5 things I learned from club last night

1. If your opponent opens with exchange 4 and your rack is AAAILOR, playing RAIA for 8 is a bad idea. Sure you keep them from cashing in on the double word score, but a) you don't cash in on it, b) ALO isn't that great of a leave, and c) your opponent will play ZA for 40 something points as a reward for your stupidity. (which is what happened.)

2. Fun hooks: I got to play CENTAUr/C(OVERALLS). Missed the OVERALL hook with the first C, but was lucky enough to get the 2nd one and remember. What I didn't know is that CENTAUR takes a Y!

3. Sometimes you just can't draw to save your life. In my second game, I had three 6-vowel racks. One was a post-bingo rack, and the other two were after playing off 5 and 6 tiles, so it wasn't as though I was asking for it. And later I played off JO from AEIJORS (with 25 unseen and an open L on the board) and drew UU. I was able to bingo twice, but still lost by 30- but I was happy with even that.

4. READMIT also plays through an O. (and has a front hook that I didn't get to play.)

5. AINSSU? plays to an L ( I played SUNdIA(L)S.)

 

3 things I learned from club this week

Played one quick game at club- we both had 15 left on our clocks. I drew both blanks and all 4 S's, so it was an easy win, 464-300. If I had known #2, I would've had the distinction of playing all the S's in two plays.

 

1. AEEINV? has two anagrams; one scores more as an opening play. (I played NAIVEtE, that's not it.)

2. BIASED can be spelled with two S's! Didn't even occur to me as a possibility; It would have been a 100 point play rather than 28!

3. LNOSRT? plays to an E.

8 Things I learned from club this week

1. DEINRSS thru a U: two bingos.

2. It sucks when you play what, strategically, is the right move:O(G)EE, to balance your rack- and your opponent holds CDKNORU, looking for an E.

3. BOUGHT takes a front hook of A. (duh, past tense of ABY! maybe if it were spelled ABUY* I'd remember?) It also extends to BOUGHTEN.

4. Balked on REGAVE. I figured you couldn't give something again once you've given it, but hey, what do I know? Well, I now know that GREAVE is also         good, and it takes a D or S.

5. MUNCHY* isn't good. Neither is MUNCHIE*, for that matter- only MUNCHIES. I hooked MUNCH with PROGENY- it was either that, or PYROGENE*, which I     thought I was totally making up, but the anagram of PROGENY is PYROGEN- no E hook on that one, though. Thankfully it stayed on.

6. There are three 8's you can make from AEEIQSU?, but the one I didn't know was through the T on the board. 

7. SPERMS takes OO as a front extension, which then in turn takes a Z front hook. 

8. ENTANGLE takes a D,P,R, and S. Oh, well one is a front hook, the others are back.

 

 

Bummer...

Opponent opens with 8G ZEE. 

I play the only playable bingo with AACEIV?, which puts an E in the triple lane.

Opponent triple-triples thru E with DEOPSTU.

Adding insult to injury, there is now a U on the board and my rack is EKMNOSX! 

Pretty sure this is as close as I'll ever get to playing this 8 as a natural.

Pathetic rack sequences

Just two examples of some poor playing/ bad luck I've had recently...

 

1. ?JNNRTX  exchange JNNR (guess I didn't think keeping ?TX could go badly... and no, there wasn't an I to play thru)

2. ?DTTUVX play TUX for 16

3. ?DGRTYV play GR(A)VY for 24

4. ?DEFMOT play FEM for 20 (no place for the 8s and I probably would've missed them anyways)

opponent bingos

5. ?ABDEOT play BOrATED for 75 and I'm still down by 35 points. I thought getting a blank on the first turn was good?

-------------------------------------

1. ?DHJLOS play JO for 18

2. ?DFHLNS play F(O)HN for 27

3. ?ADLSST don't know SANDLOTS, play LAS for 20

4. ??DDEST baDDEST for 75. baddest, indeed.

 

Words are fun.

I'm getting a kick out of learning words lately-- even though half the time I don't even know what they mean! As many of you know, there's a common method of study in competitive scrabble which generally involves going through words by probability or length- a method which I've mostly ignored. Of course, I learned the two letter words first, and the Q without U words, and the TISANE + blank bingos, but after that I pretty much have picked up words randomly. These days, I add new words to my study list one of the following ways:

1. I'm going through all the four letter words- any I don't know, I add.

2. Any interesting fives that are made from adding a hook to a four from above.

3. Any bingo (or 5 or 6 letter word) I find I've missed after reviewing a game, regardless of its probability. 

4. Fun, though mostly useless extensions that I find myself wondering about after a particular play in a game.

5. Any other random word that catches my eye for any reason (i.e. strange letter distribution)

So here's a few words I've added recently:

MUSTH a state of frenzy occuring in male elephants (interesting hook for MUST)

CATHOLICON a universal remedy, REQUIESCAT a prayer for the dead (file under 'useless extensions')

BENZOYL a univalent chemical radical (just caught my eye, I mean, hey, it has a Z in it)

MINIMILL a small scale steel mill (was looking up extensions for MILL, and look at all those I's!)

VALVAL, VALVAR pertaining to a valve (missed in a game, nice double V words.)

 

Highly Probable

So since I got a laptop for Christmas, I've actually been using Zyzzyva for most of my word study, rather than the flashcard pile from my dashboard. Of course, for the most part, my method of adding words to my 'cardbox' has still been pretty random- anytime I see a word I don't know, I'll pretty much add it. Words that I miss when I review my games also get added, and I've been going through the 4s to see what I don't have down. Over the last few years, by virtue of probability, I've learned most of the highest probability seven letter words, either by going through the stems or just learning them when I've missed them.

However- I realized that maybe I should start looking at lists of the most probable words and seeing if there are any on there I don't know- so I whipped up a list of the top 1000 sevens. I wasn't surprised that most of them are ones I've already come across. But there were a few in there (mostly ones that don't fall under the 'top bingo stem' category) that I'm pretty sure I've never even seen played. In fact, I was playing a podcast friend on Facebook the other day and he played the first one in this list, which was part of the inspiration to look them up:
OERSTED / TEREDOS
LINGUAE / UNAGILE
CTENOID / DEONTIC / NOTICED
HORDEIN
THEROID
INGOTED
DIOPTER / DIOPTRE / PERIDOT / PROTEID
TOADIED / IODATED (didn't know either of these could end with D instead of S)
SERIEMA / SEAMIER
Ah well, these are all in my cardbox now, so I can't rely on my previous strategy of throwing my opponents off by incorrectly challenging words like these and then playing much less probable words later on in the game to confuse them.

What I learned at club this week

-There is no 4 letter front extension to THOLE. (lots of 3 letter ones, though, and BUT isn't one of them, sadly.)

-SPREE is not a verb. (would have tried it if I got ING, and my opponent wasn't sure if they'd challenge.)

-when you don't see AEINRRS in your flashcards for a while, you may end up ripping out your hair over the fact that you know it forms a word while the little Samtimer clock laughs at you and keeps counting down.

-LORrAINE* is a phony, and if you take a few more seconds, you'll find that there are a dozen other playable bingos on the board.

-AAINOV? has another bingo in it besides OVARIAN. (I needed it to play to an S.)

-OVOLI is the plural of OVOLO (how did I know the first one and not the second?)

Low Probability Word of the Day: ABHIKLOR

Brought to you by the last day of our CSA farm share.

Find the bingo Quiz

Two bingo lanes open: one is a two-tile overlap over JEE, the other through or ending with M.

Your rack is DDEILS? Ready? Go!

Post how long it took you, if you'd like.

Things I learned at club this week

1. Aside from taking an N and J front hook, APERIES also takes DR- and GR- front extensions.

2. Two new 5's: DICTY (snobbish, adj.) GUTTA (a drop of liquid, takes an E, no S)

3. Two new 6's: QUARTO (a paper size, not sure how I didn't know this hook to QUART)   BRUXED (to grind the teeth, knew BRUX, but not that it was a verb.)

I just dropped in for one game, and I was pretty happy with my play, even though I lost.. I was down 100 points pretty quick as my opponent played two natural bingos, AAEIPRS and HIENSST through an I (I also didn't know there was a bingo without the I), but I clawed my way back to what was nearly a chance to bingo out and win. I was happy that I knew to open a lane at the end and fish at mostly the right times, even though the right tiles didn't come my way. Got her to challenge ADEGMNOT (which I wasn't 100% on myself.)

Play the game here
(note: I switched the player names by accident)

Found word of the day

GMRUYYZ



-a branch of chemistry dealing with fermentation.

I'm sure I've seen this crazy word near the back of the OSPD, but I didn't remember it. It definitely jumped out at me off the cover of this magazine. (For those of you who haven't been reading long, I work at the post office, thus the often-captured words from magazine covers, etc.)

Found word of the day

AABIKSN.. spotted at the local florist. I've learned a few other good ones here.



an australian plant.

Add an E and you get the Japanese art of flower arranging.

The latest quiz from my dashboard

I've been staring at this one for a few days, and finally gave up on the answer (I wasn't sure if there was one.) The tiles are GHIIRT? in case you can't see.


Also, can anyone tell me why this is the most viewed page on my blog? Leave a comment, please.

Alternate spellings to 'common' bingos..

Here's a couple of bingos that I might have falsely challenged before discovering that they are alternate spellings to the more commonly used bingos that I'll also list:

TAWNEYS (a light brown color, pl.)
I would have said, "Duh, it's spelled TAWNIES, you idiot!"

AIGRETTE (a tuft of feathers worn as a head ornament)
Of course, I know AIGRETS (SATIRE + G), but never knew that it's really
an alternate spelling of the above.

Got any others to add?

STOURIE

If you googled STOURIE, you probably ended up on this page. Congratulations! Hopefully you also enjoy competitive scrabble, because that's what this blog is really about.

01.28.08 5:08 PM




adj. dusty

found: flipping through the OSPD 4. Words that are at the tops of the pages denoting the alphabetical span of words catch my eye.

also: alternate spellings: STOURY... root word is STOUR/ STOURE. plus, it can be an extension of OURIE (adj. shivering with cold)

notes: I like this word because a. it's 7 letters, and b. because it sort of looks like the word 'story'.. I'm hoping that will help me remember it.