Following the news that Collins are to produce a new version of OSW with meanings, Barry Grossman gets in first with a few definitions of his own: -
AA meeting: volcanologist's conference
ADZ: TV commercial that's so boring it puts you to sleep
ANI: plural of anus
BI-ELECTION: a decision to be bisexual
BOX: something a teenage boy learns to do
BRA: something a teenage boy learns to undo
CD-rom: gipsy music on compact disc
DEF: unable to hear or spell
ER: hesitation over whether to watch TV hospital series
FAX: a machine for scrunching up paper
GJU: opposite of gjentile
GOY: the son of a ventriloquist
HAO: endless chaos
MA: mother
MAMA: mother with a university degree
OO: Scots word for we, or wool, or any other word they haven't time
to say in full because the pubs are open
OXO: first word learnt by one who learns to read by playing noughts
and crosses
PSI: number of Greek letters per square inch
RAM: number of sheep that can fit into a computer
SEX: large bags used by posh people
WIG: a device worn to emphasize a bald patch
Unique M- front and back Hooks - Some of the more interesting ones
|
M-ZEE |
HM-M |
Can you find the more common anagram for each of these eight-letter words?
CHARNECO
CRUNODAL
DEBRIDES
NONESUCH
PANGAMIC
PRETRAIN
REMEDIAT
STEPDAME
SUBIMAGO
YTTRIOUS
Ronnie Reid : One of the first things that I observed after starting to play Scrabble in 2002 was that blanks should be taken out of tournament Scrabble in order to reduce the luck element. Imagine sweating over a chess game for an hour and slowly building a strong attacking position only for your opponent to declare a 'joker' (equivalent of a scrabble blank) and then move any piece in a wayward fashion and destroy your hard work. You'd be right to be annoyed at such a move. I believe the blank in Scrabble was included to make family games more entertaining, but it has no place in a serious Scrabble match, especially when it reduces many matches to simply a game of chase the blank !!
Stewart Holden has pondered a different approach&ldots;.
Stewart Holden : I stress that I have absolutely no desire to
change the rules of Scrabble, however, if there was to be a change,
I've always harboured an idea, which I shall call 'liquid blanks',
which might be interesting to play around with, thus:-
Make the blanks changeable once they have been played on the board.
In other words, a blank on the board can be used as any letter in any turn.
Player A plays RETAIN? and nominates the blank as an S. Player B has
BUNGALO and plays those letters onto the blank, nominating it as a W.
The potential for overlapping plays would be increased as the blank
could be re-designated whenever needed. As long as for every turn,
which involved the blank in some way, the blank was nominated as
usual. This means that the player who picks each blank out of the bag
will gain most of the advantage from it, but not all. Judicious
placement of blanks in words would add an extra element of strategy
and reward players who were able to find more than one word from a
set of letters, by giving them a choice of where to place the blank
inside the word.
ENCROACH
CAULDRON
BIRDSEED
UNCHOSEN
CAMPAIGN
TERRAPIN
DIAMETER
STAMPEDE
BIGAMOUS
TOURISTY