant except F and Y is part of at least one three-vowel four. Here is one for every possible combination of three different vowels:
AEI gives IDEA
AEO gives ODEA
AEU gives BEAU
AIO gives IOTA
AIU gives AITU
AOU gives AUTO
EIO gives ONIE
EIU gives LIEU
EOU gives ROUE
IOU – none – except that cry of Bacchic frenzy EUOI
Again, you can see there are a few familiar ones mixed in with some exotica. ODEA, for instance, were Greek or Roman buildings for entertainment, the plural of odeum or the more familiar odeon. An AITU is a half-human, half-divine being, like some of the incredibly good players I try to beat on the tournament Scrabble circuit. A ROUE is a man given to immoral living (some of them on the circuit too), while, more prosaically, ONIE is a Scots version of any.
13 More on All Fours
There are a few four-letter words with no vowels, not even a Y:
BRRR, GRRL, PFFT, PSST
You know three of those, even if you have never thought of them as words in a Scrabble context – BRRR is what you say when you’re cold, PSST is for surreptitiously attracting someone’s attention, and PFFT is one of those words that everyone knows but is rather hard to define – a sound to indicate deflating, diminishing or disappearing. A GRRL is a young woman who enjoys aggressively feminist rock music, just the type you are likely to meet at your local Scrabble club.
Incidentally both BRRR and GRRL can have either two or three Rs – BRR, BRRR, GRRL and GRRRL, depending, presumably, on exactly how cold you are and exactly how aggressive the girl is.
14 The C
The C can be a very useful letter to have. It combines well with other high-scoring letters H and K to give you the chance of a high score for just a four- or five-letter word. If you can play something like CHUNK or FLICK, with the K on a triple-letter square and the whole thing on a double-word square, you score 48 for that alone.
One drawback is the lack of those ever useful two-letter words: C only appears in one, the odd-looking CH, an obsolete South West of England pronoun meaning ‘I’.
High-scoring three- and four-letter words with a C include:
CAZ casual
COZ old form of cousin
COZE to chat
COX
COXA the hipbone
BACH to live the life of a bachelor
CHIB a knife; to stab with a knife
CHIV same as CHIB
CHAV (derogatory) working-class person who wears casual sports clothes
ZACK an Australian five-cent coin
EXEC an executive
15 Bonuses with a C
Another drawback of the C is that it is not a hugely productive source of prefixes and suffixes, with CON-, -IC, -ANCE and –ENCE being about the best.
Words which combine a C with those common one-point tiles AEIOU and LNRST include CERTAIN, CISTERN, CINEAST (a film enthusiast), CANISTER and CLARINET.
Our American friends are fond of putting CO- before a word to signify something done in partnership: COEDITOR, COWRITE, CODRIVE and so on, along with all their derivatives like COWRITER, CODRIVER and CODRIVEN. These are all valid words. Don’t concern yourself with hyphens. The Yanks rarely bother with them and if they allow the word, so do we.
Definitions of CO- words are usually quite self-explanatory. COWRITE is not a religious ceremony involving cows, a CODRIVER is not a river full of cod, and a COINMATE is not a friend who helps you count your money.
16 Starting on the Sevens
Some top-drawer Scrabble players know all the two-, three- and four-letter words. But nobody knows all the sevens. Well, maybe a tiny handful of dedicated word-study fanatics with photographic memories and lots of spare time, and even they must get the odd twinge of doubt over the correct spelling of HRYVNYA.
At the same time, seven-letter words are crucial to scoring big in Scrabble because if you can play one then you get that most wonderful of things, a fifty-point bonus. In the early days of serious Scrabble, players obsessed about learning as many sevens as they could because of this. It probably wasn’t the best approach to take and must have led to a lot of frustration as they waited, endlessly, to play ZYZZYVA (an American weevil). The secret is to confine yourself to the most useful ones, e.g. the sevens that are most likely to come up in play. These are those that consist solely of the one-point tiles LNRST and AEIOU – the commonest letters in the Scrabble bag.
17 Seventh Heaven
Here are some of the high-probability seven-letter words to remember as you search for a bonus-score:
NATURES
NEROLIS oil used in making perfume
NEUTRAL
OILNUTS
RETAINS
RITUALS
SALUTER
TAILORS
TRISULA trident symbol of Hindu god
Nearly all of these have at least one anagram (one has ten – can you guess which?). If you can get into the habit of being able to look at your rack and say, “Ah yes, AILRSTU, that makes RITUALS”, you will soon automatically also see the anagram, TRISULA, and you can then play whichever one fits on the board, scores more, or is otherwise the better move.
(The mighty ten-anagrammer is RETAINS, making eleven anagrams including RETAINS itself.)
18 Sizing Up the Eights
In the exact same way as it makes sense to concentrate on the sevens, which contain the commonest letters (AEIOU and LNRST), the eight-letter words with those same common letters are the ones that will pay the biggest dividends. Here are a few likely suspects:
LATRINES
LUNARIST one who believes the moon influences weather
NEUTRALS
NOTARIES
ORIENTAL
RETINOLS plural of retinol, a name for vitamin A
TENURIAL pertaining to a tenure
TONSILAR pertaining to a tonsil
TURNSOLE a plant with flowers said to turn towards the sun
Again, many of these have anagrams, and it’s a good idea to learn a few as it is often harder to place an eight-letter word on the board. For instance, ORIENTAL is an anagram of RELATION, but the third anagram TAILERON may be the only one that fits.
19 Fantastic Fours
Here are some fantastic fours to help you get rid of awkward consonants:
JIAO Chinese unit of currency
JEUX plural of JEU, a game
EAUX plural of EUA, a river
QUAI same as QUAY
QUEP expression of derision
QUOP to throb
QAID Arabic chief
QADI a Muslim judge
FIQH Islamic jurisprudence
WAQF Islamic charity
DZHO another spelling of ZO, our old friend the yak-cow cross
ZOOT as in zoot suit, a once fashionable man’s suit
VIVA to give a candidate an oral exam