Scrabble

For the first time for getting on for a year, we broke the 600 barrier this afternoon. Only the fifth time altogether since we started playing regularly at the start of the plague.

BH might have drawn the big letters - Q, X and Z - but I did all the landing on triples and I managed to use all my tiles with 'manners' at one point, earning me a handy 50 point bonus.

Various interesting quirks of the fairly new to us Longmans dictionary, collected from Raynes Park last year, as noticed at reference 2. Convenient for Scrabble as it can be consulted without having to stand up. And interesting because standard English has moved on a bit in the hundred years which separates it from our OED.

So, 'ex' is sllowed as a nominal derivative of the qualifier. But not as the name of the letter. Longmans do not allow names of letter, while they do allow the names of the notes of the solfa scale - which is a little inconsistent to my mind. But see reference 3.

'Anti' is also allowed as a nominal derivative.

'Jo' is described as 'chiefly Scottish', which lets it in by a whisker, but we have always allowed it anyway.

'Gene' might well not have been in OED.

And we failed to do much in the top left hand segment of the board, a common failing of our games. Must be something to do with writing from left to right and top to bottom. Does the game work at all in Hebrew?

A quick Bing, tells me that Hebrew Scrabble certainly exists, and seems to be much the same as the original English game, but there are complications. And so far, I have failed to find a simple statement of what they are. Maybe later.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-flawed-victory.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/hammond.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_sol-fa.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet.