The eight-letter combination with the most anagrams is AEGINRST, with eleven. No obvious name suggests itself for this group, like the RETAINS group or the TEASING one, but I suppose we could call it the STEARING committee, or even the ANGRIEST brigade.
STEARING is simply an old form of STEERING, REASTING means ‘being uncooperative, especially of horses’. ANGSTIER, meaning ‘more worried’, is curiously close in meaning to ANTSIER (from the RETAINS group), despite their completely different origins. ANGSTY comes from German whereas ANTSY comes from Americans who got annoyed with having ants in their pants.
By Barry Grossman
Barry is a leading UK Scrabble player and winner of several tournaments. He is the author of Scrabble for Beginners (Chambers), Need to Know Scrabble, Scrabble – Play to Win and The Little Book of Scrabble Trickster. He has also contributed to numerous other books on the subject of words and word-games, has been a series champion of Channel 4’s Countdown, and has written four comedy series for BBC Radio 4. He lives in Hertford.
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