Thursday, March 3, 2011

G is for GOOD

It's time again for the ABC Wednesday entry, where I try and cover some of the basics of competitive scrabble, while somehow trying to relate it to the current letter of the week. Up this week: G!

'Is GHAZI good?' Someone might ask at a local scrabble club.

'Good' in this case, means "good (or acceptable)  in tournament scrabble play".

And yes, GHAZI is a 'muslim war hero' according to my scrabble word study program.

On the other hand, a phony is a word that is usually referred to as 'not good'. GOOGLE* is not good (yet) in competitive scrabble. The asterisk is there to signify it as such.

Some other interesting G scrabble words:

AG agriculture, (noun)... this is the only other two letter G word, which makes the letter G a tough one to over (or under)lap on a board.

GHI a kind of liquid butter made in India... I've always like this one since it lets you put a G in front of HI. Also spelled GHEE.

GEEZ interjection, used as a mild oath... I love the definitions they give for these types of interjections. Also spelled JEEZ, this is what is called a 'highly playable' 4 letter G word. Meaning, it will pop up most often in competitive scrabble games of all the 4 letter G words. In fact, I'm going to list the most 'playable' G words for the next three:

GROSZ a Polish coin... I actually have a feature on my scrabble podcast called 'currency of the month' because there are so many interesting coins/ currencies that make great words. Plural of this one is GROSZY or GROSZE.

GIAOUR  a non-Muslim.. well I guess we're sticking with the Muslim related theme. I'm pretty sure this is considered highly playable because it's a great way for a player to get rid of excess vowels. GUAIAC is another crazy one with similar CVVVVC pattern. (it's a medicinal resin.)

GODETIA a showy annual herb.... as opposed to a conservative, humble annual herb. This is a highly probable 7 letter word, also and an unusual word, so it's a good one to end with.

Thanks for reading!

4 comments:

Roger Owen Green said...

The powers that be are slow to add GOOD words, it seems.

ROG, ABC wednesday team

Linda Bob Grifins Korbetis Hall said...

wow, so many G words..
creative take.

Bonnie Kenaz-Mara said...

Fun post. Love scrabble. We have a fundraiser at a local place that runs free writing workshops for kids called scrabble for cheaters where the teams try to get away with fake words on purpose.

scrabblepodcast said...

That sounds awesome! The irony is, if you're using the tournament dictionary, there would be quite a few words that would look 'fake' to most people.