In the days before newer editions of the dictionary brought us all those U-less Q words, the U was prized as the only way you could get rid of the Q. Now that that no longer applies, it is not a particularly highly valued tile, being the least useful of the vowels. It is not a terrible tile, but there are some letters with which it is very incompatible, notably V and W. Yes, you might get UNWEAVE or UNWOVEN, but it won’t happen too often.
There are three interesting three-letter words with two Us:
ULU a type of knife
UMU a cooking pit
UTU a reward
They all take handy front hooks to become:
LULU anything very good
PULU substance obtained from certain ferns, used for stuffing cushions, etc.
SULU a Fijian sarong
ZULU letter Z in phonetic alphabet
MUMU an earth oven in Papua New Guinea (perhaps related to the UMU)
KUTU a body louse
TUTU short stiff skirt worn by ballerinas
There is a word which can help you get rid of three Us, and it isn’t even unusual. Well, it is. UNUSUAL, that is.
Even all four Us in one fell swoop isn’t impossible, with MUUMUU, a loose Hawaiian dress, or SUCURUJU, an anaconda.
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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