101 Ways to Win at Scrabble: Top tips for Scrabble success. Barry Grossman
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
29 You Can Put an E After That?
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.