Comments on: Scrabble is a five-lettered SPORT

By: John

John — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:14:03 +0000

I play scrabble competitively and have done for nearly a decade. Zat is not a word. Don’t know where that idea came from. I met Nigel Richards at a tournament in Malaysia in 2008. He is an absolute legend when it comes to scrabble. Quite possibly the greatest player ever.

But he is not a sportsmen. Sports contain physical activity. Scrabble does not contain this. Scrabble is a fantastic board game. But it’s just that. Otherwise Monopoly, UNO or even Snakes and Ladders could be considered a sport.

By: Ian Whitchurch

Ian Whitchurch — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 23:17:39 +0000

Scrabble isnt a sport, and neither is chess – and I say that as someone who will play the Grand Prix Attack into the teeth of a Sicilian every damn time, and who thinks Tal vs Miller is up there with anything Frank Lloyd Wright built.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1259999

By: don

don — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 23:03:09 +0000

I love scrabble. But in the dictionary of sport the word, “scrabble” does not exist.

By: Karina

Karina — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:50:55 +0000

Greetings..really nice this history, I read first in Spanish than somebody translate for a scrabble Blog in Venezuela. Actually I am in London now, and I am looking for people play Scrabble in Spanish in London, I will be here for some month, even I brought my spanish tales, but I want to play in english as well for improve my vocabulary, if you know about some players club I appreciated this information.. Best regards!!!,

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:11:54 +0000

Just on a personal note on the difference between ‘sport’ and ‘game’ – in my view if it doesn’t have a physical aspect, it’s not a sport. I’ll allow things like darts and pool as a sport, but not scrabble or chess.

By: Johnny Green

Johnny Green — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:53 +0000

Howzat!

By: Carl

Carl — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:02:46 +0000

The list of 257,751 words to which you refer is called (for esoteric historical reasons having nothing to do with either pigs or peas) SOWPODS. It is used for English language tournament play outside the U.S., Canada, Israel and Thailand; however, within those four nations a much smaller list, TWL, having only 178,691 words, is used.

You can view all of the words in these lists by visiting http://www.lexifind.com, selecting the word list you want, and then entering .* (a dot followed by a star) in the Freeplay Search column on the right (in the constraints field).

As it happens, there are actually 47 words in SOWPODS that start with a Q and which do not contain the sequence QU. These can be found by entering the constraint

Q[^QU][^Q]*

into the aforementioned Freeplay Search column.

Scrabble players are interested in these words because they are often getting stuck with a “rack” of letters that contains a Q but no U, and knowing these words (like QABALISTIC, QINGHAOSUS and QINDARKA) can be a lifesaver in such situations. It is therefore more to the point to view all words that have a Q but no U (not just words starting with a Q that have no QU). There are 70 such words (including MBAQANGAS and TSADDIQIM), which can be viewed by entering the constraint

[^U]*Q[^U]*

into the same Freeplay Search column.

@Mattwa: ZAT is not a Scrabble word and is evidently a typographical error. I’m guessing the author meant to write “ZA,” a word that is short for “PIZZA,” that is one of the more recent Scrabble words to be approved for tournament play. There are exactly 124 such 2-letter words in the SOWPODS word list, and they can all be viewed by typing .. (dot dot) into the aforementioned Freeplay Search field. ZA (and its two-letter counterpart, QI, which was added about the same time) are very significant additions to the Scrabble lexicon, since both Z and Q are worth 10 points, the highest number assigned to a letter in Scrabble, and two-letter words are exceptionally useful for making multiple words by playing a word above, below or to the side of another word. If the Z or the Q is a part of two words made during a single play, then its points are added to the score for that play twice.

–Carl

By: preciouspress

preciouspress — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:56:21 +0000

40 years ago when we lived in India, my wife and I played a lot of scrabble. Then she decided she wouldn’t put up with my slow play. Neither does she share my love of cricket. We haven’t yet got round to discussing the impact of ELVs.

By: Mattwa

Mattwa — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:36:23 +0000

“Some of these words include over 100 two-letter words like ‘aa’ and ‘zat’ ”

Is ‘zat’ a two-letter word?

By: LeftArmSpinner

LeftArmSpinner — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:11:45 +0000

Queen Charlottes or Hammersmith Hospital. if the former, I know it well. two visits there for two boys of my own!!

Well, its very rare for a new sport to come along. new variations of existing sports: sure. Truly new ones: not many.