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 into the same kinds of game over and over again. Of course, that’s not the end of it – once you know the words, you also need to be able to spot them, which can be a challenge in itself.
Over the years, I’ve seen many different methods used to learn and retain words. Something which works well for one person might be useless for another – flashcards, mnemonics, computer programmes, writing the words down over and over and over again, all have had their place among my friends in the Scrabble world. There is, however, one approach which works pretty much universally: make it Personal.
Do you ever find yourself spotting a loved one’s name in your letters? How about your childhood pet’s name? A country you’ve visited? Certain patterns leap out to us more as they are familiar and create an emotional response. With a little bit of effort, this can be harnessed to help with word learning.
Let’s take my name as an example. BRETT. Unsurprisingly perhaps, one of the first words I learned was BRETTICE (the only word beginning with BRETT, apart from its verb forms BRETTICED, BRETTICES, BRETTICING) From there I learned that BRETTS combines with all 5 vowels to make 7 letter words (a total of 7 words, with a couple having valid anagrams) Taking it further, I learned that BRETT plus two blanks makes 36 words.
Very quickly, that’s 40+ words which I will easily commit to memory and, because they have my name in them, will almost instantly see.
My mum’s name and initial, LYNDAS, offers some lovely 7s (ADENYLS, SANDFLY, SYNODAL) The town I grew up in, Camborne? Well, that helps me spot BROMANCE. Camborne is in England….ENDLANG, south of Scotland…COTLANDS…
There aren’t really any rules or guidelines that I would offer in picking out the words that you want to learn “around” – just make them things that mean something to you (and ideally contain at least one vowel…!)
These kinds of personalised wordlists can be really valuable and fun. Admittedly, they might not always be the most useful, but it’s one of the joys of Scrabble when you win a game as a result of playing one of them.
Here are a few more of my own personal groups of words – see how many you can spot (answers at the end)
ANDREW = 9 x 7 letter words if you add a blank
IRELAND = 9 x 8 letter words if you add a blank
ANGELA = 10 x 7 letter words if you add a blank
REBECCA = 1 x 8 letter word with a blank. This is a toughie!
(ANDREW = AWARNED, BRAWNED, DAWNERS, PRAWNED, PREDAWN, REDRAWN, WANDERS, WARDENS, WRANGED
IRELAND = BILANDER, DANGLIER, DEARLING, DRAGLINE, FILANDER, HARDLINE, INLANDER, ISLANDER, RENAILED
ANGELA = ALNAGER, ALNAGES, ANLAGEN, ANLAGES, AULNAGE, GALENAS, GAMELAN, LAGENAS, LASAGNE, LEGUAAN
REBECCA = CABOCEER…but honourable mentions to the lovely 9s featuring REBECCA: BRECCIATE, BUCCANEER, CABOCEERS and CYBERCAFE!)
By Brett Smitheram
Brett Smitheram is the UK Number 1 rated Scrabble player, former World Champion and has been ranked in the World Top 10 for more than 20 years. Originally from Cornwall, he now lives and works in London as Head of HR for an energy company in Canary Wharf.
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.
