Scrabble: Hints and Help for Winning Strategies

Autumn finds me back in my ancestral home of Michigan, watching the forest leaves set gloriously aflame by diminishing chlorophyll reserves. A few last rounds of golf are to be squeezed in with my brother, Leon, but there's no denying that winter is backstage rehearsing its icy entrance. Soon the sun will be like a bare light-bulb in a dank cellar, offering light but no warmth. It's time for hot chocolate, wool scarves and indoor pleasures like hot soup, fireplaces and games of Scrabble with me dear mum. Let the games begin!

First off, while my vocabulary is full of expressive archaisms and indecipherable jargon from this field and that, I am not one of those fanatics who studies from lists of wacky words that come in handy when you're playing Scrabble. For instance, did you know that there's a basaltic lunar rock rich in potassium that is spelled k-r-e-e-p? That's the kind of specialized noun only a moon expert could love, but that humble K is worth five points, so it pays to peruse your paperback Scrabble dictionary before sitting down to play.

But there is one mnemonic feat that is indispensable for the serious Scrabbler – learning all of the ninety-six 2-letter words that are the connective tissue of the game's anatomy. Mind you, some of them are specious, bordering on absurd. While we all acknowledge that a group of late-night stoners might pool their loose change to order a ZA (short for pizza), one would think such a word, when spelled, would demand the use of an apostrophe to stand in for the lazily omitted letters. Not in Scrabble: Za is now a perfectly acceptable play, as is Qi, and Xi and Xu and Ki – a bunch of Asian imports that rulesmakers decided would make games easier and more competitive.

Some of the words admitted and omitted from the official Scrabble dictionary reflect a degree of political correctness and ethnic sensitivity that seem a bit arbitrary. Thus in tournament play, one can use the lower-case words "jew" and "arab," but you won't see these loaded dice in the dictionary. Ironically, however, there is an Australian plant called the "blackboy" that is perfectly acceptable to use. Same goes for offensive words: perfectly okay for the street-corner, but ganz verboten in Scrabble-World.

Speaking of which, a phrase like the one I just used – ganz verboten — German for totally forbidden – may or may not be used during a game. For a foreign phrase to be used in Scrabble, it should be "spoken enough by native English speakers that it has become a part of the English language." Now I don't know if I've used the word "peseta" in a sentence in the last half-century, but the Rules People like admitting foreign terms for coins and currency: thus, Xu (a Vietnamese coin) is playable, as well as dinar. Same goes for sahib and Qaid, two foreign titles that may come in handy. And did you know that Ko is the Maori word for a digging stick? Now you do, and it's legal tender in Scrabble.

But here's my bottom line when at home playing a game or two daily with my sharp-as-nails, 86-year-old mother. Hang the rules and just have fun. My mom used to play with her old pal Rudy Simons, an erudite gent who agreed with her that looking up words prior to playing them expanded one's vocabulary and made the game more enriching. That, or course, is a no-go for purists, as would be my habit of fumbling around in the bag for a full thirty seconds while selecting three tiles, which inevitably results in my mother screaming: GET YOUR HAND OUT OF THE BAG!

My jibing response to the old gal is to declare that I am employing the "Braille System," that is, feeling the faint surface of the imprinted letter on the plastic tile to see if I'd like to add it to my rack or not. If that were possible, one could always extract the X, J, Q or Z from the bag and easily win every game. Unfortunately, it would take some super-sensitive fingers to do so successfully, but the annoyance factor is what's important. Between the White Russian my mother customarily sips during a game and my "faux" cheating, I am sure to win every time. P.S., "faux" is playable, as is "Pho," an expression of disgust. And yes, a fake expression of disgust would be a "faux pho."

Now you know…..