101 Ways to Win at Scrabble: Top tips for Scrabble success - Barry Grossman

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E. The best of the vowels, ranking perhaps equally with the S as the best letter of all. One of the most frustrating things for the Scrabble player is to go rack after rack without an E. Especially as the Scrabble set contains twelve of them, three more than any other letter.

      It’s almost impossible to say what are the best ways to use an E – there are so many. Prefixes like DE- and RE-, suffixes like -ER, -EST, -ISE, -ATE, -IES, -ED and plenty more. It will fit with almost any promising looking six-letter combination to make a seven, and likewise with most reasonable sevens to make an eight. Even having two or more Es isn’t as bad as having duplicates of other letters. Indeed, it’s quite possible to use four Es in a seven- or eight-letter word. Here are a few interesting ones:

      DEERWEED a plant

      ENTETEE obsessed

      EYETEETH

      GREENEYE a small fish with green eyes

      REPEREPE the elephant fish, a large fish with a trunklike snout

      SLEEVEEN a sly, smooth-tongued person

      SQUEEGEE

      WEEWEES urinates

      In the unlikely event of having too many Es (and even that has a silver lining – you may be depriving your opponent of any), there are plenty of short words to help you get rid of the excess:

      EE Scots for eye

      CEE the letter C

      DEE the letter D

      JEE exclamation of surprise

      MEE Malaysian noodle dish

      NEE born

      PEE the letter P

      REE a walled enclosure

      VEE the letter V

      ZEE the letter Z (US)

      EME South African word for uncle

      ENE variant of even

      EEK exclamation of mild fright

      EEN plural of EE

      A more unexpected use of the E is that it goes after a lot of other words to form new words, or, in Scrabble jargon, it is a versatile ‘hook’ (because it hooks onto the word). The large number of these E hooks means you might be able to fit in a seven-letter word or other good play that might otherwise have had to go unplayed. Here are a few E end-hooks:

      HEM becomes HEME

      HET becomes HETE

      TIG becomes TIGE

      FORM becomes FORME

      LENS becomes LENSE

      LOWS becomes LOWSE

      RARE becomes RAREE

      COMIC becomes COMICE

      CARPAL becomes CARPALE

      PENSION becomes PENSIONE

      Many of these words are just old or variant versions of the word without the E (as in ‘Ye Merrie Olde’). A TIGE is the trunk of an architectural column, a RAREE show was a carnival, and you might know the COMICE is a pear and a PENSIONE is a small Italian hotel.

      The secret to playing the big bonus-scoring words is … you’ve got to know them! Obvious really, but you won’t always get a nice simple word like RETAINS or ENTAILS popping onto your rack. You might end up with a rack like ETESIAN (a Mediterranean wind), GENITOR (biological father, as in progenitor) or VENTILS (valve on a musical instrument). But if you don’t know it’s a word, you won’t be able to play it.

      The trouble is there are over 33,000 seven-letter words to learn … A lot of players have embraced the concept of six-letter stems as a way of learning seven-letter words that are likely to come up. This means taking a combination of six letters which you are likely to get on your rack, and which combine with a lot of other letters to make a seven-letter word, and learning those sevens.

      At the end of this book, you will find a few resources you can look into to help you make a list of seven-letter words using six common letters like RETAIN or SATIRE. There is a very useful book called Collins Scrabble Trainer, or for the more computerate there are computer programs that can help you.

      To take the best of the six-letter stems, RETAIN goes with every letter except A, Q, V, X, Y and Z to form at least one seven-letter word. Learn them all, and you will automatically have your seven if your rack reads RETAIN with any of the other twenty letters. Here are some of them – a definition is given for the more unusual anagrams.

+B:ATEBRIN malaria drug
+C:CERTAIN
NACRITE mineral
+D:TRAINED
ANTIRED a colour of an antiquark
+E:TRAINEE
ARENITE type of rock
+F:FAINTER
FENITAR plant with spurred flowers
+G:TANGIER
GRATINE
+H:HAIRNET
THERIAN from Theria, a subclass of mammal
+I:INERTIA
+J:JANTIER
NARTJIE tangerine
+K:KERATIN
+L:LATRINE
TRENAIL peg used in carpentry
+M:MINARET
MERANTI Malaysian wood
+N:ENTRAIN
TRANNIE transistor radio
+O:NOTAIRE
OTARINE from otary, a type of seal
+P:PAINTER
PERTAIN
+R:TRAINER
TERRAIN
+S:RETAINS
ANESTRI
+T:NATTIER
INTREAT
+U:URINATE
TAURINE bull-like
+W:TAWNIER
TINWARE

      Not a favourite tile for most players, the best use of the F is often just to hunt for a handy vowel or Y which has a premium square beside it, and use that to play a two-letter word, preferably going both ways to double the value.

      So if, say, an O has a triple-letter square to the right, you could put the F on it to score thirteen. Then play downwards if possible, even with another two-letter word, and your score is into the high twenties.

      The two-letter words with F are:

      FA, FE (Hebrew letter), FY (whimsically strange), EF, IF, OF

      Useful threes with an F include:

      FIZ, FEZ, WOF, FAW, FOU, FAP, AFF, EFF, IFF, OFF, FUB, FUD, AUF, OOF

      A FAW is a gypsy woman, a WOF is a fool, a FOU is a bushel, and FAP means drunk. There are two wonderful fours which both come from the Muslim world – FIQH (law) and WAQF (charity). In the same vein you can also play FAQIR (Muslim who spurns worldly possessions).

      Your best chance of a bonus with an F may involve the prefix FORE-, such as FOREARM, FORELEG, FORENAME. The likeliest suffix is -IFY (RECTIFY, IDENTIFY, etc.). If you haven’t got the Y, see if -IFIED or -IFIES are any help. There aren’t so many seven-letter words with these endings but there are a few nice eights, like RATIFIED/RATIFIES and PACIFIED/PACIFIES.

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