Seven-letter stems

Just as you can use six-letter stems to help you remember lots of useful seven-letter words, you can take seven-letter stems and use them to find eight- letter words. About half of all bonus words played are eight-letter words – you can’t afford to neglect them.

Let’s take a rack like AEGILNR; you may be able to play one of the seven-letter words it makes – ALIGNER, ENGRAIL (decorate with small notches), LAERING (from laer, make a circle with wagons), LEARING, NARGILE (another name for a hookah), REALIGN, REGINAL (queenly). But if it’s the sort of board that’s more amenable to eight-letter bonuses, it’s good to be able to call on the likes of these:

+A:       GERANIAL substance used in (lemony) perfume

REGALIAN royal

+B:       BLEARING

+C:      CLEARING

RELACING

+D:      DANGLIER

DEARLING darling

+E:      ALGERINE woollen cloth

+F:      FINAGLER one who finagles, achieves their ends via trickery

+G:      REGALING

LAGERING fermenting into lager

+H:      NARGHILE

NARGILEH other words for hookah

+I:          GAINLIER

+J:         JANGLIER

+L:         ALLERGIN

+M:       MALINGER

GERMINAL

+N:      LEARNING

+O:      REGIONAL

GERANIOL substance used in (rosy) perfumes

+P:        GRAPLINE device with several hooks

PEARLING

+R:      GNARLIER

+S:        REALIGNS

SALERING enclosure for livestock at market

+T:           ALERTING

TERAGLIN Australian fish

+V:          RAVELING

+X:      RELAXING

+Y:          RELAYING

YEARLING

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.

Other Articles

The letter Z

Point for point, the Z is one of the best tiles you can pick. It’s worth ten points, but it often isn’t all that difficult to use. There are the two-letter words ZA (pizza) and ZO (a yak-cow crossbreed – you must have learnt that by now if nothing else). Read More

Want to learn some new words? Get personal!

To a dedicated fan of Scrabble, words are the tools of our craft. Without a decent word power (as distinct from vocabulary – remember, you don’t have to know what they mean, whatever the purists might say!) then your options for moves are restricted and you’ll rapidly find yourself getting… Read More

Company names allowed in Scrabble

You might think that the name of a company or a product would always be spelt with a capital. Not so: some of them have found their way into the dictionary without an initial capital and thus become valid for Scrabble. All these words are allowed: BIRO EBAYER EBAYING FACEBOOK… Read More