Barry Grossman - 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble - Top tips for Scrabble success

The trouble is there are over 33,000 seven-letter words to learn … A lot of players have embraced the concept of six-letter stems as a way of learning seven-letter words that are likely to come up. This means taking a combination of six letters which you are likely to get on your rack, and which combine with a lot of other letters to make a seven-letter word, and learning those sevens.

At the end of this book, you will find a few resources you can look into to help you make a list of seven-letter words using six common letters like RETAIN or SATIRE. There is a very useful book called Collins Scrabble Trainer , or for the more computerate there are computer programs that can help you.

31 Retain Those Good Letters

To take the best of the six-letter stems, RETAIN goes with every letter except A, Q, V, X, Y and Z to form at least one seven-letter word. Learn them all, and you will automatically have your seven if your rack reads RETAIN with any of the other twenty letters. Here are some of them – a definition is given for the more unusual anagrams.

32 Using the F

Not a favourite tile for most players, the best use of the F is often just to hunt for a handy vowel or Y which has a premium square beside it, and use that to play a two-letter word, preferably going both ways to double the value.

So if, say, an O has a triple-letter square to the right, you could put the F on it to score thirteen. Then play downwards if possible, even with another two-letter word, and your score is into the high twenties.

The two-letter words with F are:

FA, FE (Hebrew letter), FY (whimsically strange), EF, IF, OF

Useful threes with an F include:

FIZ, FEZ, WOF, FAW, FOU, FAP, AFF, EFF, IFF, OFF, FUB, FUD, AUF, OOF

A FAW is a gypsy woman, a WOF is a fool, a FOU is a bushel, and FAP means drunk. There are two wonderful fours which both come from the Muslim world – FIQH (law) and WAQF (charity). In the same vein you can also play FAQIR (Muslim who spurns worldly possessions).

33 Bonuses with an F

Your best chance of a bonus with an F may involve the prefix FORE-, such as FOREARM, FORELEG, FORENAME. The likeliest suffix is -IFY (RECTIFY, IDENTIFY, etc.). If you haven’t got the Y, see if -IFIED or -IFIES are any help. There aren’t so many seven-letter words with these endings but there are a few nice eights, like RATIFIED/RATIFIES and PACIFIED/PACIFIES.

With six one-point tiles and an F, you might have SEALIFT, FANSITE or INSOFAR. Or with another one-pointer on the board, you could come up with FILTRATE, FARINOSE (containing flour) or the rather wonderful OLEFIANT, an adjective meaning ‘oil-forming’.

34 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 a coin), LAERING (from laer, make a circle with wagons), LEARING, NARGILE (another name for 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:

35 Q but no U

For most casual players, the letter that fills them with more dread than any other is the Q. Needing a U to be able to use it with any ‘normal’ word, it can leave you effectively playing with six tiles (removing any chance of a bonus, of course) or force a change and miss a go. So thank QI there are words with Q but no U, and as they are so crucial to getting rid of this rather unwanted letter, we should take a look at some of the most useful:

FAQIR worldly-posession-spurning Muslim

FIQH Islamic jurisprudence

INQILAB revolution (in India, Pakistan)

MBAQANGA South African pop music

NIQAB, NIQAAB veil worn by some Muslims

QABALA, QABALAH, QABALISM, QABALIST ancient

Jewish mystical tradition QADI Muslim judge

QAID Arabic chief

QALAMDAN writing case

QANAT irrigation channel

QASIDA Arabic verse form

QAT African shrub

QAWWAL from QAWWALI

QAWWALI Islamic song

QI life force

QIBLA direction of Mecca

QIGONG exercise regime

QIN Chinese instrument

QINDAR, QINDARKA, QINTAR, QINTARKA Albanian coin

QOPH Hebrew letter

QORMA same as KORMA

QWERTY

SHEQALIM plural of SHEQEL

SHEQEL Monetary unit of Israel

TALAQ Muslim form of divorce

TRANQ

TSADDIQ, TZADDIQ Hasidic Jewish leader

WAQF endowment in Muslim law

YAQONA Polynesian shrub

All of these can have an S added to them except

QINDARKA, QINTARKA and SHEQALIM, and

QWERTY can have the plural QWERTIES or

QWERTYS.

The big one is, paradoxically, the smallest one – QI. With an I on your rack, or usable on the board, the Q should no longer be a major problem to get rid of.