6 Things I learned/ was reminded of from club tonight

1. SOU takes an S, SAU doesn't (one's a former French coin, the other is a Vietnamese coin. I knew SAU didn't take an S but was thinking of it when I thought of SOU... so I didn't put down EFIORST! Crud!) SOUS takes an E.
2. BECAP is good- add it to a ton of other BE- verbs that are weird. (I sense a podcast feature here...)
3. REVET is good, and takes two different front hooks- T and B.
4. Somehow I knew BREGMATA, but not BREGMA. (BREGMATE is also good, and BREGMA doesn't take an S.)
5. REPEG is good.. Hm, I'm sensing a theme here: five letter words.
6. There is a bingo in GHIINVY with a C on the board!
You can check out a game I played vs. Mike F, our club's best (I think) player, in which I luck out and win. (I originally simmed this to show Mike, hence the comment directed to him early on.)

7 things I learned from club this week

1. CHAIR has two 3 letter front extensions: ARM and BED.

2. EUPHORIA can be extended with -NT.

3. NIELLO is good. (It's both a noun and a verb, plural is -LI or -LOS.)

4. TALUK is good. (another interesting 5 I didn't know, it takes an A or S.)

5. An F (or any other high point tile) will score you more points on a TLS (in two directions) than as part of a DWS.

6. COELIAC is good. Luckily I didn't challenge- CELIAC takes an S, but this one doesn't.

7. I don't think I knew TELOI. A highly probable, but not playable, five.

 

Here's the game I played against Mike, our club's best player- I only needed both blanks and a late Z/S draw to win it. I try and explain some of my strategy, flawed though it may be. Feel free to leave your input. 

 

Some PHYL- words...

Some shorter ones (which are what got me started on this):

PHYLA, plural of
PHYLUM, a taxanomic division- also PHYLAR

PHYLAE, plural of
PHYLE, a political subdivision in ancient Greece- also PHYLIC

Of course, there's the delicious PHYLLO, very thin pastry dough (also FILO, FILLO)
but here are the cool extensions:

PHYLLOCLADE
PHYLLOTAXIS, PHYLLOTAXES, PHYLLOTAXIES, PHYLLOTAXY
PHYLLOGENETIC, PHYLLOGENY/IES
PHYLLOXERA(S)

That's not all of them, feel free to post your favorite that I left out.

Cancun found word of the day 2

ACIOT


This is kind of like a mexican raccoon (not really, I'm just making that up)- except for some reason these seem a little more trustworthy, to me. There's a cool way to extend the word too:
ACDIIMNOTU

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?)

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)

7 more things I learned at club this week, and a rules question.

1. It feels good to go 4-0. I don't usually get to stay for more than 2 games.
2. I apparently have a reputation for not playing phonies. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. (I still drew challenges on FURZY, ONERY, and RESITING, though.)
3. FORM takes and E hook. FORME also takes an E hook. FORMEE takes no hooks.
4. Double check what the blanks are before deciding you have no play. I held an X in my hand and passed for the last three turns because I thought a blank above a DWS was an 'I' instead of an 'E'. I could have played it for 36 points and instead my opponent racked up 50+ points including my X. Luckily I was up 130!
5. LOWBORN doesn't take an S (I wasn't 100% and didn't play it, luckily)
6. NICE has only one 4 letter front extension.
7. LEU only takes a D back hook.

Ok, here's the rules question: I play TODD(Y). Several turns later, opponent exchanges, and a few turns after that, on my turn, I notice that the T is missing from TODDY! Opponent says she may have taken the T somehow during her exchange but neither of us is sure. Both of us have played a T between the exchange and the current turn. Club is pretty laid back, so the club director suggests we leave the board as it is, even though ODDY* is now on the board. I end up making a play on that turn that puts another T on top of it, giving me more points than I would have otherwise gained. Seems kind of unfair, but on the other hand, I did discover that the tile was missing, (and I suspect that my opponent in fact did accidentally pick the tile up.) Anyone know the proper ruling on this? I don't want to post it to cgp if I don't have to.

Found Word of the Day

This week's word is brought to you courtesy of the break room at my office. One never knows what treasures will be found there: doughnuts or last night's pizza brought in by a coworker, some trashy paperback novels, or DULSE with garlic.

DULSE has 4 anagrams:
DUELS, LEUDS, LUDES, and SLUED.

DULSE is apparently an edible seaweed.. there was another delicious sounding container of stuff in which the main ingredient was KELP.... which for your information, takes an S front hook, as well as a Y back hook.

4s Hook Quiz

So as I've been studying my 4's, I've also been trying to pay attention to any interesting hooks that they take. See if you know the unusual front hooks these words take:

YARD
HOOT
MAZE
SADI
ATAP
RARE
AGIN

Studying 4s

So we've had an extra laptop in our house for the past few weeks, and I just recently figured out that I can carry it along with me to work. (I'm a letter carrier for the Post Office. So if you see a guy in western mass typing in his truck instead of delivering mail, it might be me.) I installed Zyzzya, and decided to start seriously studying my four letter words. I could be wrong, but I think that learning the '4s' is one of the main hurdles one has to get over before moving toward the upper end of an intermediate ranking. Of course, I haven't actually played in a tournament since 2008, so I don't really know what my ranking is. Hopefully it's higher than the 1075 I rated after the two that I played in that year. Not because I'm egotistical about it, but because I'd be ticked if I've been studying flashcards and reviewing games all this time without improving. Anyway, here's a few words I've discovered recently, narrowed down because they are formed from surprise -Y end hooks.

ATOPY a type of allergy (ATOPIC adj)
BOTHY a hut in Scotland
COBBY stocky
DONSY donsie (adj) (anagram: SYNOD)

Clearly this guy didn't study his expurgated 5's...

translation: 'FLUSH IT KOOK..OK HOWLY  HOWLIE  HOALE (SPELL IT WRITE ASSHOLE) OK BARNY' as seen on the bathroom wall at Food Lion in NC.

Found Word of the Day

AREPA a cornmeal cake

anagram is
PARAE plural of
PARA a woman's status regarding the bearing of offspring (related to PUERPERA?)

here's a simple recipe in case you're curious:

http://www.whats4eats.com/breads/arepas-recipe

UMBELULE*

So what are the chances of this-
I see someone play UMBEL in an annotated game (I think that's where I got it from, anyways), and look it up in my OSPD4 while at work. I see UMBELULE* listed, and say, 'cool! an 8 with two U's! I'll make a flashcard and learn two words at once!' Unfortunately, I happened to stumble upon one of a handful of words that was mistakenly added to some printings of the OSPD... Turns out it can only be spelled UMBELLULE.

UMBELED
UMBELLAR
UMBELLED
UMBELLET
are all good, though.

Here's a list of those words along with all the other changes from OSPD3 to OSPD4, if youi're interested:
http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/boards/dictionary/ospd4-changes.html

The 'words missing from early printings' can be especially fun to play because a lot of players have never heard of them.

I love me some chemical compounds...

Here's a long list of words that I deleted from the current podcast when it became waaaay too long. Plus I think it's easier to see it written out in this case:

IMINE a chemical compound
IMINO containing an imine (adj- no S)

AMIN (main, mina) amine (takes front hook of G)
AMINE a chemical compound (also takes front hook of G, F)
AMINO containing an amine united with a nonacid radical (adj- no S)
AMNIO  a surgical insertion of a needle into the uterus (takes back hooks N, S)

I unfortunately had to witness my wife getting an AMNIO (full name is amniocentesis) when she was pregnant with our first child. I don't recommend it.

AMMINE (immane) a type of chemical compound
AMMINO pertaining to ammine (adj- no S)

AMMONO containing ammonia (adj- no S)
AMMONIA (takes back hooks C, S)

LOL

Here's some fun words that end in LOL:

ATENOLOL a drug to treat hypertension

LINALOL linalool (a fragrant alcohol) .....I knew this one, but not the -LOOL spelling.

SALOL a chemical compound (OLLAS)

SANTALOL sandalwood oil ....... or, Santa Laughs Out Loud.

TALLOL a resinous liquid

THEELOL estriol (an estrogen) .....alt spelling of ESTRIOL- who knew?

TIMOLOL a drug used to treat glaucoma ..... someone played this on me on Facebook. Then they tried to  tell me they had glaucoma, so they knew this word. Sure.

XYLOL xylene (a flammable hydrocarbon) ..... the word that got me thinking about this entry.

Speaking of LOL (or ROTFL, LMAO,  etc.)... I have a problem. I find that even if it's the only online comment I can think of using when I respond to someone's post, it still makes me sound like a 15 year old. But the alternatives, ('Ha Ha!, 'Too Funny!', etc.) make me sound like my mom. What to do? I'm thinking of starting a new one:
LSOLTSTITTF  (Long Sequence Of Letters To Show That I Think That's Funny)