Sneaky Scrabble Words

For People Who Play To Win

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Suppose near the end of a close game, you are leading by a small margin and decide to block the board to prevent your opponent from going out with a big score. To do this, you place a C in an awkward position 'knowing' that your opponent cannot make a parallel play.

To your dismay, however, your opponent places their H under the C to form CH, for just enough points to devastate your plans!

The problem here was that although you knew it was time to play defensively and block the board, you did not realize that the board was not really blocked because you did not know the word CH (a Scottish personal pronoun).

The lesson to take away is this...

Scrabble strategy sits on top of word knowledge, and therefore you must know lots of weird and wonderful Scrabble words before you worry about fine-tuning your strategic game. In other words, although both components of the game are very important, word knowledge is more urgent because strategy depends on it.

But what exactly are all the words allowed in Scrabble? I'm glad you asked...

Official Scrabble Words

Just what constitutes an allowable word in Scrabble can vary from place to place. Fortunately, you only have to worry about two of those places: North America, and the Rest of the World (United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and so on).

Why? Because there are two owners of the Scrabble trademark, and each one has its own official word list. Your decision then is pretty simple...

Here is where you can find a dictionary of all

words allowed in North American Scrabble

And here is where you can get yourself a dictionary of all

words allowed in International Scrabble

Of course, if you want to play Scrabble online, or enter an international tournament, you might want to get your hands on a copy of both of these tomes.

As always, there's a bit more to it than this. For more information you can read my Official Scrabble Word List (Long Version).

Scrabble Word Lists

If you're serious about winning at Scrabble, no matter how strategically brilliant you might be, you simply must sit down at some stage and learn hundreds (preferably thousands!) of words.

The best way to do this is to organize words into lists, each of which should have some kind of strategic importance. So here are some lists of very important Scrabble words to get you started. Each of the following links will take you to a page of useful words with a preamble explaining why you should learn them...

Collins Scrabble Words (CSW12)

Words with a Q that is not followed by a U

All Two Letter Words Allowed in Scrabble

All Three Letter Words Allowed in Scrabble

Most Important Four Letter Words in Scrabble

Most Important Seven Letter Words in Scrabble

Most Important Eight Letter Words in Scrabble

Scrabble Word of the Day Archive

Daily Scrabble Words for March 2012

Cool Scrabble Words

Well, I did call this page 'Scrabble Words from AA to ZZZ', so...

Let's get a feel for the sorts of weird and wonderful words that are allowed in Scrabble. Below is a list containing an interesting and unusual Scrabble word for each letter of the alphabet. I'll give a brief definition here, but if I've talked about a word in more detail elsewhere at Word-Buff I'll format the word as a link...

AA
n. A type of lava.

BHOOT
n. a ghost, or other supernatural being in Indian mythology.

Bhoots are usually assumed to be trapped between death and a more permanent after-life as a result of some unsatisfactory ending to their life on earth.

Although bhoots often take on a human form, if you look carefully there are some giveaways. The most spooky giveaway in my opinion is the fact that their feet are back to front, with the heels facing forwards and the toes facing backwards.

While you're checking out their feet, by the way, you will probably also notice that they don't actually touch the ground, but rather float just above the surface of the earth.

About the only places I've actually come across the word bhoot 'in the wild' have been in the titles of second-rate Bollywood ghost-movies I was stuck watching in my hotel room in India a while back. Like this one...

Anagram: BOOTH
Variant: BHUT

CHLORODYNE
n. A medicine used for its hypnotic effect and pain relieving qualities.

GJETOST
n. A dark-brown Norwegian cheese, made primarily from goat's milk.

OTARINE
adj. Relating to a family of eared seals.

QI
n. The life-force presumed in Chinese medicine to flow through the body.

REREDOS
n. An ornamental paneled screen, usually located behind an altar.

UNUNUNIUM
n. The formal name used to describe the chemical element with atomic number 111 until its existence is confirmed, at which point it will be given 'proper' name.

WATERZOOI
n. A thick broth based on fish or chicken and vegetables.

ZZZ
n. The sound used in cartoons to denote sleeping.

Word Buff's FREE Downloadable
Mini Scrabble Dictionary

As part of my effort to compile a free library of Scrabble cheats, I've put together a 39 page mini online Scrabble dictionary containing all the short Scrabble words. As I explain in the book's introduction, the short words are by far the most important ones to learn first.

I've carefully highlighted which words are from which dictionaries to help you avoid learning phonies. If you'd like to get your hands on it right now, just click the image below to get the download link...






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