h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Loved this article.

Anyone who's ever played scrabble will surely know all of these.

However, I have one of my own to add.

You will play with someone who is older than you and thus expects to win. When you start winning they assume you are lucky and then start looking up words in the dictionary every go - claiming that the game should be a "learning process anyway". The game will last four interminable hours.
When they then win, having discovered that EN and AE are acceptable words, they then get smug and claim they should have won anyway as they are older than you.

Not that this ever happened to or anything

Orcus (a fully admitted member of SBGAA - Sad Board Game Addicts Anonymous)

A much more serious annoyance can occur if you decide to have a game of scrabble with your current SO and they see the name of a previous SO on the old score sheets.
Very delicate and tricky issue

That's what comes of being a cheapskate
The big annoyance in our house (not that we ever play it seriously, you understand)is that the person who has the fantastically huge vocabulary loses because the others are faster at mental arithmetic and tie up all the triple letter scores with piddling little words for three-toed sloths

*used to know the word for the three-toed sloth*

My little sister always insists on looking at the dictionary constantly, to "check" if something's a word. Any suggestion that she is reading through all the words beginning with "V" to see if she can get on that triple word score cause her to sulk and claim that she's allowed to look at the dictionary because she's too young to know many words.

An Ai is a two toed sloth, and I think a three toed sloth is an Urs.

That's the one. Other favourites are:
aa: Hawaiian word for lava
ee: Scottish oven, plural "een"
qi: alternative spelling of "chi", Chinese life-force.
do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti / te.
sh

Zo (or Zho) - A cross between a Yak and an Aurochs (I think)
Jo - Alternative spelling for Yo!
Xi - the greek letter

Heh! All the sad scrabble merchants are coming out of the closet now.

(Didn't know about qi, cool, next time I have a game, he he he )

What about "qat" and "qadi". I forget what "qat" means, but I think a qadi is some sort of middle-eastern prince.

"qat" I believe is that nasty stuff some cultures love to chew instead of smoking tobacco.
"Zo" has long been a favourite of mine along with its alternative spelling "dzo" and then "zobo" the name of the male animal.
Oh and it dowsn't feel like a proper game of Scrabble if nobody's used "li" that Oriental measure of distance.

This is a most useful forum for us Scrabble addicts. You're right its dzo, not zho.

Incidentally, the most points I've ever thought of for a word is 326 for Quixotic across two triple word scores (X on the double letter score). SI there anything better?

I love scrabble. I've never won a game in my life. Not never ever!

Being a Maths not a words person, my idea of a good result is if my SO beats me by margin of less than 100%. That said, I have NEVER lost a game of Trivial Pursuit.

GreyDesk - "thats one more cheese for me please"

Another member of Scrabblers Anonymous here!

American Scabble doesn't recognise Zo (most annoying as I use it all the time!) It can also be spelt (forgive me if I get this wrong) DZO, DZHO or ZHO. Another good one is XU - although I haven't a clue what it means!

Qi is a new one on me though - I can't find it in any version of OSW...

Any chance of Online Scrabble.....

There is a version called Niggle available for those with a 3Com Palm (I think any version) which is Free - but it does use American Dictionary :-<.

During the game, (this also happens in Trivial Pursuit), someone will up the stakes by getting pedantic (e.g., 'I don't care if everyone else in the WORLD thinks it's a word. It's not in this dictionary, so you can't have it.'), then, when you start to beat them at their own game, will say, 'Oh, alright then, if it means THAT much to you.'

A devious variant of the above is to play for most of the game without a dictionary, then challenge your word (with triple word score and double letter score on the 'X') and look it up in the sort of dictionary that comes out of a Christmas cracker.

In reply to Orcus, the world record for a score from a single go was done with the word "oxidizes" (hence the joke in the Simpsons where Homer has "oxidize" in front of him and moans that nobody could make a word with "these lousy letters").

heheheh, there are some good ones here....I'll have to try that next time I'm confronted with a sad board games addict!

It's funny you should mention a scrabble game for the Palm, because I actually wrote the article on my Palm Vx!

Cheer Bagpuss, I calculate that at 329, not bad!
My Quixotic word is only theoretical, I've never manged to play it (unsurprisingly) - actually I've just recalculated and it would be worth 356 so it would beat Oxidizes.

I once was one E away from being able to play "squeezes" across two triple word scores. I spent the whole game changing one letter to try and get that E, it never happened and I lost horribly. Serves me right really.

How do you calculate that? If I had a Guinness book of Records around I could tell you the actual amount scored. Note that this was in a proper competition and games at home would probably not be counted, since they can't be verified very easily.

Indeed, most records are like that, when I was at school I beat our school record for long jump but it couldn't be official because it was in a games lesson and not in the actual sports day

Anyhow 1(O) + 8(X) + 1(I) + 4(D*2) + 1(I) + 10(Z) + 1(E) + 1(S) = 27

(27*9)+50(bonus for all letters used) = 293

(OK my earlier calculation was wrong . This assumes no blank were used and that the D was not there from the previous word)

10(Q) + 1(U) + 1(I) + 16(X*2) + 1(O) + 1(T) + 1(I) + 3(C) = 34

34*9 + 50 = 356

Unfortunately, I'm that sad that I have can visualise a scrabble board in my head and I know what all the letters are worth off by heart