Sowpods Scrabble Tips

Scrabulous is back on Facebook, with a new name, new rules and circular tiles that could help its makers skirt legal claims from the owners of Scrabble. Two days ago the creators of Scrabulous blocked their popular version of the word game from U.S. and Canadian users of Facebook. The Indian brothers behind Scrabulous were sued in federal court by Hasbro Inc., the owner of Scrabble's North American rights. Now, the game has reappeared with the name Wordscraper. The change could help it avoid any brand confusion with Scrabble, a key point in trademark disputes. The game itself has also changed. Instead of Scrabble-like square tiles, for instance, Wordscraper has circles. The tiles earning double and triple points have been rearranged, and tiles for quadruple points have been added. Source: Yahoo News

There is a new official Scrabble application available in Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/livescrabble . This is obviously there to replace Scrabulous, which currently looks like it will lose its court case. The new application is very well-featured, with the possibility of playing live timed games, word check, letters remaining. Unfortunately at present it is only available outside the US and Canada because of copyright issues. There are still one or two glitches as it is in Beta, but it is still fun to play. In the game above I am just about to put down my bingo!

Everybody knows that you are not allowed proper nouns in Scrabble (Sowpods version). However a quick trawl of the Scrabble dictionary reveals the following allowable words which are also people's names. This is only an initial list - I'm sure there are hundreds more. You might find a few surprises. Feel free to add any more that you know of in the comments. abigail, alan, ana, ann, anna, ava, bill, billy, baldric, basil, beth, bob, bunty, charity, cher, cherry, cliff, carl, colin, crystal, dean, daisy, danny, dawn, deb, derrick, dexter, dick, don, donna, doris, emma, eric, erica, eve, faith, felicity, frank, gill, grace, harry, hazel, henry, holly, iris, ivy, jack, jade, jake, james, jane, jasmine, jasper, jean, jeanette, jeff, jenny, jessie, jill, jo, joanna, joe, joey, john, johnny, joy, kitty, laura, laurel, lily, louis, madge, martin, mary, matt, maud, mavis, mick, micky, mickey, mike, nardine, nat, natty, neal, nick, nicky, olive, oscar, otto, pat, pandora, pearl, peter,...

There are some great ways of extending your vocabulary through playing other games than Scrabble. On Facebook a really useful game is Word Twist which is basically an anagramming game but fun because you get to challenge your friends. At the end you get to see which words you couldn't find in the six or seven letter anagram. On Facebook as well, its worth playing Scramble and of course Scrabulous . By the way, there is a seven-letter anagram in the game shown on the left. Know what it is?

Yesterday I played this game online and managed to get four bingos: BLINDERS, CLANGER, NEAREST and STATING. They weren't exactly clever words but its the first time I managed four in one game. It was a challenge match, so there happened to be three "phonies" - one played by me and two by my opponent. If you can spot them, you could write the answer in the comments section. Click on the board to see a larger image.

EUOUAE

Coming from a vegetarian, that's a bit rich. But I want more pork, or to be precise morepork. Sometimes you come across a word in the dictionary that you just can't take your eyes off. The image is of a morepork owl, native to New Zealand and a protected bird of prey. You'll also be interested to know that they eat hairy huhu beetles. One day I hope to play "morepork" and "huhu" in Scrabble. They are both legal. Failing that, if I don't have eight letters, I could try "mopoke", an alternative spelling.

According to Scrabulous ETAERIO is the most likely seven-letter word to get in Scrabble. It refers to an aggregate fruit, like a raspberry - which is actually lots of little fruits joined at their bases. Another likely word is TAENIAE - the plural of TAENIA which was an ancient Greek hairband. Some other high-probability bingos containing five vowels, in order of likelihood, include: AEOLIAN - relating to the wind (the image is of an aeolian harp - a harp played by the wind) OLEARIA - daisy bush AIERIES - eyries or eagles' nests DOULEIA - veneration of saints in RC Church AEONIAN - everlasting AENEOUS - brass coloured or greenish-gold AREOLAE - coloured rings around human nipples AUREOLE - halo ALIENEE - person to whom a transfer of property is made EUGENIA - plant of the clove family AEROBIA - organisms that require oxygen

I play scrabble addictively online at www.isc.ro as well as on Scrabulous (in Facebook). Since I've been playing online, my ability to anagram in my head has increased enormously. This is probably due in no small part to the fact that I have played 6,400 games as UncleArly and 3,800 games as DJScratch (just to mention two of the handles I use on ISC) and I've just reincarnated as Banoffee (allowable word). Despite this, I still get accused of cheating from time to time - usually by people who have just lost a game. I don't cheat, I just spend some time learning the words that other players use against me, often looking them up afterwards. I also mostly play "Void" games which means you can try out words that you think might be right. The software refuses them if they are not acceptable in SOWPODS (or whichever dictionary you choose to use). Occasionally I play Single or Double Challenge games, where you cannot check the words as you play them. It keeps...

All the three letter words you can play just using consonants. Now these are really worth learning. BRR BYS CLY CWM DRY FLY FRY GYM GYP HMM HYP LYM MYC NTH NYS PHT PLY PRY PST PYX RHY SHH SHY SKY SLY SNY SPY STY SWY SYN THY TRY TSK TWP TYG VLY WRY WYN ZZZ

Well Scrabulous is still alive, although apparently the Internet Scrabble Club is also under threat now. Can't Hasbro and Mattel (the international owners of Scrabble) see that Scrabulous and ISC are actually creating more fans of the game? It would be interesting to know if sales of the game have been affected since the rise of Scrabulous. As Josh Quittner of Fortune suggests: "If I were an evil genius running a board games company whose product line spanned everything from Monopoly to Clue, I might do this: Wait until someone comes up with an excellent implementation of my games and does the hard work of coding and debugging the thing and signing up the masses. Then, once it got to scale, I’d sweep in and take it over. Let the best pirate site win! If I were compassionate, I’d even cut in the guys who did all the work for a percentage point or two to keep the site running." And now you really can join a Facebook group to save Scrabulous!

These are some really fab four-letter words with three vowels. ALAE AIGA AMIA ANOA ATUA AULA PAUA AKEE ALEE AWEE EALE EINA ILEA KAIE EOAN TOEA AUNE IXIA JIAO MOAI NAOI OBIA OHIA AITU HUIA KUIA UNAI OUMA OUPA URAI LUAU UNAU EIDE EMEU EUGE ONIE IURE OLEO MEOU HIOI MOOI OLIO

So you've got no vowels on your rack? Don't despair - here are some effective SOWPODS four letter words containing no vowels! BRRR BYRL CYST FYRD GYMP GYNY HWYL HYMN JYNX KYND LYCH LYNX MYTH PFFT PRYS PSST RYND SCRY SKRY SKYF SKYR SPRY SYNC SYND SYPH TRYP TYMP TYND TYPP TYPY WYCH WYND WYNN XYST YMPT

Hasbro, the manufacturers of Scrabble, are trying to shut down Scrabulous - the ninth most popular Facebook application. Invented by two brothers from Calcutta - Jayant, 21 and Rajat Agarwalla, 26, the application has 2.3 million active users as of today and 70 million pageviews in the past month. However Hasbro have warned Facebook of their intention to shut down Scrabulous. So perhaps we do need a Facebook Group to Save Scrabulous ! Watch this space. If the worst comes to the worst we'll just have to continue playing live at http://www.isc.ro

Anagrams is a board-free word game that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words. It is very often played 'out of hours' at Scrabble tournaments around the world. The game has various other names, in particular 'Snap Jarnac ' in the UK. The game has been sold separately as a commercial product, but at Scrabble tournaments is typically played by any number of players (typically 4-8) using two sets of Scrabble tiles of different colour. Tiles are placed face down on the table and then turned over one by one, and players form words by combining unused tiles with existing words, their own or others'. Whenever a player can form a word with the tiles in the middle of the table, possibly combined with words that he or another player has already formed, he calls out the word and uses those tiles to spell it out in front of him. If two players call out words simultaneously, the longer word prevails. All words must be at least five letters long and the new word must c...

The perfect place to relax after a game of scrabble... These Scrabble Sofas are made by Stephen Reed for employees in the London offices of Bloomberg financial services. Users can make words and leave messages with the screen printed letter cushions.

Very handy for putting words alongside each other, these are all the two letter words allowable in SOWPODS Scrabble: AA AB AD AE AG AH AI AL AM AN AR AS AT AW AX AY BA BE BI BO BY CH DA DE DI DO EA ED EE EF EH EL EM EN ER ES ET EX FA FE FY GI GO GU HA HE HI HM HO ID IF IN IO IS IT JA JO KA KI KO KY LA LI LO MA ME MI MM MO MU MY NA NE NO NU NY OB OD OE OF OH OI OM ON OO OP OR OS OU OW OX OY PA PE PI PO QI RE SH SI SO ST TA TE TI TO UG UH UM UN UP UR US UT WE WO XI XU YA YE YO YU ZA ZO

A couple of handy bingos if you happen to have AEIORST are: OARIEST - like an oar OTARIES - seals with ears And nothing to do with the above, but handy nonetheless is AEROSAT - a satellite

The letters left in your rack after you play a word are called your "rack leave". As you play your game, aim to get the following six letters in your rack: R-E-T-A-I-N With these six letters you can add almost any letter of the alphabet to make a bingo - thus scoring an extra 50 points bonus! Learning the following words could help you increase your score by 50 or more points each time you play... RETAIN + B: atebrin RETAIN + C: cantier, ceratin, certain, creatin, crinate, nacrite, tacrine RETAIN + D: antired, detrain, trained RETAIN + E: arenite, retinae, trainee RETAIN + F: fainter, fenitar RETAIN + G: granite, gratine, ingrate, tangier, tearing RETAIN + H: hairnet, inearth, therian RETAIN + I: inertia RETAIN + J: jantier, nartjie RETAIN + K: keratin RETAIN + L: entrail, latrine, ratline, reliant, retinal, trenail RETAIN + M: meranti, minaret, raiment RETAIN + N: entrain, trannie RETAIN + O: otarine RETAIN + P: painter, pertain, repaint RETAIN + R: retrain, terrain, traine...