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 about our friendly-looking N.
UN-, like -LY that we looked at in the ‘The Letter L’ article, can lead you astray. It’s hard to guess which words can have UN before them and which can’t. For instance, you can be UNLAST but not unfirst because UNLAST doesn’t mean “not last”, it’s an old spelling of unlaced. You can UNHAT (remove your hat) but you can’t uncoat, though you can have UNCOATED and UNCOATING. You can UNLIVE but you can’t undie, but you can have UNDIES, and indeed I hope you have.
The ING suffix is discussed in the ‘Using the letter G’ article, but it’s worth repeating that one of the commonest mistakes made by inexperienced players is to hang on to ING, thus limiting themselves to playing with four tiles. Don’t.
Finally, N is a letter which doesn’t begin many words. There are more words beginning with the four-point letters F and H than there are beginning with N. Just a point to bear in mind when you’re switching your letters around on the rack looking for that elusive word.
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.
