Found phony OTD: AAHKNSU

 

I’ve been reading some Stephen King lately and I really expected this to be an acceptable scrabble word: USHANKA* however, isn’t in the latest OSPD. Perhaps it’s a trademarked word?

To those who don’t know, an asterisk after a word in scrabble lingo indicates that it’s not acceptable to be played, often called a ‘phony’. 

For bonus points, can you find the actual playable word that’s an anagram of USHANKA*? Drop it in the comments, and prove to me that anyone is actually reading this. 

Found words OTD: ABEGL

 When you’ve got words on the brain, you find all sorts of opportunities to learn new ones. For example, you buy a bagel and think ‘I wonder how many valid anagrams there are?’ The answer is four. 

BAGEL

BELGA: a former Belgian monetary unit

GABLE: to form a triangular section of a wall

GLEBA: a spore-bearing mass of some fungi

Alternate Spelling OTD: AADEFFRY

 

Not sure where I spotted this but hadn’t seen it before! Add it to the list: 

AFRAID

AFFRAYED 

AFEARED

AFEARD

Words that are surprisingly playable

 I saw a recent Reddit post where someone had played FEDEX on a board and another user mistakenly assumed that the word wasn’t acceptable, because, well it’s a reasonable assumption to make: most often a trademarked company name is not included in the OSPD. 

Certain words, however, have become so ubiquitous that they supersede (ugh I thought I knew how to spell that and I don’t!) the usual rules. Think ‘googled’ as a verb. 

FEDEX is another example, where the word can be a verb (FEDEXED, FEDEXING). This also brought to mind KLEENEX because of the similar EX ending, and in this case it earned its way into the OSPD simply because so many people used the word to mean ‘facial tissue’. The power of good branding, I suppose! 

I’d love to hear any other examples you have – drop some in the comments if you’d like. 

The License Plate Game

 Perhaps you’ve played this game, I find that different words games can be a fun way to exercise the brain: usually when you’re traveling about, you’ll see plenty of license plates that have a series of three letters in a row on them. The challenge is to find a word that contains those three letters, in the same sequence. 

For example, I just walked by a plate with the letters DMH and came up with ADMONISH. This game can be played off the road as well, and I actually was thinking about it based on a series of three letters I saw yesterday ‘in the wild’.  I noticed a Pez™️ container and started thinking about what words would work: I came up with PREZ. Can you find any others? I’ll list a handful below.

ALPHABETIZE

COMPUTERIZE

DEEPFREEZE

HYPERCIVILIZED

PALEOZOIC

PETAHERTZ

TRAPEZE

UNSPECIALIZED

It’s been a while…

A lot has changed since our last post: new dictionary updates, new words, some new rules! We are hoping to get back to posting new content. For now, enjoy this link to a Merriam Webster post that includes some random newly added words. Who knew that DEMPRSTU previously had no playable anagram?