A Nestful of Aeries

Or should that be Eyrie?

Well luckily there's lots of ways to spell the word for an eagle's nest in Scrabble. Especially if you are using the most up to date Collins Scrabble Words (CSW) for 2012.

You can spell it:

AERY
AERIE
AIERY
AYRIE
EYRIE
EYRY

A very handy bingo can also be made using the letters AEEIIRS:

AIERIES

Some of the new Scrabble words

Here are some of the latest additions to the Scrabble canon. I look forward to finding and learning all the 3,000 additions. You can download a list of the most useful three to eight letter new Scrabble words for 2011 here. Innit?

You can read a comprehensive introduction to the new list at the WESPA site.

However you can't actually use them until January 2012. No harm in learning a few though.

ACIDFREAK
ALOO: (Hindi) a potato
ALU: (Hindi) a potato
ARTHOUSE: a style of film
AUTOSAVE: a facility which automatically saves newly-recorded data
BARCODE
BIMBETTE
BREDREN: brother
CHAVETTE
CLIT: clitoris
DYKON: a celebrity, often a woman, who is much admired by lesbians
FACEBOOK
FANSITE
FIQH: Islamic jurisprudence, an expansion of the Sharia Islamic law
GAK: cocaine
GOBI: cauliflower
GREBO: a devotee of heavy metal or grunge music, with unkempt hair and clothes
GRRL and GRRRL: as in RIOT GRRL, a young woman who plays or enjoys an aggressively feminist style of punk rock music
INBOX: email folder for incoming mail
INNIT: isn't it
KEEMA: (Hindi) in Indian cookery, minced beef
MEH: mediocre or boring; an expression of indifference or boredom
MILF: a sexually attractive middle-aged woman
MINGIN
MOOBS: overdeveloped breasts on a man, caused by excess weight or lack of exercise
MWAH: a representation of the sound of a kiss
MYSPACE
NANG: (slang) excellent, cool
NOOB: an Internet novice, a NEWBIE
OFFIE and OFFY: (slang) an off-licence
PAEDO: short for paedophile
PERVY: perverted
PERVIEST
PUNAANY: female sex organ
QIN: a kind of Chinese zither with silken strings
SCREAMO: a type of hardcore music
SNOTRAG
SOZ: short for sorry
STRIM: to cut grass with a Strimmer
SUG: to attempt to sell a product while purporting to be engaged in market research
TAOISEACH: prime minister of Ireland
THANG: (slang) thing
TIK: the drug methamphetamine in crystal form
TINA: (slang) crystal meth
TRANCEY: a style of music
TRANCIER
TWEENAGE: a child of approximately eight to fourteen years of age
TWIGLET: wheat snack
VLOG: video blogging
WAGYU: a breed of cattle
WEBZINE
WIKI: a collaborative web site that allows users control over the site's content

Stagier

One combination of letters which seems to come up regularly for me is AEGIRST.  The only word I can usually think of is "Stagier".  After a bit more cogitation I thought of "GAITERS", but that was it. So I decided to look up the combo in "Scrabble Words" and came up with the following list:

AGISTER, AIGRETS, GAITERS, SEAGIRT, STAGIER, STRIGAE, TIRAGES, TRIAGES

Take a look at the list and then play a game of online hangman (which I created just for this purpose) to see how many you can remember. OK you are unlikely to lose a life because you know which letters are in the word, but it might help you to remember them for next time!

By the way, no I didn't know what most of them meant either.  But I do now :)

Lexicomania

Lexicomania is a site for sad people obsessed with Boggle and Scrabble. Whoopee! It has a great quiz. You need to solve each page before you can move onto the next one. I'm on page 2 out of 15. How well can you do? Thanks to Al for putting this together.

155 tricky four letter words (A-M)

Here are 155 tricky four letter words which you can test yourself on using Flash cards and other games at http://quizlet.com/_qnj3

They include words such as: MAKI (Japanese) a slice of a cold rice concoction, COWK (dial.) to retch, feel nauseated and HOHA (NZ) bored, annoyed. Enjoy.

3 letters no vowels

I've found a useful site which enables you to create your own sets of flash cards - which you can play various games with, as well as using it to learn the words. The site will remember which words you get right. I've created a set with three-letter SOWPODS Scrabble words containing only consonants.

There are 19 words to learn, plus their meanings, including such gems as myc, lym, wyn, tyg and many others.

Otarine plus one letter

Let's say you happen to pull out the most likely and fruitful handful of letters in Scrabble: AEINORT

You already have a bingo: OTARINE (like or pertaining to seals)

But if you add one letter you can also make the following acceptable words:

A aeration

B baritone, obtainer, reobtain, taborine

C actioner, anoretic, creation, reaction

D arointed, deration, ordinate, rationed

H antihero

L oriental, relation, taileron

N anointer, inornate, reanoint

P atropine

R anterior

S anoestri, arsonite, notaries, notarise, rosinate, senorita

T tentoria

Z notarize