Ode to the letter E

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

EYETEETH

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

SQUEEGEE

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.

Related Articles

Other Articles

The letter O

The O is not just the fourth vowel alphabetically, it is also the fourth-best in Scrabble, not quite as good as A or I, certainly nowhere near as good as the E, but better than the U. Having said that, it has the advantage that if you get too many… Read More

Challenge!

In this country (certainly until you get to the more high-level tournaments) you can challenge any word your opponent plays “free of charge”; if it does turn out to be a valid word, you don’t lose anything. Many players don’t make full use of this rule; they will look doubtfully… Read More

The letter N

The N, being one of the one-point tiles, clearly figures in a lot of bonus words. You can think of dozens of words beginning with EN-, IN-, CON-, UN- and other prefixes. It comes up in endings like -MAN, -MENT, -TION and -ING. But just a few words of warning… Read More