Ah, the E, lovely 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
GREENEYE a small fish with green eyes
REPEREPE the elephant fish, a large fish with a trunk-like snout
SLEEVEEN a sly, smooth-tongued person
WEEWEES urinates
Short words containing E
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 word for eye
CEE the letter C
DEE Scots word for die
GEE or JEE exclamation of surprise
MEE Malaysian noodle dish
NEE born (indicating the maiden name of a married woman)
PEE urinate
REE a walled enclosure
VEE the letter V
ZEE the letter Z (US)
EME Scots word for uncle
ENE variant of even
EEK exclamation of shock or fright
EEN plural of EE
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.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
